If you do nothing else, do this one.
On Friday evening, tell yourself: “I’m treating this weekend like a vacation.” It nudges you to savor what’s already in front of you—pancakes with sticky fingers, the smell of cut grass, the sound of kids arguing over the last blueberry and then sharing it anyway.
In the experiments, this mindset made people happier during the weekend and even on Monday without spending more money.
Presence—not price tags—did the trick.
The quiet math of chasing
For years I thought persistence was a virtue everywhere.
Work? Stick with it. Parenting? Stick with it. Relationships? Surely the same rule applies.
It doesn’t.
There’s a difference between staying power and chasing someone who has already made a quiet decision not to meet you where you are.
I learned that the long way.
Chasing has a sound. It’s the tone you use when you bring one more “just checking in” message into a conversation that’s gone lopsided.
It’s the way you over-explain, as if more words will balance the scales. It’s saying yes to plans you don’t enjoy, because maybe this time they’ll see your effort and choose you back.
Here’s the math that finally got to me: effort on one side, effort on the other. If you have to add yours with a shovel and squint to see theirs on the scale, that’s not a partnership; that’s a performance.
And performers get tired.
A small story that cracked something open
One afternoon at the park, my grandson ran ahead to follow the geese. They waddled away, unimpressed. He jogged faster, arms wide, trying to befriend them with pure enthusiasm.
“Buddy,” I said, catching up, “if they walk away, it’s their way of saying no thanks.”
He stopped, watched them glide into the pond, and shrugged. “Okay. Let’s find ducks that want to play.”
That line stuck with me on the walk home. Simple, unhurt, honest.
Find the ducks that want to play.
The people who want to be there don’t need to be chased.
The belief that kept me stuck
Underneath my chasing was a story I didn’t want to look at: if I just tried harder—more patience, more understanding, more flexibility—things would work. That belief served me in plenty of places. It also kept me parked in one-way streets.
I told myself it was loyalty. Sometimes it was fear.
Fear of being alone. Fear of admitting that someone could know me and still not choose me. Fear of the empty Saturday.
But empty Saturdays are less empty than they look. They have space for friends who call back, for a book and a bench in the sun, for a dinner where the conversation doesn’t feel like a job interview you didn’t apply for.
Reclaiming my half of the relationship
Every connection has two halves. Mine wasn’t broken; it was overgrown with jobs I took that weren’t mine.
- Their mood? My job.
- Their schedule? My job.
- Their lack of effort? Definitely my job.
When I pulled those weeds, what remained was my actual half: show up with honesty, kindness, and the willingness to be known.
The rest is outside my fence.
I’ve mentioned this in a previous post, but boundaries aren’t walls. They’re property lines. They tell you where your lawn ends and where you stop mowing.
Choosing isn’t chasing
We confuse choosing with chasing because both involve movement.
Choosing is a step forward into places where you’re met.
Chasing is a step toward someone who is stepping away.
The body knows the difference. Choosing feels like a breath out. Chasing feels like holding your breath and smiling anyway.
I started asking one quiet question after every interaction: do I feel more like myself or less? The answer told me when I was choosing and when I was chasing.
What choosing myself looked like
It wasn’t dramatic. There was no slammed door, no cinematic speech.
- I stopped sending two messages when one got no reply.
- I stopped offering workarounds for people who never met me halfway.
- I stopped making plans with folks who left me rescheduling life around their maybe.
Instead,
- I started leaving more white space on my calendar.
- I started saying, “I’m free Thursday at 6—does that work?” and letting silence be an answer.
- I started investing in the friends who notice when I go quiet and check in because they want to, not because I reminded them.
I know it sounds simple written down. It wasn’t. Habits of chasing are sticky because they make us feel useful.
But useful isn’t the same as loved.
Letting grief do its work
You don’t stop chasing without feeling the sting of what you hoped for.
Grief shows up as a weekend that feels longer than it should. As an empty chair in a restaurant where you’ve sat before with someone who stayed on their phone. As a song that takes you back to a version of you that kept trying.
Let grief move. Don’t tidy it up with platitudes. Let it run its lap, and then give it water.
One thing that helped: naming the good openly and the truth plainly. “There were sweet moments, and it still wasn’t mutual.” Both can be true. Saying both unclenches the fist.
Making room for new kinds of love
When you stop chasing, you don’t create absence; you create capacity.
Capacity for the friend who texts you first. For the neighbor who waves you over to sit on the porch. For a partner who remembers the story you told last week and asks how it turned out.
Capacity for your own company.
I started taking myself on the kinds of small “dates” I had postponed: used bookstore, a coffee on the church steps, a drive to the lake with a folded sandwich and no agenda. Choosing your own presence is practice for being chosen well by others.
And if someone new arrives? You’ll recognize steady when you’ve stopped normalizing uneven.
The practical part: how to unlearn chasing
I’m a fan of steps small enough to do on a Tuesday.
Here’s what worked for me:
1. Set a contact cadence. Match their pace for two weeks. If they text once a week, you text once a week. If they don’t, you don’t. The goal isn’t to play games; it’s to see what the connection does without your extra scaffolding.
2. Name your three non-negotiables. Mine were reliability, curiosity, and kindness under stress. If a connection kept failing those gently, I didn’t escalate effort; I de-escalated investment.
3. Use plain language early. “I’m looking for friendships where we both reach out.” Or, “Romantically, I’m looking for consistency.” The right people exhale when they hear it. The wrong people ask you to lower your bar and call it “being easygoing.”
4. Create a ‘no chase’ rule. If I caught myself composing a third follow-up, I closed the tab and took a walk around the block. Fresh air fixes more than you’d think.
5. Track how you feel afterward. Keep a tiny ledger for a month: “Coffee with L—felt seen, energized.” “Call with J—tired, talked over.” Patterns emerge faster on paper than in your head.
6. Tell one trusted person you’re practicing. Accountability helps when old reflexes itch. I texted a friend, “If you see me writing essays to people who answer with emojis, remind me who I am.”
And if you want a little help stepping off autopilot, I’ve been dipping into Ruda Iandê’s new book ‘Laughing in the Face of Chaos‘. That’s how I decided to create a dead-simple intention ritual that travels well into family life: one minute to name what you want more of (ease, laughter, unhurried meals), one minute to name what you’ll let go of (rushing, doom-scrolling, “just one work email”), and one minute to pick a concrete act that fits your Saturday.
No incense required — just a pen, a note on the fridge, and the permission to keep it small. I tried it before a “busy” weekend and noticed how often I reached for my phone out of habit.
Naming “unhurried” helped me put it face-down and sit in the sun for five extra minutes.
Same schedule, better weekend.
If you’re in the thick of it
Here’s something you can do tonight.
Write two lists—ten minutes, tops.
List one: people who, when you reach out, reach back—and sometimes reach first.
List two: people who respond only when you chase.
For the next month, put 80% of your time into list one.
Not because list two is unworthy, but because list one is telling you where love is already choosing you. Water the garden that grows.
And if someone from list two drifts into list one because you stopped doing their half? Wonderful. If not, you’ve already built a life that doesn’t hinge on a door that won’t open.
Final thoughts
Stopping the chase isn’t a grand gesture. It’s a series of small, brave pauses where you let reality speak and you listen. And in those pauses, you make room for the people—and the parts of yourself—who have been choosing you all along.
What’s one quiet pause you could try this week to see who walks toward you without being asked?
