Overwhelmed and anxious

Hello, I'm 40m, all my life I've struggled with opening up to people and letting them get close. I've always pushed people away as soon as I have feelings for them.

The last couple years I've been trying to change that. Especially this year when I started to see a therapist a few months ago. Its helped alot. The main reason I started going is I met someone that I felt I had a great connection with and didn't want to push her away.

I had met her a couple times through my group of friends. Last year she decided to get divorced. Didn't really think anything of it. She started hanging out with a couple of my friends a little more often. Earlier this year I decided to try and see if there was anything there and invited her to a sporting event with a couple other friends that she was close with. She agreed and a couple weeks later she mentioned she was seeing someone. We still went and had an awesome time.

Since then I found out the guy is a friend and they are not dating more FWB. We have hung out a few times in groups and just the 2 of us. The conversation just flows and I feel there is definitely something there, but there also is something holding her back. We seem to get closer and talk more and deeper conversation. But at the same time it has gotten harder to see her in person. She never says she can't off the bat when I ask. It's been a we'll see or I'll try.

Other than her divorce she has also had a lot of other life changes the last year.

My issue is she has only started a conversation a couple times but she always responds and will start a conversation when I just text a simple question. But I still have to reach out first. We have not spoken in a week because I decided to take a step back because I'm really starting to get strong feelings for her and the up and down from her is killing me. She still interacts with me on social media, but just doesn't reach out first.and that makes me feel like I'm bothering her. She has brought up that she told her best friend about me. I just don't know if I should give up on it because she is obviously not ready for a relationship and the f buddy is still in the picture. Or should I just continue to reach out first and risk really falling for her not knowing when she might be ready.

I'm afraid to talk to her about it because I feel if I told her how I feel (even though I'm pretty sure she knows) and she's not ready, it might cause her to back off completely

Also she recently moved a little further away so interaction with her even in groups has gone down.

Thank you for reading all of this if you made it this far.