What if someone is warm in person but never texts first?
Initiation style and affection are two different things, and we confuse them constantly. Plenty of people are genuinely delighted by you in the room and simply have no relationship with their phone — their memory is cued by presence, not by notifications. If the in-person warmth is consistent, if they say yes when you suggest something, and if they are clearly pleased rather than merely available, the friendship is probably real and you are simply the one who schedules it. If, however, they never initiate and also seem relieved when plans are cancelled, that is a different pattern, and it is fair to let the effort find its natural level.
Can you read these cues if someone is shy or neurodivergent?
Not in the same way, and assuming you can is where most misreadings begin. Eye contact, physical openness and facial expressiveness vary enormously between people for reasons that have nothing to do with how they feel about you — anxiety, autism, hearing difficulty, cultural norms and plain exhaustion all change the picture. With people whose signalling is quieter, weight the content far more than the delivery: the follow-up question, the thing they remembered, the fact that they turned up. If you find yourself constantly unable to tell whether you are wanted anywhere, and it is wearing you down, that is worth talking through with a professional rather than solving alone with better observation skills.
