The important question is “Why?”
Why are you interested in getting into a relationship?
Why are you in a relationship now?
Why do you stay in this relationship?
Is it for her?
Or him?
Or you?
Is it because “that’s just what people do?”
Why do you do what you’re doing?
If you can’t honestly answer that most basic question, you probably shouldn’t be in the relationship.
Successful relationships, like most of life, require willful action.
Once you’ve decided that you want to learn more about yourself by taking your crushes to the Grown Up Crush level, there are four major tools you’ll be using: Self Control, Imagination, Introspection and Action.
Without Self Control, there’s no way other than dumb luck that you’re going to keep from falling so hard into a crush that you’ll get hurt and confused. Self Control allows you to deliberately move one step at a time. It allows you to step outside of your actions and realize what the outcomes (intended or unintended) may be. Most importantly, it allows you to not make what you know is a really bad decision.
Like many things, you get better at Self Control through practice. Start small in an unrelated area of your life–preferably something that doesn’t have a lot of emotional energy weight behind it. Decide to do something in a certain way, at a certain time for a certain duration. Exercise is a good example, as would be a hobby like painting or writing. Learn what it feels like to be in control of yourself. What it’s like to focus and separate yourself from the distractions around you.
Self Control isn’t easy to master. As humans, we’re fallible creatures. If you slip up, don’t be too hard on yourself. That’s part of the learning process. Just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again.
Make Self Control into a habit. As a general rule, it takes about three weeks to get into a groove with a habit. It takes three days (or three missed iterations) to break that groove.
Taking control of your actions and thoughts will help you not get swept away by the emotions involved in crushes. Or, at least, it will let you more easily get your feet back on the ground once you’ve fallen head over heels.
Most of the work of discovery done in the course of a Grown Up Crush takes place in your head. Because of this, Imagination is exceptionally important. Without a solid Imagination, you’ll find it difficult to run yourself through fictional scenarios with your crush.
Imagination is one part storytelling, one part acting and one part creativity. Don’t worry–we all have those parts in us. The thing is, most people let the mental muscles that make up those parts atrophy as they creep into their adult years. As children, most of us had fantastic imaginations. Try to reclaim that.
Like everything else, Imagination takes some practice. Prod it into action through some creative work–writing or sketching or painting, anything will do. Be silly with it. Be serious with it. Just get used to stepping outside of plain old reality. It’s good for you, even if you’re not going to run with the Grown Up Crush idea.
Even better, you can practice your Self Control and work your Imagination at the same time. Do something creative at the same time every day or every few days during the week. That way you can really have a handle on the whole process.
Everything involved in a Grown Up Crush is useless without Introspection. In deciding you wanted to learn more about yourself, you’ve already begun practicing some of the key points needed for worthwhile Introspection.
Honesty and an ability to not get drawn down into self-destructive criticisms are two key components to Introspection. You have to be able to objectively look at a situation–either during or after the fact–and evaluate it.
How did the situation make you feel? How did your actions influence things? What could have gone better? What could have gone worse? Those are just some of the questions you need to address after each step in the Grown Up Crush.
Sometimes it’s hard to answer those questions honestly. It hurts to realize we didn’t do as well as we had hoped or to admit that what we did hurt someone else. Keep in mind that it’s impossible to actually live life without stumbling and sometimes inadvertently hurting others. As time goes on, both of those occurrences should decrease.
Introspection takes just as much practice as Imagination and Self Control. It’s also intimately tied to those two things. Together they make up the core of any program of personal development.
Without Action, nothing you do matters.
You can imagine and evaluate things all you want, but unless you do something with the knowledge and information you gain, nothing changes.
The goal of the Grown Up Crush is change.
When you decide to do something, set a deadline and then do it by that deadline. If you miss the deadline, take a step back and look at why you missed it.
Be Introspective about it–don’t make excuses. Know why you do (or don’t do) things. Work to understand and change.
Be Creative in deciding what to do and how to do it–creative action can have a much deeper effect on yourself and others than plain wrote action.
Most importantly, be in Control of your actions–the main way you’re going to get hurt (or hurt others) is by rushing off half-cocked and flailing into a situation. Even when things go in unexpected ways, be confident enough in yourself that you stop for a moment and think about what you’re going to do before you do it. Alternately, be well-practiced enough that some useful responses are automatic and instinctual.
With the four tools of Self Control, Imagination, Introspection and Action, you can move forward not just with your Grown Up Crush work, but with many other things in life.
Every now and then I get reminded what real Love is.
And every single time I’m surprised that it’s so easy to lose sight of it.
We spend so much of our lives chasing Love. We make fools of ourselves for it. We hurt ourselves and others in the name of it. We grow and celebrate and twist and turn and laugh and cry in pursuit of it.
But oh so rarely do we actually stop and think about what it is.
Too often it’s not until we’ve had it and “lost” it that we wake up and think “Oh! That’s what it’s supposed to be like!”
Even then we don’t quite get it–because we think we’ve lost it.
That right there is the biggest misconception ever.
Real Love isn’t something you can lose.
Real Love is something you give.
We can chase and reach all we want–that won’t get us Love.
But we forget that. We think it’s all about what we get from others. We think we have to receive for it to be good. We think what we should only give our Love when we’re going to get it back.
Most of these misconceptions come from how we’re told things “should” be. As anyone who has taken a minute to think about the matter, few things are ever how we think they “should” be. All of our “shoulds” don’t mean a bit in the face of what is.
When it comes to Love, what is is that we get it only if we give it. When given freely and without expectation, something always comes back our way. Or, even more frequently (and more frequently missed), something else wells up within us.
Without fail, we all forget that inner joy. Instead we quest for the flutter and flame of romance (so much easier to recognize, so much easier to explain to others). We look for that and we call it Love. If we’re lucky, in a moment of fun, we forget we want something in exchange for what we give and real Love slips in.
I know I’m as guilty as anyone of forgetting what real Love is like.
But, every now and then, when I’m out and about, I run into someone I do actually Love. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone I’ve Loved for weeks, months or years, the effect is always the same.
I see them happy and I smile. I smile because that’s all I ever want for someone I really Love–for them to be happy.
Sure, I wish it was me making them happy, but that’s secondary to what is real.
If you Love someone, their happiness is what fills you with joy.
That is where the connection is made.
The best case is that they feel the same way. Then the system feeds itself and you discover something better than Romance. You discover that feeling you’ve been looking for, loud and strong, resonating between you and another person.
More typically, they don’t feel the same way and you feel a bittersweet twinge. The bitter part comes from the unrequited hopes, not the unrequited Love. If you can move past that, you’ll see that the deeper feeling still rings true.
Of course, the only way to get to that point is to practice. I prefer to practice by crushing on people. Right off the top I’m not looking for actual returned feelings. As time passes and I get to know her as a person, though, it becomes easier and easier to separate my hopes from what is.
The actual Love becomes disentangled from the Romance and the weight of expectation and want.
I forget that, sometimes.
But all it ever takes to remind me, is seeing her smile.
Nearly 15 years ago, right at the end of my first year of college, I met this wonderful girl.
We met at a very outdoorsy community service project my service group was working on. She was a friend of a friend and had spent most of the day trudging through the underbrush on the other side of the project site. It as right at the end of the day that I actually met her. Immediately, I was smitten.
That summer, I spent a whole lot of time hoping that she’d still be around when school started back up.
Sure enough, she was. Even better, she was living right down the hall from me.
Relatively quickly, we got to be pretty good friends.
We’d spend hours just sitting in her room talking. Every night we’d be there until she was just ready to doze off. And every night, as I left we would hug and smile and wish each other well.
I, of course, became even more smitten.
Then one night, in a rare flash of want overcoming sensibility, I kissed her after that last hug of the evening.
Without a doubt, she was a bit surprised.
I went to bed thinking things were OK.
The next day, and for about a year afterward, I would know differently.
A lot changed after that opportunistic meeting of lips. At first, she just became a little distant, more guarded around me. Then, as she moved off floor (for other reasons), she became a lot distant. For months she would barely acknowledge my existence. Not responding to e-mails or attempts to chat in public places.
Losing her like that was compounded by the collapse of my academic career and being frozen out by another friend of mine (who I also had quite the crush on, of course).
That was kind of a bad bit of time for me. What weighed on my most, though, was not knowing the “why” of it all.
I only had half the story. In and of itself, that’s not a problem. The problem came up when I tried to figure out the other half with nothing except that kiss to go on.
My mind spiraled into myriad things–she hated me, I disgusted her, somehow that kiss had been a breach of an unspoken platonic guarantee, it had destroyed the friendship and hurt her more than I ever wanted to.
All of it, I surmised, was my own fault.
Perhaps just as bad would have been if I had managed to be detached and blind enough to be able to say that none of it was my fault.
Very rarely do any of us have the full story. Our minds fill in the blanks as best they can, drawing on our fears and hopes. Filling in the blanks, however, does not mean we’ve guessed right or that we’re even close to the reality. More often than not, in retrospect, those wild imaginings make no more sense than your average Mad Libs story.
That’s something we all forget easily in the joy or pain of the moment.
Reality goes on with or without us being aware of it. Better to try to hold on and follow it than be rudely awakened by it later on down the road.
Eventually, about a year after that kiss, after a lot of dust had settled and many other things had changed, I caught up with her and we actually talked a little about what had gone on. Her side of the story wasn’t at all what I had expected it to be. No, I hadn’t offended her or scared her off. My (not completely unwelcome) advance had come hot on the heels of her life getting more complicated as she began to fall for people and other people began to announce their desire for her. So she pulled back and made hard choices.
None of that was my fault. It was the reality of the situation. And, up until that moment, there would have been no way for me to know that.
Communication is the linchpin of any relationship–romantic or otherwise. It’s the only way all involved can get the whole picture, the only way they can know more than half (or less) of the story.
If we remember that, it can help us keep those wild imaginings in their place. If we remember that, it can help us not get lost in the clouds or the abyss, so we can see more clearly and choose more wisely.
A few more years down the line, in a random conversation with some other friends about “the good old days” of that second year at college, I discovered that there was even more to the story than even she had told me. Not anything vitally important, mind you, but extra bits of context that made it easier to understand her confusion and need to pull away.
Just an extra added reminder that even when you think you’ve got the whole story, you probably still don’t.
Reality just keeps moving on, with or without you…
The first step in taking control of your crushes and making them useful as well as fun, is getting to know yourself.
By taking a few minutes and answering five questions–the first of many you’ll eventually be asking yourself as the process goes on–you can discover a little bit more about where you’re starting from.
Everything from here on out requires that you be honest with yourself. Especially about things that make you uncomfortable. Without that commitment to honesty, you won’t be able to effectively take advantage of the idea of the Grown Up Crush.
There’s no rush when it comes to the process you’re about to embark on. Everyone works at their own pace and has their own comfort level. You may decide along the way that this process isn’t for you, at least not now, and abandon it. Later, you may decide to give it another try and things will just click.
So answer those five questions and keep them where you’ll be able to reference them later. A special file on your computer or a hard copy journal could be very useful.