Here’s what probably went wrong and how to do better next time.
Brandon used to swipe IDs at the entrance to the old gym, back when we were college freshmen. He was quiet, with a serious air that spoke of secrets and a dream world he kept shielded and safe.
He never said much more than a flat hello as he took my ID card. He’d occasionally make the briefest eye contact before averting his gaze as if my eyes had the potential to shoot fire at him if he stared into them for too long.
This went on for all of freshman year. One day in June when the early, humid NYC summer was starting to bake that un-air-conditioned gym, I decided to grind out one last workout before bikini season.
Brandon was at the turnstile again, waiting to swipe my card. I honestly don’t even remember him ever smiling. And a great smile always leaves a lasting impression.
This time when he returned my card, there was a folded-up handwritten letter on lined notebook paper with it.
All he said was, “Read it later.”
I was as surprised by the letter as by the fact that he managed to utter more than one word.
His love note was rife with intricate, romantic depictions of me and us. I was 19, naive to the ways of romance and newly minted with my first kiss just a few months earlier. This note was quite the shock.
I can’t remember much of it now, except how it ended. Something about how he and I were like 2 grains of sand blowing in the wind.But it rhymed.
His words leaped off the page, but the sentiment rang hollow.
It was clear he didn’t know anything about me. He was caught up in that oh-so-familiar isolating prison of having a crush.
The Crush Prison
This is the purgatory where you and the object of your affection are separated by an emotional distance that prevents real intimacy and connection.
Even if you talk to and hang out with your crush, even have a friendship with them, you’re still in a putting yourself in a box that serves an important purpose.
We develop and maintain these crush prisons because they:
- Protect us from taking a risk and being vulnerable.
- Build and preserve an ideal persona with which we feel safe enough to fall in love.
Here are 4 beliefs that form the walls of your self-imposed crush prison.
You assume your crush is inaccessible.
You think they’re “out of your league.”
But they’re a regular person with regrets, desires, hopes, and dreams.
Perhaps they could develop feelings for you too, but how will you know if you don’t ever give them the chance to?
I didn’t know Brandon because he never shared anything about himself with me but maybe I’m the one who missed out.
I was writhing around in the delirium of my own consuming crush at the time, but I was still open to getting to know Brandon as a person and a friend.
He must have assumed he didn’t have a chance with me which was flat out untrue. Brandon wasn’t bad looking and back then, I had a penchant for brooding, dorky types.
You assume your crush is perfect.
No one is perfect of course. And you know that.
But when you get caught up in a crush, all you can see is the qualities that make them glow and shimmer.
You’re either blind to their flaws or you see the imperfections and erase them out of your mental picture.
You end up with an incomplete, distorted vision of this person.
If your love is someday reciprocated, you’ll have been so blinded by imagined perfection that you’ll have missed out on warning signs of toxic behavior or other indicators of incompatible core values.
Making it that much harder to walk away.
You put your crush on a pedestal.
You’re imprinting an idealized fantasy of your perfect partner onto your crush. You don’t even know if they’re reasonably compatible.
When you withhold your feelings and refuse to get to know them intimately, you’re rejecting their true personality.
Because that idealized, romanticized version of your crush is sexier than the real, flawed human that makes them able to connect with you. You stay in crush mode so they don’t get the chance to disappoint you.
This pedestal worship is the main feature that nixes any fledgling hope of developing a real relationship. You’re falling in love with a person who doesn’t exist.
You see this friendship as a means not an end.
Crushing on a friend or colleague can singe the relationship with awkwardness or tension. Your secret feelings are a time bomb waiting to explode, changing the relationship forever.
Confessing your feelings is the answer here, but it’s hard to show how you feel when you’re worried your crush doesn’t feel the same way.
We don’t want to be rejected, we’re afraid to jeopardize the friendship, and we fear that we aren’t worthy.
And if your crush knows or even suspects your romantic feelings, they may think you’re only being their friend because you have an ulterior motive. You’re hanging on for a “reward” that may never materialize because they’re not obligated to return your feelings.
This makes your relationship transactional rather than one where two people organically enjoy each other’s company.
How to free yourself from the crush prison
Ideally, you tell your crush how you feel about them.
If you’re not ready to take the leap yet, you can do the following to reframe how you view this person and your true feelings for them in a more objective light.
Make a list of their “flaws”.
This isn’t an attack listfilled with all the reasons why they’re an idiot for not falling in love with you yet.
You’re trying to know them as a whole person. Approach their negative traits with the same gusto with which you glorify their positive ones.
Brandon could have listed how I only spent 45 minutes at the gym as a “flaw” or how my hair was never completely perfect when I arrived. He could have noted how my gym clothes rarely matched or wondered why I always worked out solo.
He could have gotten curious about what not so stellar parts of my personality these observations suggested.
Don’t judge. Get curious about what makes your crush a real, fallible human.
Bear in mind that a making list of flaws is not an opportunity to become a creepy stalker.
Don’t share your list with anyone. Not even your crush if you end up turning into more. The idea is to make your crush a real vulnerable, accessible person to you and you only.
If you can’t find any vulnerabilities, remember, everyone poops.
Alter the way you interact with your crush.
Brandon and I probably had overlapping circles of friends and acquaintances who could have connected us. I was also part of a couple of active social groups that he could’ve joined.
Perhaps if we’d interacted in a different social setting, that allowed us to spend more time together than the time required to swipe an ID, he would have gotten to know that I was a pretty shy, romantically inexperienced, and sometimes lonely person.
And maybe he would have won my heart.
Change how, where, when, and/or how often you interact with your crush. It’ll give you a fuller, deeper picture of who they are and make them more accessible to you.
Envision what an honest friendship with your crush looks and feels like.
The best approach to imagining a simple friendship is imagining that you’ve told your crush how you feel and they rejected you.
- After you heal from the pain of rejection, can you still be friends or do you hate them?
- Is it always going to feel awkward between you two?
- Do you approach them with resentment or can you still enjoy their company?
- What else changes about how you view them?
If you can’t envision a genuine friendship, then you need to interrogate the source of your desire.
Your feelings might not be just about how gorgeous and kind you think they are. They might be more about you having an object upon which to project your fantasy of love. And honestly, you can do that with almost anybody.
If you can’t see yourself as friends, you’re making your crush responsible for the happiness you want to feel. NO one else, not a crush, not a boyfriend/girlfriend, family, or partner is responsible for how you feel. Only you are.
You must imagine this friendship because if YOU DO GET TO DATE your crush, the basis of any healthy relationship is a friendship.
Use your crush to learn about yourself.
Having a crush doesn’t have to be an exercise in futility. Until you muster up the courage to say how you feel, use the above tools to develop your objectivity and increase your self-awareness.
If you do get to be with your crush, you’ll both be much more likely to have a healthy, fulfilling relationship.
And if you don’t, you’re free to move on to being happily single.
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