I’ve experienced the same head-melting infatuations as you describe, but not so much any longer. They usually completely wreck my head and now I try to catch it very early on and do something about, as I describe in my “infatuation” post. I think also you just have to practice sitting back, trying to relax and just make efforts with someone you’re interested in. If they’re keen too, they’ll show it. If they don’t, you have two ways to look at it. Either they’re scared too and don’t want to show it, for which there is little you can do but you confront it head on. Or, they’re just not into you. Move on. If you’re not prepared to meet the former head on, you have to treat it like the latter… and move on.

Since I fully realised this, I’ve engaged people who I’m interested in and usually they ignore me, but sometimes they respond and it’s great – I have fun, they have fun. But basically, you have to just do something about it.

There’s a lot more to say I think, but perhaps offline is better or this will be another mammoth post

“mental movies and extrapolations too soon”

I suffer from this too in a big way. Something I’m becoming more away of in more recent days. For me I become infatuated, then become keen. Too keen infact. I think my keen’ness comes from a deept setted hope. I then wrestle with myself mentally over this, over the course of days or even weeks. It’s torture. I ask myself what am I hoping for? what am I wanting? is this worth the effort? is this right? is this mutual? what are the rules? does she think like me? -the mad amount of questions mainly arise from an impatience to need to know answers now for, wait for it, fear that I will have invested my time, emotions and self into a fruitless experience, whereby I might even become emotionally hurt in some way.

I then catch myself on with my excessive thinking and wondering and desiring, even very recently too. Is this thought process healthy for me? Is it worth it? I alternate through phases:
1. Convince myself it can’t possibly work as . I then believe in the simple logic of why it cannot work, and then suddenly I can live again as I was.
2. Maybe I will miss an opportunity. And so I go back into the hope of something new and exciting and become consumed by it.

Maybe it just lacks a balance that I haven’t found yet?

Anyway, I could talk on this for AGES! I love talking, remember?

I think there’s much more to finding “The One”, much much more than is covered here. I’m gonna come back to this though as I’m particularly busy just now and write what I think, have read and rings true and have uncovered through personal experience so far.