FWIW, I don’t think you’re fucked up. You’re just a very sensitive, feeling type person. I wish I could be just a little like this, just for a few minutes. I won’t go as far as saying people are like objects to me, but in some ways, that’s indeed what they are. I bump around in their midst, but I don’t see them, really. That is more fucked up, IMHO, than obsessing over someone.
Romance is not the same as sex, right? When I think about romance, I think about being very emotionally open and intimate…much more so than you are with a friend. There is no physicality in the picture at all, just loving hearts. Sex is just being nekkid and doing the things nekkid people do. So I can see how someone could have a romantic crush without sex being in the equation at all. In fact, I can understand an asexual crush much more than a sexual one. I think that’s the major reason why I don’t understand why bisexuality isn’t more common.
it was very confusing. Asking her out to coffee was unsuccessful.
Then I didn’t see her for about a year. Every once in a while I’d think about her; “perhaps I’ll run into her here,” that sort of thing, and now that we’re in the same class again, a year later, and nothing has changed. It’s very confusing.
I have read that crushes involve a great deal of “fantasizing” but I’ve done little of that. Mainly I just want to talk to her, and am very nervous about the prospect, though I’m basically fine once we start talking. When I do fantasize, it’s mainly fantasizing about “what conversation will we have tomorrow?” and thinking about how best to move things from an acquaintanceship to a friendship, and toying with the idea of asking her out again.
I tried having an erotic fantasy about her, but it felt very inappropriate, and embarrassing, so I stopped.
this was supposed to happen in high school or middle school, but I’m a senior in college, and I feel very much at a disadvantage to people who presumably did all this years ago.
I have been doing research, to try to make up for some of this inexperience.
Is it an enjoyable feeling? Or is it like being obsessed and you just wish it would go away? It is enjoyable, at least initially, but it can also really suck if it is unrequited.
Does all love start off like this? Is it possible to fall in love without having a crush first? I believe it is possible for a mature relationship to blossom without a “crush” stage. I don’t know how common that is, but I think it is more likely for people who are older and more emotionally mature.
How does one make it go away? IME the only thing to do, besides giving it time, is to find another object of obsession.
Does the nature of crushes change as one gets older? Is a crush in adolescence fundamentally different from a crush in middle-age? If so, how? I think the feeling is the same, but by middle age most people have become mature enough to recognize it for what it is. And hopefully, but that time, most people would have found a stable marriage/partnership anyway.
This is why you hear the stories of guys having sex with park benches and cars and stop signs.
The key is to obsess over an object that is not out in public. Like a teddy bear or a watermelon*.
*The key to success with the watermelon is to buy it and then bring it home first before you start obsessing over it.
