Ok. Informal survey. See if any of these scenarios fit you. Here goes.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been interested in someone and gone to the place where he or she works or hangs out in the hopes of “accidentally” running into him or her? And technically, that’s not stalking. It’s only stalking when you know for sure that person will be there.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever posted something on facebook in hopes that a certain someone would read it. Because that always works. Not. Of course, I’ve NEVER done anything REMOTELY like that. I’ve NEVER found out the hard way how completely futile that is.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever judged the health of a relationship based on how many times the other person likes or comments on your statuses and posts on facebook. Yeah, I seem kinda hung up on the whole facebook thing, but play along with me. Maybe you see the absence of response to your posts and texts as a lack of interest on the other’s part, or even an indicator that that person is upset with you or doesn’t like you. Again, I can say that I’ve never . . . . ok, I’ve been there, done that, thrown the pity party. Now I take pills and I do much better.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever obsessed over the next time you might see that certain someone and rehearsed in your mind what you would say to them. You even got the script down perfect. The only problem is that real life never follows those rehearsed scenarios and real people tend not to want to stick to your script.

What little I know about relationships is this: there are no perfect relationships because there are no perfect people. You can’t make any one person your life or build your future on the hopes of a relationship. To put another person on that kind of pedestal is to put that person in the place of God and put a burden on them that they were never meant to bear.

So I’ve learned to trust God. And pray a lot. And take deep breaths. And not freak out. The other person most likely is just as scared and intimidated and nervous and self-conscious as you are. They just have different ways of showing (or hiding) those things.

By the way, I bet you feel pretty silly sitting in front of your computer all by yourself with your hand raised in the air. You can put it down now.