It’s fun­ny to be ner­vous about talk­ing to some­one, and then real­ize that they’re just as ner­vous when the time final­ly arrives. The dou­ble ner­vous­ness makes for some awk­ward paus­es.

I had the chance to wit­ness (as opposed to being involved in) such a thing once on the bus. A guy and a girl, who must have been in their ear­ly 20’s and both rather obvi­ous­ly attract­ed to each oth­er, sat in adja­cent seats sep­a­rat­ed by the aisle. I could just hear the thought process­es going on in their heads as pause time seemed to stretch out towards infin­i­ty. Every so often, they would turn to each oth­er and say some­thing. Of course, they’d blurt out things at the same time and strug­gle to see who would get to talk first, result­ing in fur­ther awk­ward­ness.

I think that the key to rec­og­niz­ing this kind of ner­vous­ness is all in lis­ten­ing to what’s not being said.