So I was a "crushee" and never even knew it! Or the girl with the crush!.

In My Humble Opinion
1

(And no, I’m not trying to pursue anything. Everyone involved has long since moved on with their lives, gotten married, etc.)

Without going into specifics as to the hows and whys, I learned a couple of days ago that back in high school…actually, waaaaayyy back; I think most of you have an idea about my age–there was a girl in the next older class who’d had a crush on me. Very nice looking, too; I don’t mean to be superficial, but that’s truly all I have to go on. I didn’t know the name, or that she even existed, though it’s certainly possible that I knew her by sight but not by name. But I can’t recognize her by her recent online pic, nor by her graduation photo. (I happen to have that yearbook, but never got around to buying the next one for my own senior year.)

As it happens, because of the context and wording, it’s also possible that I’m being mixed up with my brother, who was in her class. But the weird thing is, as I found out when I touched base on this, he didn’t know her either. He knew of her, and remembered the name, but that was it. They weren’t friends, and didn’t seem to belong to any clubs or organizations together.

Whether it was me or my brother the fact remains that she was totally into one of us, and whichever one of us it missed an opportunity we never knew existed! In a way it’s a good thing. Despite the missed chance it’s nice to know there was someone out there at a time in my life when I was so terribly shy and bewildered about these things.

Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, judging from the 1974 (Ouch!) pic, she looks quite a bit like my wife did in her twenties and thirties. I didn’t know my wife back then but she can still rock the look today if she wants to. It’s rather uncanny how these things can come full circle in a way, in terms of the women I seem to attract, and am attracted by.

Have any of you had a similar experience, whether or not you decided to follow up on it?

2

No quite the same thing, but sort of similar.

I remember once when I was in like 5th or 6th grade a girl calling me on the phone at home (this was before mobile phones, kids). I believe it was my dad who answered, and handed the phone to me, and it went something like:

her: Hi, it’s [girls name] from one year below you in school. Do you want to be my boyfriend?
me: No!
her: Oh. Ok, bye.

Never heard anything more about it after that. Now, afterwards, I am left wondering if: A: She really liked me, and wanted to date or whatever you do at that age, or B: If she made a wrong call, because there was another way more popular guy with the same first name as me in my class. Or C: If she, and most likely some of her friends, were trying to mess with me and be like “OMG you actually think I would be interested in you, you ugly, stupid loser, lol”.

At the time, I totally thought it was C, and I still kinda do, but still, who knows? :slight_smile:

3

Yes, and ironically, I think it was my low self esteem that attracted the women to me.

Back in my younger days, there were some women so beautiful, I would immediately write them off my list as there was no way I could imagine these girls having any interest in me what so ever. So I would basically ignore them. I was never rude, I just never actively sought to interact with them.

And then, when it gets passed on through the grapevine that said girl has a crush on me, I STILL wouldn’t believe it. I took some MAJOR convincing to get me to eventually believe.

4

Several years ago, my young niece joined a youth group at her church. As she was discussing some activity she mentioned one of the adult advisors, Alan. The full name was familiar and after asking a few questions I realized the guy was a old high school classmate - we weren’t really good friends but had been in some of the same after school clubs together.

My mother attended an event at the church afterwards and met Alan. I said “I’m curious, did you ask if he remembered me?”

My Mom laughed and said -“Oh Yes, he said he had a huge crush on you back then.”

I had no idea. I never really found him attractive so I don’t think it would’ve made a difference if I knew, but still…

5

That’s so funny, because something pretty much like that happened to me. In 6th grade (and this would have been 1967-68), one of the girls in my class sent me a note and asked if I “wanted to go steady”. Now, there was no dating or anything prior, we just knew each other from being in the same class. I sent her a note back saying “OK”, but I honestly didn’t even know what that meant.

Then, one of the other boys, who had a big crush on her, found out and tried to call me out on the playground after class. Now, you have to understand that I’ma big guy. Always have been. I was easily the biggest guy in the class, and this other guy was one of the smallest. I just sort of laughed at him and said something: you’re crazy.

I can’t remember if I ever even kissed that girl, but we did “hang out” together for a bit.

It wasn’t until the next year that the hormones really started raging…

6

I’ve had a few relatives tell me that such and such girl working at some store we’d been in has been giving me googly eyes. I never notice. (Possibly why I’m single.) And, personally, I find it a bit skeevy to be googly eyed by someone who literally knows nothing about me. (Which also contributes to being single, I’m sure.)

7

A lot of us thought it was “C”, and it wasn’t, and years later, we had the fall off the roof moment* and realized, “You mean I could have dated her?!”

Becky was my high school crush…she once asked me if I wanted to go out, and I smiled and didn’t say anything, because Becky couldn’t have wanted to go out with me, so she must be joking! We later went out to dinner together (because we were working on a school project), and after we got back to her place and made an awkward attempt to do some schoolwork at her house (her parents were out, so we were in the living room, but she didn’t seem into it), I left. Later, somebody told us that we should date, and she said “we did.”

We did?! :smack:

  • Let’s see if I don’t mangle the joke…
    A man in his 50’s breaks his leg, and the doctor who sets the bone asks him how it happened.

He says, “When I was 14…”, and the Dr interrupts and says, “I have a lot of other patients. I don’t need a life story. I just want to know how this happened to your leg.”

The man rolls his eyes and says, “I’m trying to tell you. When I was 14, the 17 year old cheerleader next door asked me to mow their yard. When I finished, she said she’d do anything to repay me. I charged her $5.”

“So what does that have to do with your broken leg.”

“Well, last night, I was putting up Christmas lights on the roof when I realized what she meant by “anything” and I fell off the roof and broke my leg.”

8

I have not had this experience. For those who have, including the OP, I’m curious how you found out about it all these years later.

9

One day I was at work and my friend’s sister came into the store. We chatted for a bit and she showed me photos of her recent camping trip - I saw her husband in the pics and said “I totally know that guy! He had a crush on my friend in high school so he always bought us each a chocolate popsicle at lunch and I never had the heart to tell him that I hate chocolate popsicles.” After she stopped laughing she called her husband over.

My old buddy: “Hi Juicy, it’s nice to see you again.”
His wife: “Juicy has something she wants to tell you! hahahahaha”
Me: “I, um, really don’t like chocolate popsicles.”
Buddy: “Haha, yeah, I totally had a crush on you back then.”
Me: “No you’re remembering wrong. You had a crush on my friend so you bought me a popsicle too to get in good with her.”
Buddy: “No Juicy, I had the crush on YOU.”
Me: “Omg I’m so sorry I had no idea.”

10

I have had this experience. I think it was a combination of being oblivious and really not wanting to deal with the complication of a relationship for much of my school years.

Let’s see:

  1. In fifth grade, we were on a school trip and the two girls in the seats behind me on the bus kept putting tiny little bits of paper into my hair. One of those girls was actually a pretty good friend through high school, but (again) I really wasn’t interested in making it romantic. In my high school years I once joked about the paper in the hair thing and she said she had had a crush on me. The other one I got confirmation on later, which was…
  2. … in high school, we were doing academic decathlon and the second girl from fifth grade (who had gone to different Jr and Sr High school) was on a competing team but our teams did lots of practicing together. Anyway, someone mentioned that one of the girls on my team had a really bad crush on me ("Really? Who? Me?) and the girl who’d been there in fifth grade admitted that she had a crush on me back then. Apparently, little bits of paper in your hair is a sign that girls like you. Who knew?
  3. In college chemistry lab a girl kept missing her class and making up the lab sessions in my class, where it forced us to share a station. The first time might have been accidental, but she missed too many sessions that semester to be coincidence. She kept working sexual innuendo into conversation and wearing clothes that were not well suited to a chem lab. On the last day of the semester she invited me back to her dorm for pie… like the joke from another poster, it was much much later before I figured it out.
  4. In another class in college, I once asked a female acquaintance “Is [other girl] flirting with me?” She looked at me like I was a total moron, like I’d asked “Is that water wet?” Anyway, she admitted that she’d had a crush on me in high school. The revelation for her at that moment was that I really hadn’t noticed anything, but she thought she’d been so obvious.

You may notice a trend here… Don’t worry, I saw the pattern myself, even if it did take a while. :slight_smile:

11

In my twenties I had a crush on a guy I would see in my neighbourhood. I didn’t know his name, just saw him from time to time, and thought he was cute. I had seen him with a woman who was clearly his partner, so I didn’t try to meet him, just crushed on him from afar.

Until one night, someone introduced us. He was no longer with his girlfriend and fueled by a few pints of beer, I confessed my longstanding attraction for him. He was charmingly flattered. Although we never became a couple, we did become friends and spent time together. Despite moving miles apart, and leading different lives, we stayed in touch, wrote letters, visited occasionally, and remained friends for years, until sadly, he died. I miss him still.

12

Online social media, of course.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

13

On several occasions, I have found out after the fact that girls were attracted to me. “After the fact” being code for “several days after I started dating someone else…”

14

An intelligent cute girl/woman whom I would have dated in a heartbeat told me at our 20 year HS reunion (with my wife standing beside me) that she had a crush on me way back when. Sadly I was carrying a torch for another girl in those days, and probably didn’t notice the signs, although she was probably 2nd or 3rd on my “list”.

15

Ahh…Cindy.

I was a fucking idiot when I was younger! :smack:

16

I had a friend in college who was cute and fun. We had work schedules that’d have us hanging out in the dorm lobby from midnight-4am and we’d play cards or just talk. She was seeing someone and he was often there as well and I never thought of it beyond friendship and she never gave any indications (that I picked up) that she felt differently. Later, she broke up but I was dating someone and that “never both single at once” dynamic would continue until I left school.

About a year later, she called me and said that she was (a) moving to my neck of the woods and (b) was getting engaged. I made a joking comment of “Aw, now we’ll never date” and she straightly said “I always wondered why you never asked me out”. I don’t know if that counts as a “crush” but it was suddenly obvious that she had put thought into the idea of us dating and was receptive to me making the move but so it goes. We’re both married now so i guess it worked out fine.

17

Why? It’s hardly your fault if some girl wasn’t communicating properly.

This got me thinking a bit. You know, it’s funny: I know that I could have fucked more when I was younger if I had picked up more of those subtle signals. (Not that I wasn’t already getting more than my fair share, BTW. I was well taken care of, so don’t worry about that.) And I usually spend a lot of time beating myself up over things in hindsight, generally speaking. But this is one particular category of could-have-beens that I just can’t bring myself to feel upset over.

I can only work with information that I have. If you liked me, but you were too damned coy to get me to notice, it’s your own damned fault.

Maybe I was being more oblivious that I should have been. Probably so. But you know what? I’m not sure if it’s a bad thing. I’d rather be that guy than someone who is constantly concerned with reading signals and playing games. If I was doing that, I would certainly have been reading false positives all over the shop. That might have had some ugly results.

So, yeah. I didn’t max out my results in that department, but I don’t feel bad about it. I suppose that it’s because obliviousness is at least harmless. No one else has ever been hurt, or, let’s be honest, missed out on anything earth-shaking, by not fucking me. It’s cool. I’m fine with it.

18

This never, ever happens.

Good for You, OP!

19

All through Junior High and High School, I believed I was something of a troll in my own school. When I visited friends at other schools (dances and stuff), I was quite popular, but not at my own.
Never knew why, so I assumed it was just one of those things.
Until a guy I went to JH and HS confessed a crush, and added “Oh, there were a bunch of us, but that one guy, sort of crazy guy, threatened to murder anyone that attempted to date you…” Well, that mystery is solved anyway.

20

I kept a journal in high school, and when I read what I wrote about a class trip to Wall Street it became obvious that the girl who hung out with me on the trip did have a crush on me. I was intermittently going out with someone else at the time, but I think I would have asked her out if I had any inkling. Odd that I could write down the evidence without appreciating the evidence.