How to Crush Without Being Crushed

No matter how well we think we know ourselves, there’s always more to learn. We are, after all, constantly growing and changing due to the experiences and thoughts we have.

In this blog, I advocate using your crushes to learn about yourself. Before you can effectively do that, you need a solid starting point. You need to understand who you are now. Thankfully, there are a number of tools available to help with that–and most are readily available, thanks to the wonders of the modern world.

1. Personality Tests

By the time you’ve gotten half-way through high school, you’ve probably taken at least one or two personality tests. The most common is the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. While it works best when given, interpreted, and followed up by a professional trained to work with it, even a self-administered one can be eye opening. You can take various versions of it online, here’s one. Another, with a slightly different way of grouping the results (that I particularly like) can be found here.

Even the memes that float around on social networking sites can lead to some insight into who you are right now. Unfortunately, they’re so easy to produce that most of them are horribly constructed, bland, skewed, and shallow. Be aware of the source and try to gauge the depth of any meme that crosses your path before you put too much stock in it.

The important thing to remember about any versions of any personality test is that it is only an indicator of who you are right now. Tomorrow, you may be in a different mood and answer enough questions differently that your type will change by a letter or two. Nothing that these sets of questions spit out is set in stone–if we want to change who we are, we can.

2. A Video Camera

Most of us are visual creatures. We’re kind of built that way. Most of the meaning we glean from interacting with others comes from non-verbal cues. What better way to learn about ourselves than to get someone else’s view of how we behave?

Video cameras are cheap these days–many cell phones even have video capability–so this isn’t as far-fetched a tool as it once was. The trick is, you probably need someone to help out and a group of understanding friends who don’t mind being caught on tape as you interact with them. Alternately, set it up and tell stories to the camera.

No matter the technique used, the first few times you’ll be very self conscious, making that early data very flawed. When you get to the point where you forget there’s a camera there, though, you’ll be able to look back at the footage and see yourself in a whole new light.

3. Lists & Journals

Make lists. Lots of them. Write down the thought process you go through to make a decision. Write out pros and cons of what shows you watch on TV. Write stories of your day–no matter how mundane or boring. Eventually two things will happen: you’ll become more aware of the processes you go through on a daily basis and you’ll be able to shift your thinking to a more analytical level when looking at your own thoughts and actions.

Journaling can be one of the most productive things you can do when getting to know yourself. It provides a permanent record of what’s come out of your head before. You can flip back through the pages and see how you felt a week, month, or year ago. If you write about both your good and bad times, you can see the ebb and flow of your moods and start to pick out patterns.

Most importantly, going back and reading old journals and lists months or years later can really help you keep the drift of memory in check. Depending on our general mood, memories often drift either to the positive or negative, dropping out bits that don’t support the direction of the drift. When I went back and read my own journals from my teen years, I discovered many positive things I had completely wiped from my memory as I focused on how awful that time period was.

4. Friends

While it’s never easy to hear some things, we can always ask those around us how they see us. Real friends will offer constructive critiques of your good and bad points. Take anyone who only has good things to say with a large a grain of salt as someone who only has bad things to say. If you really trust your friends, you can ask them to point out when you start falling into certain patterns–like being argumentative after a bad day at work or being flighty and hard to understand when you’re excited about something.

Sometimes, just the act of asking someone what they think of you can be an enlightening experience. It can point out just how much we don’t know about ourselves… and how afraid we are to find out.

5. Professionals

Once upon a time, I would have never recommended a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist as a viable tool for learning about yourself. All I had heard were horror stories of people being put on medications, told how they thought was wrong, and, more or less, coerced into falling into “normal” patterns in order to be considered OK.

Years have passed since then and the world has changed. Many therapists are much more open to non-destructive personality quirks or beliefs and practices that fall outside of the norm (like minority religions such as Wicca or the behaviors of various sub-cultures like Goths or the BDSM scene). Even better, there’s a wider range of professionals available, so you stand a better chance of finding one who’s personality meshes well with your own.

Make use of one or all of these tools–or numerous others that are out there–and you’ll start to get a better idea of who you are right now. Once you’ve started to get a handle on that, you can begin to use your crushes as tools to delve into the depths of your emotional side.

As you flesh out your own view of yourself, two new tasks become important: deciding who you want to be and starting to figure out how to get there.

Next time, I’ll talk a little about some processes that can help keep everything moving along.

Tags: introspection, personality, Science

So I’ve talked about how to tell someone you have a crush on them and why you’d want to do that. I figure now it’s time I share a couple of stories from my own life. Just a little while ago, I told you about one that didn’t go so well. Now I’d like to share a much more positive experience.

History Can Brighten the Present

As I’ve mentioned before, in high school there were many, many, many girls I had crushes on. Some of those crushes left me blind to other opportunities, but mostly I missed out on things because I just couldn’t fathom anyone actually liking me. Too many years of rejection and too much feeling like an outside will do that.

But, as the years went by, I came to terms with my high school (and middle school) experiences. I accepted that I was at least as much responsible for my situations as anyone or any other force was. Many of those crushes developed into decent friendships, and that let me keep in touch with people, at least for a little while.

When I moved back to my home town after college, there were still a handful of people I knew there. Others weren’t that far away. Classmates and underclassmen from my high school years. Some people I expected to see. Others, I was pleasantly surprised to run into or hear from.

Kerry was one of the latter. She was a constant in my high school days. Not in many of the same classes, but thankfully often on the same schedule when it came to lunch or gym or a study hall. During college, I’d lost touch with her. Once or twice our paths crossed. I hadn’t expected to run into her again… but I stumbled across some contact information and, just before Christmas one year, we got back in touch.

She invited me to a little party her and her boyfriend were throwing within sensible driving distance. There’d be a handful of people from high school there. It was one of my earlier chances (way before Facebook would make it easy) to reconnect with my own past and gain some perspective.

I arrived and, before long, the conversation turned to those high school days gone by.

At one point, Kerry lamented, “No one liked me back then!”

I laughed and told her the truth. “Everyone liked you. Most of us had a crush on you. I know I did.”

And she looked at me for a moment, then hauled back and smacked me in the shoulder, just like old times. “You should have said something, idiot. I would have said yes.”

Everyone got a good laugh out of that.

We can’t change what is in the past. But sometimes revisiting it with new eyes can give us a different perspective.

For years, both her and I had thought we were outcasts and unloved. A nearly a decade later, we proved that perception to be untrue.

Through that one, simple, honest and unconditional declaration, both of us whisked away some small bit of darkness that had been holding us down for years.

A better understanding of the past, brightened our day.

This is the kind of crush reveal that often goes over best. There was a good distance between the actual crush and the admission of it. Circumstances at the time of the reveal made even the thought of exploring the old crush in anything other than an academic manner an impossibility. It happened naturally, in the flow of a normal conversation. And there were no expectations on anyone’s part of what the revelation would lead to.

Granted, if either of us had been in a negative headspace at the time, it could very easily have set off a negative spiral of lamenting missed opportunities of the past. We were both in good spirits, though, so that negativity was avoided.

This experience is similar to many I’ve had over the years as I’ve confided in past crushes how I felt about them “way back when”. In fact, it’s kicked off some better communication and planted seeds for better friendships that I had with them while I was crushing on them.

Love, even old Love, has a wonderful power to transcend time and bring with it a bit of joy.

We just have to be willing to share it.

When we do, we can see that history can brighten the present.

Tags: anecdotes, crushes, friendship, high school, lessons learned

So I’ve talked about how to tell someone you have a crush on them and why you’d want to do that. I figure now it’s time I share a couple of stories from my own life. One when things went pretty darn wrong and another where they went considerably better.

A Failure to Understand

Back in my first year of college, just when I was starting to get my head clear and really start living my life as myself (as opposed to some oddly contorted version of who I and others thought I should be), I met a girl. As usual I fell for her something fierce and didn’t do all that much about it.

Mijan and I spent a lot of time together. Her and a couple of her friends easily integrated with the group I was running with. We all went out together every now and then, we all explored strange and unusual ideas, we were all friends. Coming from the not entirely self-imposed isolation of middle and high school, I was loving it.

One night, my buddy Z, being the epitome of awesomeness (which I really couldn’t appreciate quite as much at the time) loaded us all into his car to go… somewhere. Maybe it was just out to a movie, maybe shopping, maybe just a spin around town. I don’t remember. What I do remember is that there were about eight of us crammed into his Audi. Five in the back seat, him driving and two of us in the passenger seat. Most stacked two deep.

What makes Z awesome (at least in this instance) is that he orchestrated it so that it was me who ended up in the passenger seat and Mijan who ended up sitting on my lap, her head cocked to one side so it wouldn’t be pressed completely up against the roof.

Really, all the other details are a bit fuzzy. All I knew was that she was there, on my lap, and, every now and then, shed glance back, smile, and laugh a little at or contribute to the conversation that was going. I could feel waves of attraction coming off her in my direction.

It was shortly after that night that I decided I was definitely going to tell her how I felt.

I spent days psyching myself up for it. Had seventeen different segues planned, moving from telling her how I’d fallen for her the day I met her in passing at orientation and how I’d been thrilled to stumble upon her in the computer lab and ecstatic about being able to help her log in properly (leaving out the semi-obvious fact that doing so also let me get her e-mail address so I could keep in touch with her) to asking her out on a date.

After all, it was sure thing!

Right?

But I was far from solid in my conviction and still quite unsteady when it came to asserting myself in any way. Especially in matters of the heart.

So I begged my friend Chris to help me by serving as moral support. “Dude, I’m going to do something that may be incredibly stupid,” I said. “I need you there to at least watch in case it goes bad.” He grudgingly agreed and went to wait in my room.

A few minutes later, I corralled Mijan in. “Hey, can I talk to you about something?” I didn’t get a look at her face when she saw Chris was in the room, too, as I was rehearsing my lines in my head, but I can imagine she was, at the very least, a bit wary of what was about to happen.

To door closed and I launched into some jabbering, halted, lilting version of something vaguely resembling what I had wanted to say. It took maybe a minute or two to get through, but felt like days. Agonizing days. But then I got to the next to last set of words. “I really like you and have for a long time. And I hope you feel the same way…”

I paused as I caught the look of utter horror in her eyes. She took the opportunity and rendered my planned final question more than moot.

“I don’t,” she said. “You’re nice and all but I like… him.” And she looked back at my friend Chris, who I can only imagine was in almost as much shock as I was.

That’s when it occurred to me that Chris had been sitting behind me in the car that night. Every time she turned around to smile and laugh, she was actually looking over my shoulder at him. Those waves of attraction I felt coming in my direction? They were meant to hit three feet past me.

To my credit, I didn’t crumble into a ball and die right there. I felt like I would. But I didn’t. Instead, I politely excused myself. “Well, then. I’ll, uh, just leave you two to talk.” And went for a bit of a walk.

Not at all what I had planned.

In retrospect, I couldn’t have done it much more wrong without insulting her family and vomiting on her.

My first mistake was going into the conversation with high expectations. A close second was going in with a set agenda. The third? Dragging someone else into it. Fourth and finally, I was so wrapped up in what I had planned to say that I must have missed at least a dozen cues that should have stopped me before things went as far as they did.

If I was just going to confess my crush on her, I should have done so in a much more casual manner.

But my goal wasn’t to let her know how I felt.

My goal was to ask her out.

With that as the goal, I should have skipped the long, drawn out story (which I obsessed over something fierce) and just skipped straight to “Would you like to go on a date sometime?”

It would have been a lot less painful–for all of us–if it hadn’t been built up as much as it was.

When we attach so much significance to a hoped-for (or, even worse, expected) outcome, we can’t help but be crushed when things don’t pan out that way.

The whole situation could have been as simple as me asking her out and her politely telling me no. Instead, I brought it into a whole new level of pain and discomfort for three people.

I failed to understand where I was coming from. I failed to take her (or my buddy) into

It was bad, but we all recovered from it. Chris and I are still friends and still in touch. Mijan drifted out of our group as time went on, but we parted as friends. I haven’t seen or heard from her in over a decade. (But I’d love to have the chance to catch up… and hear her side of this story.)

Not all of my crush declarations have gone anywhere near this bad. I’ll tell you about one of the better ones next…

Tags: anecdotes, college, crushes, friendship, lessons learned

With International Crush Day having just passed, I hope some of you let fly with declarations of wild interest to some of your crushes.

Me? I discovered that I really don’t have many actual crushes around I haven’t told about my crush on them. And those that I do have… well, they’re not quite ripe yet, so they’re staying on the vine a little longer. Granted, I did kind of limit myself to only one or two of the seven types of crushes I make note of, but I’m going to save up all my Hollywood crushin’ for Dragon*Con, when I’ll be able to tell some of them in person.

I mentioned my lack of secret crushes to a few people and they were a bit shocked. “You mean you just tell people you have a crush on them? How do you do that?”

The easy answer is “Practice.” The more complete answer includes the words “lots of pain and whole lot of willingness to risk things.” Then I figured it would be more useful to put together a short list of steps that I go through when getting ready to tell someone I have (or have had) a crush on someone.

1. Be Honest About Why You’re Telling Them

As is often the case with crushes, they pan out best if you use them to dig deep into yourself and find real answers. The first step in declaring your crush is to be honest about why you want to make such a declaration. Are you telling them in the hope that they feel the same way? Are you telling them with the expectation that they’ll drop everything and run away with you like in the movies? Do you think it will brighten their day? Complicate their lives? Lift a weight from your own mind? Make for a good story later?

The reasons are endless and can be very personal. At this stage, don’t worry about anything other than the truth of your answer. We’ll be filtering for sensibility and reality before long.

2. Actually Know the Object of your Crush

There are some pretty big differences between telling someone you’ve actually gotten to know that you have a crush on them and telling a stranger or vague acquaintance (or celebrity). If the person you’re crushing on is someone you know, you should be better able to bring it up in conversation, but you’ll also possibly have more to lose. If it’s a complete stranger, you really don’t have anything to lose except your imagined persona of them.

3. Estimate How They Will React

This one is never going to be 100%, but you should be able to estimate pretty well on the “best case” and “worst case” ends of things. If you’ve known your friend Sally for a decade and she’s always going a bit batty about the endless parade of guys who hit on her, you’re really going to have to be careful to not fall into that group by default. If your friend Chuck tends to keep an even keel even in the roughest of situations, you can be pretty sure that your admission of a crush on him will, at worst, lead to a discussion of the pros and cons of exploring it more.

Again, honesty with yourself is important. If you answer this while clad in the rose colored glasses that some crushes breed, you’re not going to see the bad side of things. If you’ve already decided you’re doomed to be alone, you won’t be able to reach for the best possible outcome.

4. Ask Yourself: Is it Really Worth It?

Take your answers to the previous three questions and line them up. Objectively look at them–best and worst cases.  Imagine how you’ll feel hearing each of those answers (and a few somewhere in between). Now weigh those feelings against how remaining silent will affect you and your relationship with the other person. Is your crush under control? Can it simmer for another week, month, or year without getting in the way of a platonic relationship with the person? Without getting in the way of anything else you may be involved with? Or will you just be bursting at the seams to declare your love every time she even glances in your direction?

Can the object of your crush realistically handle the information you are about to give to them? Does it stand a better chance of making them happier or of making their lives more difficult? Are your reasons for telling them in both your and their best interest?

Remember, a crush is a one sided thing. Once it is declared, it’s something more than just an imaginary relationship in your head–it’s something new… it’s a potential real relationship. There’s now someone else actually involved so you have to take their side of things into account, too.

5. Speak Up, then Shut Up

Be as casual as possible when broaching the subject of your crush on someone. I’ve found it’s best if you can get into a conversation about related subjects (like celebrity crushes, or the crazy feelings we all have at one point of another, or relationships in general). If that segue doesn’t go well, be prepared to do two things: Take a huge leap of faith and possible have your hopes shattered.

If you’re dealing with a Hollywood Crush, you’re probably going to have to be more direct. (Unless you’ve managed to score a week in Hawaii with your celebrity crush or something.) You’re also going to have to accept the fact that he or she probably hears the same thing all the time.

When the opportunity comes (or when you make the opportunity), be direct and to the point. “You know, for a while there in high school, I had a huge crush on you” or “Ever since we met, I’ve been kind of crushing on you” are much better than long, drawn out tales of woe, metaphor and simile.

Once you’ve let the cat out of the bag, shut your mouth and pay attention to the reaction. If she asks questions, answer them. If he looks disgusted, try to laugh it off and break from the conversation in as casual and normal a way as possible. Even if it is a big deal, don’t give in right away to your negative emotions. Save the exploration of the negative for when you’re around other friends or can have the privacy you need to let it all out.

Space after the declaration of a crush can be a very important thing. There’s a good chance that you have, in one way or another, just rocked this other person’s world. Some people respond better to that than others, no matter how they actually feel. That initial reaction of disgust may be a defense mechanism–as can that overly happy reaction.

Only two things will reconcile perception, hope, and fear with reality: Time and Talking.

Declaring your crush can be a big risk. But, at the worst, you’ve removed a layer of illusion from your interaction with someone else and gotten a better idea of who they really are.

At best, you find out they feel the same way. And then the real challenges of a real relationship (maybe even a romantic one) kick in.

Tags: crushes, lists, relationships

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s how easily I can fall back into old patterns.

And my old patterns when it comes to romantic feelings are far from beneficial to me or anyone else who may be involved.

I can very quickly fall into an obsessive, self-destructive crush mode. On the flip side, I can fall for someone because I think I can “save” them–the perfect example of White Knight Syndrome. There are also any number of other things that I’m at least vaguely attracted to that are sure-fire paths to badly skewed cost/benefit ratio.

In order to avoid those known problem areas, I’ve got a set of questions and tests that I’ve conditioned the logical side of my mind to automatically start running through as soon as a crush lasts for more than a day or two. Here are five of the big ones.

1. Am I Really Falling For Her?

Often, this is the only question I need to ask and answer to determine a real relationship would be a bad idea. There are many things that can look like falling for someone. You can be in love with the idea of a relationship–any relationship–and the object of your crush is just a convenient target. You can see them as a “project”–something to be fixed (a la The White Knight issues). Or, in my case, you can fall for the idea of the story that the attempt at the relationship would lead to–probably not the best reason to get involved with someone.

2. Why Am I Falling For Her?

If you manage to get past the first question, this one serves as a double-check and a deeper exploration of your own feelings. Again, the answer here could point back to a White Knight issue (“Because she has so much potential that I can help bring out!”). It can also lead to a very sensible list of positive qualities that match well with your own sensibilities. A close look at this list can also hint at the depth of the potential relationship–if everything focuses on the physical (pretty, snappy dresser, good job, etc.), there’s a hefty chance it’ll be a superficial fling.

3. What Do We Have In Common?

Another chance for a nice list. Relationships between people with nothing in common (despite what oh-so-many pop-culture fairy tales tell us) rarely work out well in the long run. At best, both people happily go their separate ways with broadened horizons. More often, there are grudges, heavy misunderstandings, and big fights. One big thing to look for is a common communication style. If one of you communicates best face to face and the other does best via e-mail or text message, it’s going to be a rough road.

4. Is A Relationship Even Vaguely Appropriate?

Is she a co-worker? Is he a business partner? Your boss? Your employee? A recent ex of a good friend? There are any number of situations that could make a relationship seem inappropriate. Even if it isn’t a make-or-break question, it’s important to realize going into a relationship how it’s going to look to those outside. External social dynamics can cause a lot of problems inside a relationship.

5. How Much Am I Willing To Compromise?

This is the biggest of the big deal questions. It can override all that come before or after it. It can also, in retrospect, point right back to the first question. Almost any obstacle can be overcome, almost any hardship beaten, but all that comes at a cost. Often, that cost is in our own comfort, integrity, safety, and/or security. If she refuses to live north of the Mason-Dixon line, are you OK with having to travel long distances to visit your family in Chicago? If he can’t stand the west coast, are you willing to give up on that dream of living in LA? Relationships are always about compromise, you should be very familiar with where your limits of giving are.

Granted, these are all questions asked by the logical side of the brain. There’s only so much that side can do if the emotional half is determined to jump from crush to relationship, no matter what.

At least if things go poorly, you’ll have the small consolation of being able to look back, shake your head, and say “I should have known.”

And if things go well… all the better: You’ve either beaten your own odds or proved you accurately know yourself.

Tags: crushes, lessons learned, lists, relationships