During my last therapy session about a week ago, I originally proposed only messaging a woman I like (this is not about a specific situation, just in general) for scheduling dates. My therapist said I actually don't have to do that; I can and perhaps should message the woman for the sake of messaging, and just wanting to get to know her more is already enough reason to message her.

My main reason for my previous point of view: the most common advice people will give about crushes is to just talk with them directly. In a similar vein, it's always better to ask them out directly and communicate your feelings rather than trying to circumvent it by telling other people. One word comes to mind: efficency. My previous method of pursuing relationships in high school was by telling a bunch of my peers and using them as a vehicle to communicate my feelings for me, along with trying to manifest a relationship in my head. This often ended badly since it usually ended in a whole drama involving a million people that was not fun for anyone. That was not an efficient method of communicating my intentions since the transfer of information was not direct at all. Therefore, the better alternative would be to communicate my feelings more efficiently. How? By asking them out directly, cutting out all the extra buffonery, and communicating my intentions as fast and efficiently as possible.

Suppose you want to build a highway between two cities. What do you do? Do you wind the road up mountain sloped and squiggle it around through valleys? No! That is not an efficient route between the two cities. Instead, you build bridges over the valleys and rivers and blast tunnels through the mountains to keep the highway as straight, flat, and efficient as possible for efficient transportation between both cities.

Plus, imagine you have two types of cards you can play in pursuing a relationship. One card is a text conversation, and the other card is scheduling a date. Although both lead to the core of a relationship, which is "getting to know each other" (which I'll call relationship points for the sake of argument), they yield different values of relationship material. The text conversation card is immediate but yields less points, say, only 1 point. On the other hand, scheduling a date takes more time but yields more points, say, 10 points. Which card will I pick? I will pick the "scheduling a date" card, since, although it will take more time, it will yield more points in the end. One card just makes stuff, the other card makes stuff that can in turn be used to make even more stuff, therefore yielding more stuff in the end.

My other reason for only messaging when necessary (i.e. scheduling a date) are not wanting to come off as desperate. I feel like a lot of people complain about men saying "hey" because it's a dry and uninteresting opener, and there's not much to go off of. Therefore, a message such as "Would you like to go on a date?" might elicit more of a response. I also fear coming off as repetitive and thereby desperate. Let's say I ask a woman how her week was. Well, there will always be many many weeks, so every week I might as well how her week was every week. But then that would be very repetitive, and therefore coming off as desperate since I would be asking the same thing over and over and over again. I also fear coming off as the men on r/niceguys and sometimes r/texts who continually send messages over and over again without ever recieving a response. Therefore, I really only send messages when I deem it necessary so I don't come off as one of those desperate texters that people make fun of.

CMV