You know that moment when you look up and see someone and all of a sudden you feel your stomach start to turn and your palms start to sweat? You start to smile for no reason, and then you realize what is happening. You just found your new bae (aka new crush). When it comes to crushes, it is something that develops over time and has the potential from becoming more than an infatuation. So to help you understand what these glorious, frustrating, rewarding and sometimes even disheartening feelings of having a crush, here are the five stages that most likely a lot of girls (and probably guys too) go through.
1. Observation
This is the beginning of the end. You happen to be standing behind a that perfect human being in the coffee shop, and you begin to wonder why on earth you have never seen them before. You’re thinking, “Wow, what a beautiful smile, perfect eyebrows, and a ridiculously mesmerizing pair of green eyes you have staring into my soul.” After this realization, you can’t look away. You begin to observe every part of their face and body so that it will last in your mind forever until fate brings you back together again. By this stage, you haven’t even figured out their name yet, so before they get their coffee you begin to name them something that you’d imagine it being. Like "Hey, you look like a Erin or a Alex, so now you’re Alex in my head." As they order their drink, you start to observe their personality; 40 percent great sense of humor, 20 percent extremely intellectual, 30 percent family oriented, 10 percent Star Wars fan, and you are convinced this is God’s perfect partner for you.
2. Denial
This stage will occur when they don’t recognize your existence or you know they are already taken. You begin to think, “What’s the point in liking them? This is just going to wreck my mind and my poor heart. Just because I’m planning our hypothetical date doesn’t mean I like them. No, I’m not getting a crush.” As much as you try to convince yourself you don’t like them, this only makes things worse. They’ll appear in your dreams and you’ll start to believe it’s a coincidence that is undeniable. You then declare to yourself that you do have a crush on them and this leads to stage 3.
3. Obsession
This is obviously the best stage of them all, because now that you’ve finally accepted the fact you like this person, your mood is always on a high and you feel like singing in a field covered in dandelions and rainbows while the beautiful sunshine hits your glistening skin. Everything seems so much better than it was before you ever saw this person and everything you do seems to somehow relate back to them like, “Dang, that person is riding a longboard… I bet Alex rides one… I should learn how to ride one.” This is also the period when you are utterly obsessed with them, whenever you see them, you feel as if Men’s Choral is singing behind you. You try to schedule your trips to the Lib so that you “accidentally” run into them so maybe they’ll look up from their books to say hi to you. You yearn to know everything about them, so you stalk them on every possible social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Google, and even their old 2010 Myspace page. You try to find every possible photo of them and there are no boundaries that are created until you find his old school’s website that has a picture from his 5th grade graduation.
4. Announcement
This is the time where you feel it’s appropriate to tell the whole world how great this person is. You tell your squad, family, roommates, Paws N Go employees, and basically anyone who will listen to every little detail about your crush. They are just so perfect you have to convince everyone else how perfect they are. When you hang out with your friends, they can’t get a word in because you can’t hold back your excitement about how your crush let you borrow a pen or liked your latest Instagram or twitter post. If you are lucky enough to have become friends with them, then you talk about how every single word that comes out of their mouth or body language they give you means whether or not they reciprocate the same feelings. Basically, you’re bursting with so much happiness and love this person that you simply have to blurt out all your feelings to the next person you see.
5. Reciprocated vs. Unreciprocated
The last stage of having this crush is either the happiest feeling ever or the most depressing heart crushing one. If you’re lucky enough to have awkwardly charmed and flirted your way into their radar and eventually pluck up the courage to casually ask them to hang out, then good for you Glen Coco. If they happen to like you back and asks you on a date, then you can celebrate by hitting the quan in your apartment later that night. In my book, if they recognize your existence and follow you back on social media than that is a huge achievement. However there’s the other side to that where they don’t feel the same way. Nothing is worse than this because you feel as though your heart has been crushed and all hopes and dreams for a significant other has disappeared. You wonder if you’ll ever find someone that perfect ever again, but after eating a pint of McConnell’s Santa Barbara ice cream and listening to Hello by Adele on repeat, you realize you’ll survive.
Either way, the whole process of having a crush is an adventure you'll never regret, who knows what each one will lead to.
