In a relationship, be it romantic or platonic, how do you measure how interested is one party into it? How do you know whether you are probably "trying too hard" or whether it is not worth your time and "initiation efforts"?
Let's take an analogy that everyone might be familiar with, be it personally or not. A guy has a crush on a girl, but the to her, he is probably just an average John Doe in the class or school. I am not sexist, it may happen the other way round. To the guy, the girl means everything (figuratively) to him. To the girl, the guy means almost nothing to him - other than a cordial relationship. Hence, any observer (including me) will probably make the conclusion that in this particular boy-girl relationship, the relationship is too skewed towards the boy as he is trying to improve his end of the relationship.
I believe that a relationship is like a.. plank, or a rope, or something connecting the 2 people together (Too bad for love triangles or rectangles or whatever) In other for the relationship to gain "new heights" (pun intended), both sides must raise their ends of the plank or rope or connecting thing. Therefore, any party alone will be unable to raise the height of the relationship significantly.
So back to the analogy. The boy consistently tries to improve on the relationship; by trying to get near to the person, chatting up with the person or simply helping her in whatever ways he can. However, the girl does not get the signal/ignores him and does nothing. After a period of time, one can visualise the plank becoming heavily tilted towards the girl's end. After a sustained period of time, the boy will probably be (figuratively and literally) trying to push the relationship higher but has an inherent limit (we all have limited heights).
So my question is, in such an analogy, do we act the pragmatic and tell the guy to give up his hopes, as he could channel his energies into other things? Or do we act the romantic person and tell the guy to keep on trying and maintaining his stand for one day the girl might notice and push her end up as well?
Basically, how do we know if we should give up or hang on? Or like what many people do now, just let go, let the plank drop slowly to some equilibrium and leave it there?
Now another question to think about, how do one "push" his end of the plank up?
In your relationship with friends, how many times do you initiate interactions with them? How many times do they initiate interactions with you? Are these indicators of your interest to them and their interest to you? Think back to the analogy above.
When I say "initiate", I mean any form of initiation, be it via phone messaging, online messaging, meet-ups or even face to face talking - is there a dominant person initiating interactions? Or is there a balance?
Furthermore, if the initiations do happen, do they only happen at certain times of your life? School? At work? What about the daily nights or Saturday or Sundays? It certainly says something when you only interact with the person during "work time" - it probably means you and the person are just colleagues.
I have been ruminating over this issue. Sometimes I really wonder if I am trying too hard to get closer to people or make people think I am "helpful" and "friendly"?
Am I just too analytical?
Am I too worried over such things?
Am I feeling lonely?
Or am I just too attention seeking?
Or do I just long for some caring again?
