Oftentimes you hear about people giving up the things which are bad for them, especially around New Year’s or at the beginning of a fresh school year. Sometimes it is sugar they give up, or gluten, or maybe excessive television.
I have decided that I am giving up crushes for my senior year.
All those who know me decently well, from my family members to my friends to my roommates, know I am no stranger to crushes. I can still remember my first crush, originating during those formative years of pre-school, though I do not remember his name.
Since then, I have had crushes on guys with all sorts of different personalities and backgrounds. My crushes have been on boys of varying degrees of familiarity to me, including guys I have kissed and random attractive boys I’ve barely known.
It has apparently taken me until the twenty-first year of my life to realize my long string of crushes may not have been all that productive for my well-being or even reasonable for the guys on whom I’ve crushed.
This is not to diminish those people who struggle with real, frightening addictions but there is definitely an addictive quality to crushes, at least the way I have experienced them.
This is coming from a very heteronormative viewpoint, so this will certainly not be relatable to everyone, but I am sure there are some people who will understand.
There is the initial sort of high I experience when I first develop a crush on a boy and I envision the various possibilities to which this crush could lead.
Then there is the emotional decline as I come into the oftentimes disappointing reality of this crush. Maybe I find out he has a girlfriend. Maybe I just realize that our paths do not cross enough for us to ever solidify any kind of relationship. Or maybe it’s even that we do enter the proto-relationship state but it is not quite what I thought it would be when my crush first began.
Now that I have started distancing myself from this cycle, I realize how much better off I am.
First of all, I have noticed a great improvement in my own self-worth. I am not worried about garnering the qualities that would make me attractive to a particular crush or shedding the characteristics that would potentially make me less attractive. I am more focused, as corny as this sounds, on being myself and enjoying the person I am.
I think ending this pattern of crushes has helped me to better see the worth of individual boys as well. When meeting and talking to guys, I am now more focused on getting to know them rather than sizing them up and wondering what they can do for me, wondering if they could be a potential new crush. I am also no longer imposing my unrealistic hopes or ideas of what my crush should be like.
This kind of thinking is not fair to the boys in question as it holds them to nearly perfectionist standards no one could meet. However, this mindset is additionally unfair to myself as I am now aware it leads to constant, repeated disappointment.
This newfound attitude of mine is much different than “swearing off” boys or “taking a break” from them as I have known some girls to do. I still want to date and flirt and interact with boys. I am not opposed to the idea of a serious relationship; although, I am also open to the idea that a relationship may not be in the cards for me right now.
Instead, I am taking a more liberating mindset when it comes to meeting and dating boys. I am teaching myself to apply the brakes and really get to know guys before developing feelings for them. I am making sure I understand my own value even as I see the value in boys for whom I could potentially fall.
I am also finding that this new perspective is leaving me far more open-minded as I am not narrowing myself to a one-path interest in one guy or one “type” of guy. I am not dismissing the boy who talks to me or who smiles at me simply because he is not my current crush at the moment.
I am finally seeing boys as I would want them to see me—as interesting, unique, and imperfect human beings rather than simple objects of desire.