How do I stop waiting for someone who doesn't know I like them?

A woman in one of these groups had been in love with the same man for nearly three years, and nobody knew. The first time she told anyone was on a call with me.

"I'm waiting for someone for two years and nothing changed and nothing happened." They had been out together a couple of times, as friends, and none of it had ever been mentioned to him. Her description of the arrangement was "I just, quiet, and waiting."

She also mentioned why the waiting had lasted this long: "I couldn't explain why I'm waiting for this person for two years, without telling anyone."

Why doesn't letting go work?

What ends a wait is an answer. Letting go removes any personal responsibility of an action step. Take him off the pedestal, stop checking what he posts, focus on yourself, and it's all what you do in private with still a secret hope underneath. Three years of letting go is still three years passed.

I've spoken to lots of people who've tried this letting go approach. But the buried hope comes back again, because nothing was concluded. He has not said anything, so there's a version of him still available, including the one who comes round eventually.

Why has it gone on for years?

Because the waiting has been full of activity, and that part surprises people.

She was not sitting still for three years. She was showing him care, reading him as avoidant and staying anyway, running the odds in her head, and getting ready. Her plan for the ask, when she got to it, was this: "I think I should prepare myself for the worst scenario."

That is not somebody who cannot act. Her working life runs on being the person who delivers, and preparing is what she is best at, so preparing is what the three years filled up with. Her pattern is perfection and control, which meant she was about to sit there and perfect the perfect version of it. She would prepare for another three years.

Another group member put the cost of that in two sentences: "I'm tired of controlling. I'm tired of pretending."

And then there is the secrecy, which is another part of this. Waiting without anyone else knowing usually means there is no defined date for action, because no one is going to follow up and ask you how it went.

What's the simplest thing you want that you haven't asked for?

That is the question I put to her, and it is where it turned things around for her. Not what she wants with him, which is a life and takes years. Rather, the simplest thing, small enough to ask this week.

Her first answer was "Companion."

Too big. Companionship gets built between two people over months, so there is nothing in it to say yes to today. Smaller. Can we go on a date? Can we sit down and talk?

She already had the question: "I have idea of that question actually, but I couldn't say it to him." Then what was in the way: "how if he doesn't want to? Probably I'm not ready for that rejection." And underneath both of those, said for the first time in three years: "I would like to have a date with him. More specifically, not just going out, which we do know as a friend. A date."

The size of the ask is what most people get wrong, and in the same direction every time, going straight to the biggest conversation of their life.

A great outcome is an outcome

There are two outcomes and both of them are wins. Yes means a date, and then you figure out the next challenge. No is going to suck, and then you take care of that. A great outcome is an outcome, and three years without one is the worst outcome.

It's not the yes or no that matters. It's the fact that you stepped into the courage and you did it. You stood up for something.

Daniel Lawson

You can't do half an ask. So don't rehearse it, don't build up to it over a fortnight, and do it sooner rather than later. Then tell somebody else you did it, so it counts outside your own head.

A group member working on something, got to the same place about something she had put off for four years: "Just by showing up, even if I didn't do it perfectly, I would feel like a winner." She is describing the same thing. The result is information. The win is the asking.

Her line, once she had decided: "I think it's better to ask, and then I got the closure."

Who have you been waiting for?

The question I asked her after that one was whether the waiting had been a distraction that kept her from noticing that this whole time she had been waiting for herself.

She had come close to this realisation herself the day before, after days of back-to-back work: "It's all the stuff in your head. Already been more than two years, nearly three. Is it worth it to sacrifice your feeling, even you already seen that the possibility being with him is probably 1%? So what you going to do next? You have a project you're working on, and distraction is only him."

She put the odds at 1% herself, and she was still in it. That is the thing about awareness. She could narrate the pattern accurately and it changed nothing by itself.

I do my own version of this. There was always enough in our house and never anything spare, so when I asked my mum for money I was asking for something that wasn't there, and I could see that on her face before she answered. It kept happening, so I stopped asking. What grew in the gap was building. If I build the thing everybody wants to be part of, I never had to ask to be included and therefore never received a no. It worked for about thirty years. I run two things now where the whole point is asking for what you want, and last month I told someone my own offer should probably cost three times what I charge for it. Sometimes I notice myself still doing it. I just catch it faster now.

Common questions

When should I give up on waiting for someone?

Set a date to find out rather than a date to give up. Pick something small enough for somebody to answer, ask for it this week, and you have your answer in a day instead of another year. Giving up on your own leaves you where you already are, with the hoping free to come back whenever he texts.

What if I ask and the answer is no?

Then it is over, and you have the answer you have been going without. The fear of a no is usually bigger than the no, and people say afterwards that what they imagined was far worse than what happened. It also takes less from you than you think, because you have been living in the no for years already.

Should I tell him how I feel first?

A feeling is not something anybody can answer. Tell him you have feelings for him and he is left holding a statement, while you go back to waiting, this time for a reaction. Ask for the thing instead. A date says everything the confession says, and it finishes with a yes or a no rather than with you watching his face.

How do I stop hoping for someone who will never be ready?

Hoping stops when it has something to stop on. While nothing has been asked, the imagined version of him is still in play, and that is the version your head keeps going back to. An answer takes him off the table as a possibility, which hurts, and it gives you back the years you were going to spend on it.

If this is you

The wait lasted as long as it did because it was private, and because preparing for it felt like progress. Both of those get much harder to keep going once somebody else knows what you said you were going to do.

That is most of why the groups exist. On your own the ask never has a date on it, and the getting ready can carry on for years without anyone noticing. With a few others who are going after what they want, you come back and say what you did, and they celebrate it whichever way the answer went.

The Reconnected Man and The Reconnected Woman are the group where we have these conversations together.