Becoming shy and awkward around someone you like is totally normal, and it happens to the best of us. We all want to be confident and perfect when talking to them, but naturally that will put a lot of pressure on yourself.
Unfortunately, your body’s natural reaction to talking to a crush is to become self-conscious and avoid putting itself in that position, to avoid doing something that could potentially be embarrassing, such as rejection or other negative responses.
And when you add being gay on top of all of that, it becomes even harder!
The good news is that this is something that is easy to work on and eventually overcome, the bad news is that you’ll have to be willing to put yourself out of your comfort zone and put yourself out there if you want to have meaningful and deep conversations with the person that you like.
Here’s a few tips that are sure to help you get over your awkward phase.
Do Things That Will Increase Your Self Confidence
Before we outline the tips, the first major advice we have is to develop your confidence in yourself to overcome your shyness.
Of course, becoming self-confident won’t happen overnight, you need to actively work on it and put time and effort into making it happen to actually see results.
When it comes to your personality, you don’t want to completely change yourself to make yourself more attractive to your crush, as a unique personality is always better than an unoriginal one, but focus on bringing out your best qualities and letting them shine through into your personality.
It could be that you have an amazing sense of humor, you’re a good listener or that you’re a caring person, these qualities are what most people look for in a relationship.
1. Be A Good Listener
Most people think that the opposite of being shy means that you talk a lot, but that’s not actually the case.
Being a good listener and being able to offer interesting replies and meaningful questions that encourage the other person to talk is worth way more than just constantly talking at someone.
This particular tip won’t actually be too difficult if you’re a shy person, when you like someone, you’re a lot more interested in what they have to say.
So if you treat the conversation with your crush as just getting to know them, it’ll become much easier for the conversation to flow and to ask them follow up questions to the conversation since you’ll be listening to them.
The hardest thing about this is finding the right questions to ask, if you’re naturally shy it can be quite difficult to think of questions to ask.
The biggest tip we have is to just pay attention to things that they talked about earlier in the conversation and refer to them later on.
2. Be Mindful Of Your Body Language
As humans, we’re very social creatures, most of the time we’ll mimic what others are doing whilst remembering how others make us feel.
So by smiling and laughing a lot during conversations, you’ll start to make others feel happier and thus they’ll want to be around you more. If you’re too serious or not smiling at all, the person you’re conversing with won’t want to keep talking to you.
Make sure to reflect how the conversation is going with your body language, for example if it’s a serious or intimate conversation make sure to lean in. And if your crush goes in for a hug, don’t back away, reciprocate!
3. Be Open About Yourself
Being a good listener is a great quality to have, and it’s one of the best ways to build a rapport with someone, but you also need to open up about yourself and be willing to share things about yourself.
It can be daunting being so open, but sharing your secrets is a great way to naturally make someone feel closer to you.
But what do you say? Thinking of something to share about yourself on the spot can be difficult, so that’s why you should think of some stories before the conversation starts to make talking about yourself easier.
Think of childhood stories, hobbies you have, recent events or any skills that you’re passionate about. Remember to be yourself whilst telling these stories, and keep things entertaining and light.
4. Find Some Common Ground
In the conversations that you have with your crush, try to find out if you share any similar hobbies or interests to find some common ground with them.
For example, if they’re in the drama club and you’re also interested in drama, use this as an opportunity to spend more time together.
This can also take the pressure off thinking about what topics to discuss, since you’ll already have some common interests to talk about.
If you have mutual friends, this can be a great way to hang out with them since you share the same circle of friends.
You can use this to get closer to them in a more natural setting and it’ll make it much easier to build a rapport with them, since it won’t be as awkward as a one on one conversation.
Practice With People Who Aren’t Your Crush
It’s perfectly normal to feel super nervous around your crush, but going up and talking to them whilst you look like you’re about to barf probably won’t be the best course of action.
Instead, try practicing having conversations with other people who you’re more comfortable around or who you feel neutral about.
This will allow you to gather more confidence in a more comfortable setting, and you can start to translate that into a conversation with your crush.
Technology and social media has made it so much easier to message your crush from behind the screen, whilst it’s a super helpful tool to build a rapport with your crush without the nervousness, you still need to be having meaningful conversations in-person, otherwise when you finally come face to face, it’ll be even more awkward.
Another useful tip is to try and notice any bad habits you may have during these practice conversations that you’re having.
For example, you may stare at the ground instead of the person, you may bite your nails or play with your hands, all of these things are telltale signs of nervousness.
During your practice conversations, try to make it a habit to correct any of these things that you may be doing and it’ll start to translate during the conversations with your crush.
Another thing that may help is to practice different conversations with your crush in your head, it can help you to imagine the things you want to say to them and it’ll also help to prepare you for a lot of scenarios that could happen during the conversation.
Remember That An Awkward Interaction Isn’t The End Of The World
We’ve all had an interaction become super awkward and you end up thinking about it all day and what you could’ve done differently.
You start to think that you’ll never have another interaction with them again and you’re going to die from embarrassment, but we’re here to tell you that an awkward interaction is completely fine, the world goes on.
Think about it like this, how often do you remember awkward things other people have said or done to you? Whilst you may think about it for a little while, you’ll generally forget it pretty much as it was said and done.
It’s the same the opposite way around too, we tend to remember the awkward things we’ve done much more than other people have done to us.
The person may have not even noticed that you said or did anything embarrassing in the first place!
Getting to know someone and feeling comfortable around them doesn’t just happen instantly, it takes time for both parties, especially if you’re both shy.
Being shy is likely an identity that you’ve adopted from years of small actions that have led you to believe that you’re naturally a shy person.
It can take time to become more confident in who you are, but once you make the decision to change, you’ll start to see a difference in yourself. Patience and persistence will pay off!
Hello, my name is Gay Worlley - no, really - and I love learning about all things queer. I am also a qualified gardener and enjoy traveling in my spare time.
I love sharing my travel stories with anyone who will listen, and now I want to share them with the world through my new website! Not only that, but I want to inspire others and teach you about LGBTQ+ travel, queer media, pride, and much more.
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