Dear Freak of the Week,
For the past few terms, I’ve been debating whether or not to flitz someone. This person and I see each other semi-regularly, and every time we run into each other, we end up spending an hour or so catching up. Our conversations are always pretty interesting, and in my head, I feel as though I’m being obvious about being interested in them, but I’m not so sure that’s coming across. I feel like I won’t send a flitz unless I’m 100% sure that my feelings are reciprocated. How do I work up the courage to set this notion aside and just reach out?
Love,
Wishy Washy
Dear Wishy Washy,
I’m going to tell you something bluntly. 100% is impossible. You will never know if someone you are flitzing is guaranteed to respond positively, or respond at all. That’s part of the romance of it. You are willing to go out on a limb and put yourself out there, even if it means embarrassment or rejection.
Now, there are certainly flags of whether someone is interested in you. If you run into someone and talk to them for an hour, that’s certainly a significant one. These days, I don’t think I would have the time to talk to anyone for an hour if I just ran into them, so either this person thinks you’re pretty cool in general, or maybe they’re interested. They clearly enjoy spending time with you, at the very least.
A little caveat –– I’m always tripped up by people who say that they “feel like they’re being obvious.” First of all, we have no evidence of you doing obvious things, and oftentimes we can get so insanely caught up in our own heads that we completely overestimate signals. This is the root of being delusional, something I’m sure we’ve all experienced at some point or another, and an important thing to remember is that it goes both ways. You can be completely delusional about the signals that you feel like someone is giving you, but also the signals that you are giving to another person.
So, with that being said, is this person into you? I don’t know, and you won’t know either. But anyone who regularly reads this column knows my opinion on this type of situation. FLITZ THEM! Your time at Dartmouth is so limited, and your ability to use the powerful tool of the flitz is limited with it. When will you ever again be able to just think someone is cute and send them a low stakes email to ask them out? Once you leave this campus, it’s dating apps, cold approaches, friends of friends, coworkers.
You asked how to build up the courage to send the flitz, which tells me that in your heart of hearts you’ve already decided that you will be sending it. So how do you work up the courage? It might seem like a strange answer, but think about the passage of time. Think about how fast the weeks pass here at Dartmouth. Do you really want to fritter away another week thinking about someone? Or do you want to give it a shot in a way that you’ll never be able to again? To me the answer is a no brainer.
- Eli
If you wait to do something until you are 100% sure how it will play out, you won’t ever do it. You can’t ever be fully sure how something will go, how someone feels — and that’s part of the torture of life. That sounds incredibly overdramatic, but you know what I mean.
It sounds like you want to see if they are on the same page about taking your friendship a step further, but you’re scared. I 100% get that. I feel like my baseline fear level is twice as high as the average person, and I am definitely more than twice as risk avoidant than the average person.
But in a situation like this, I find that being methodical about it — as much as you can about something like romance — is a good way to keep emotions like fear in check so they don’t override your decision making.
There are two possibilities here. You don’t flitz them, and you continue your semi-regular conversations. You continue thinking about flitzing them, berating yourself for not being brave enough to do so and convincing yourself that it isn’t worth the pain of being rejected. When you find out that they are in a relationship, you become consumed by regret over not saying something earlier and latch onto the possibility of what could have been. Or, you flitz them. You draft a fun little poem, maybe even sharpen your poetic instincts along the way and put it all out there. At that point, you’ve said your part, and what happens from there is out of your control.
Maybe they flitz you back, matching you rhyme for rhyme, and you both live happily ever after together. Or maybe they don’t. Either way, you can’t be sure what happens. But for now, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you can be 100% sure that you won’t regret not trying, and I think that holds a lot of weight already.
The worst case scenario — as I’m sure you’re replaying over and over, each time slightly worse than the last — is that they don’t feel the same way. It will hurt. I won’t lie to you about that. But in my opinion, the pain from that rejection won’t compare to the pain of regretting not trying at all.
The thing is, if you’re looking for reasons not to do something, you’ll always find them. At some point, you won’t even know what is reality and what is made up. So if imagining this person telling you that they got into a relationship would fill you with regret, that’s a good sign that you should say your piece.
Lastly, outside of any potential positive outcome between the two of you, deciding to do something that scares you might build your confidence. Doing this scary thing is something to be proud of, regardless of what happens, and it just might give you the courage to do more scary things in the future. So whether you end up with the recipient of your flitz or not, the mere act of putting yourself out there just might be reward enough.
- Vivian
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He studies government and creative writing. He publishes various personal work under a pen name on Substack (https://substack.com/@wesmercer), and you can find his other work in various publications.
Vivian Wang ’27 is a Mirror editor and writer from the California Bay Area pursuing majors in Psychology and Music. In addition to journalism, she enjoys experimenting with storytelling in its many other forms, from arranging music to playwriting.
