Advice on overthinking and texting

Hey guys, need some help.

So, I matched with a really pretty girl back in February, and we exchanged snaps. Unfortunately, this was right around the time of my sister’s funeral, and I had no real energy to date then. Over the course of the year, I’d send a monthly catch up text to see how she’s doing. But then, I don’t know what came over me, but I just asked her out on a dinner date at my house on Thursday. She said yes, and…. It went really well. I made a nice meal, I couldn’t get flowers for her, so I spent a few hours drawing flowers and putting them in a cup as a pseudo-bouquet that she ended up really liking. We then watched a movie she likes and ended up holding hands and having a few goodnight kisses with not only her being enthusiasticly down for a second date at my house, but a confirmed movie date for The Odyssey on the 19th, and giving her the understanding that things will progress only at the pace she is comfortable with (she prefaced before the date that she doesn’t do first night hookups, neither do I). We had really good chemistry throughout the night, making funny quips throughout the movie, she wasn’t on her phone, neither was I. And she liked how comfy my bed was. So…. All the signs are there.

But here’s where my anxiety comes in smh.

1. She’s a bit of a dry texter. Giving some one-word answers here and there, but also has a mixture of conversing answers since I have learned to not give dead end questions thanks to my therapist. This doesn’t really bother me since the last girl I dated was a great texter/conversater, but really different and had no chemistry with me in-person. I’ll take the inverse of that any day.

2. My uncle recently passed from cancer, so I am back in the reserve a few hours away to be with the family until next Friday. So, I can’t ask her to chill at my place until I get back. Im okay with that since i will be spending a lot of time with my late uncle’s son and daughter, whom i consider my younger siblings and love them a lot. Plus i get to see my Kokum (grandmother) too, who is basically my mother.

3. We literally have a confirmed date next Sunday, and when I asked if she’d be down for another date at my place, she literally said “of course” smh.

4. When I texted her yesterday, I told her I’d be with my fam for a week, and made sure to understand her boundaries regarding bombarding with texting, as well as her being cool with me giving her a call sometime in the week.

So here’s where my anxiety… comes in again smh. Part of me is a bit worried that… the interest will go away on her end since we don’t see each other for a bit. Now, I understand that’s thinking a bit of low of her, but that comes from a girl I really liked doing that exact thing to me in the past. I also don’t want her to feel overwhelmed by me since we literally had one date, there’s no label on us, and it’s simply a seed planted that neither of us know will grow or stay in the ground.

I do not want to project ANY of my anxieties or trauma onto her, as it is my own issues to deal with, and it’s disrespectful to make her feel like I am viewing her in the lens of the girls I’ve dated in the past. I know I am doing that right now in a sense, but that’s why I’m here and not talking with her about it.

As you can tell, if you’ve read this far, I am very, very hyper-vigilant person, which I am doing my best to work on in therapy.

So, my question is, how would you go about handling this?

How often should I text? I mean, 1 date doesn’t mean I’m a part of her daily life now. It could in the future, but it’s not right now in my opinion. If I want to become someone like that, I need to let it grow naturally, perhaps when I call her sometime this week could help with said growth, but I don’t want to send 2-3 “how are you/how’s your day going” texts a day for the next week.

What would so you do in my shoes?

Any advice and honest criticism is welcomed. I know I’m overthinking the absolute hell out of this. But this is honestly new territory for me and I just want to navigate it properly with the help of humans and not ChatGPT.