My dating life has been looking up a bit lately - I've gone from 0 to having 3 women in my regular social circles who are outright flirty with me and have expressed interest in dating. The thing is, out of all of them, there's only 1 that I'm really into.

Common advice online is to date multiple women yourself to avoid overinvesting too early but - no matter how many women show me interest, I always have one that I fall for and end up building my schedule around her.

This works out the way you'd expect - the women where I'm uninvested are all over me, and the one I truly want to date is often less available and ends up being a flop.

There are at least two things at play here:

  • When I'm uninvested, I tend to say whatever, do whatever, respond whenever, literally just live my life and end up coming off as attractive by basically sharing my life nonchalantly. If a girl tells me that she's seeing other guys, I don't really care, I'm not pursuing her, I even give her advice on her guy situations. Of course, this tends to just get people to double down on why I'm nonchalant towards them. I've recently had this turn into a full on "do you want to Netflix and Chill" text from a girl, despite not being interested in her sexually or romantically.
  • When I'm invested, aka "the one" that I have in my current scenario, I tend to act overly invested; forward with my interest, etc. Often breaking the symmetry of our interactions and showing way more interest than she does. On top of that, if she mentions that she's hanging out with or casually dating another guy, I immediately start to overthink everything and become resentful of the situation. I start thinking of everything from a "she's just using me for attention and really wants this other guy" angle.

The latter is frustrating and usually ends in me sabotaging my chances with the girls I actually want to date while ending up with girls texting me daily that I don't want to date at all. She's single and allowed to date whoever, but when I start to get signals that I'm not her first choice or that she's courting other guys, I start to detach and sabotage the situation.

This recent girl was actually one of the ones I was uninterested in at first - and the minute I started develop interest back it started to turn poorly.

The thing is, I have plenty of evidence in other scenarios that women often pick me over time with enough exposure. If I keep my cool and just be myself, women with other options have often drifted towards me anyway - on paper I have my life together in a lot of ways.

TLDR; How can I stay out of my head when I (1) really like a particular girl - even if I have other options and (2) when that girl is mentioning, even in passing, that she's dating other guys as well?

I clearly have a recipe for something that works when I'm uninvested, but my own head gets in the way when there are actual stakes on the table. I think is 100% a mental state thing and I don't know how to break myself out of it into a pattern where I can be carefree and fun with anyone, even a girl that I'm really into.