Crush Or Bust?

Since When Did Crushes Get So Complicated?

By Sophie LaRocca

Published, July 14th, 2024

A crush is defined by Betterhelp as, “Short term romantic feelings that may center around the desire for a physical relationship” but when you look into it deeper, it’s so much more.

We learn about crushes normally around grade school, some as soon as first grade, developing these so called ‘butterflies’ for another person. Everytime they’re in the room, your heart races, and everytime they walk passed you, you’ll do anything to touch them. As you get older, crushes intensify. I’m sure I don’t have to go through specifics here! Come on now, butterflies grow more promonant and once you get to High School, it’s almost too much to bare. What once was innocent, isn’t so much anymore. But once you get into your twenties, Is it still safe to say we have a crush on someone? As we get into our twenties and thirties and grow more mature, is a crush really a crush, or just primal human instincts to mate?

I learned this lesson the hard way before. My first two loves were crushes. Massive crushes. They would walk by and my heart would stop, lungs plummeting to my belly. Their laugh pumped life into me and their smiles made me melt. Now, with my last boyfriend, not so much. I never had a crush on my last boyfriend, in fact at first, I wasn’t even attracted to him. But he was nice and sweet and bought me flowers. So I fell, because no guys ever done that before. Yeah, he was nice. Until the relationship was falling apart. And I did grow to be attracted to him, but there was no instant attraction. No spark! So that begs the question as well, does their need to be physical attraction right off the bat to make a relationship work?

All my guy friends will tell you yes, and all my girl friends will tell you no, but when it comes down to it… I gave up physical attraction. I gave the nice guy that I wasn’t originally attracted to a chance, ended up falling for him and was massively fucked anyway! So maybe you need a crush to make a relationship work.

Maybe a good relationship can only work when there is a crush in the beginning. But as we get older, crushes get more and more foreign. Why is that?

Well, the ghosts of relationships past of course.

We’re scared. All of us. We’re scared to fall and we grow tainted by the partners in our past and our past failed relationship. We grow weary but wise. Smarter but harder. A scar to show for every failed talking to stage and breakup. Crushes are so rare in our twenties and thirties because we don’t allow ourselves to have them.

Why are they called crushes?

Well, because when the short term fling in your mind ends, you’re crushed.

When daydream makes way into reality and the person isn’t who you built them up to be, or they’re jerks, or it doesn’t work out, we become more and more crush proof.

I have a crush. I think.

And I’m scared to admit I do, terrified. But I’ve been this way since high school. Terrified to take the leap into saying, ‘I like you.’ I can’t admit it to myself, because when I do, it makes it real. It gives that person power to hurt me. And isn’t why we go through all of this for a relationship? Why we get back on the horse after a breakup is for a crush? Yes! I have it, I have it and I can not admit I do.

But it was instant attraction, tension, a spark. We all know the spark right? Now in the days of online dating, a spark is so rare. So many failed talking stages, so much settling. But you know when your eyes land on someone and you feel it? Fully. A full spark all throughout my body and chest.

I was giggly. I was thrown into being myself immediately, and I think he likes it. Humor. Sense of humor is huge for me, and he has it. Crushes are fun though until you’re waiting at your phone for them to answer back. And I can not do that again. But it makes you wonder how all the former single girls did it for so long. We aren’t crush proof, we’re just scared.

We’re scared of rejection, we’re not those little kids back in first grade anymore, more goes into crushes now! Chemistry, life in general! Life gets in the way! Logic. Back in first grade we didn’t have to think about logic. I want nothing more then to take the plung like jumping in to a cool pool in the middle of summer. But as the ghosts of relationships past haunts us, we almost stop ourselves and think. Think about those silly things like logic. That back in middle school, we didn’t have too.

Part of me feels like an awful example for preaching being happy alone when I’m sitting here, holding myself back from being happy with someone else. What kind of example does that make me for my neice. Whose going through her own breakup. As I tell her that it’s ok to be alone, and have another crush, and date other people, I find myself not taking my own advice because I’m so damn scared of disappointment.

But as I said. This isn’t middle school anymore. Crushes are fun, and they feel amazing, and it’s what we all hope for. But it’s what happens after the crush that’s scary. The waiting, and the hoping, and the actual relationship! If you manage to build one. That’s when stress starts to occur, and that’s why being single feels so damn good. But I’m on my way to finding out what the benefits of a crush actually are.

The truth is, crushes come and go, but if we don’t surrender to our feelings once and a while we will never be able to learn anything. We’ll never feel happiness, pleasure, pain, and pain creates art. Pain creates stories which is what I do. Without of the pain of relationships past, I wouldn’t be here. My sister told me I needed to let go, and she was right. I had to let go, because if I didn’t, I would never feel thr joys of a crush again. And whether this works out or not, you’ll never know until you let those feelings overcome you. So feel.