How to Crush Without Being Crushed

May of this year marks fifteen years since my high school graduation.

As anyone who even casually reads here knows, high school played a large role in setting the groundwork for who I am now. That all became very clear to me when the ten year mark was rolling around and I got involved in the planning of that reunion.

Well, that plan didn’t quite execute and here we are five years later, trying again.

For me, high school sucked. A lot. I was obsessed with relationships I wouldn’t ever do anything about. I secured my space as a social outcast by refusing to play by the standard rules. And I had the youthful audacity to blame my unhappiness on the world at large instead of my own choices.

If it was such a horrible time, you may ask, then why do you want to relive it?

Why? Because I firmly believe that only by facing our own shortcomings of the past–only by learning from those mistakes and remembering the lessons learned way back when–can we fully be ourselves now.

Over the last year or so, as I went back through an old hand-written journal or two from those dark high school days of the early 90s, I was reminded of many things I had let slip through the cracks of depression. There were good times back then, I just chose to remember the bad ones. Without a doubt, that gave me fuel for change, but the change it created was flawed and had trouble sticking.

Most of those skewed memories involved relationships, be they pining, one-sided, romantic ones or vibrant platonic ones. In the past decade and a half I’ve come to terms with a lot of that and become a happier person because of it.

One of the greatest joys has been reconnecting with those old crushes and seeing how their lives have turned out. Talking with them about the “not-so-good old days” is empowering. I have a chance to finally tell them what I wanted to say all those years ago.

“You know, back in high school, I had a huge crush on you.” Or, “You were one of the few bright spots in those dark days, thank you.”

It’s empowering. Perhaps more importantly, it’s allowing me to clear up a lot of fog in my own head… allowing me to see just how far I’ve come.

And I’m not the only one who’s come a long way. Just about everyone I’ve spoken with from that long ago and far away land of High School has grown into themselves. Sure, some are happier than others, and some, unfortunately, have fallen on hard times they could never have imagined fifteen years ago, but on average things are good.

They’re all still pretty recognizable, though. If not in face and body, then in attitude and presentation. Some things don’t change much, it seems.

Our core self is prepped in those formative high school years. They are the last time we share a common setting with a large group of our peers. The last time we regularly interact with the people we grew up with.

Love it or hate it, there’s no denying it was an important time for each of us.

It’s where we learned the rules and consequences of social interaction. It’s where we first loved and lost.

Where we first began to be ourselves.

So, here I am, fifteen years out and still learning from the experiences of those four years.

I think we can all learn a lot by taking some time, every now and then, and looking back.

At the absolute least, it lets us know that, if we’ve made it this far, we can probably keep going a bit more.

Tags: firsts

I’ve been talking a bit about talking lately, about taking chances, about moving things forward.

But now I want you to talk to me.

Tell me about two or three times in your life where you learned a whole lot about yourself through your interactions (real or imagined) with someone else.

I know you’ve all got a story or two to tell.

Things are busy here in WithoutBeingCrushed.com-land. Between Christmas and today, I’ve already fallen into three or four new crushes.

And of those three or four, I’ve already taken the chance and pushed one or two of them ahead to the “trying to get to know her better” stage. That, of course, brings the whole process closer to the “attempting to date” arena, the point of “new friend” (where the crush transforms into that all-important lasting platonic relationship) or on to “no, really, she’s really not that awesome, we’ll just go our separate ways” land.

Those are really the three places every crush should head. While I personally prefer to acquire new friends over dating and meeting people who will just fall out of my life, I’m really game for any of those outcomes at the beginning.

The problem is, you can’t get to any of those places without taking a bit of a chance.

Taking that chance always involves a leap into the uncomfortable, it always involves the possibility of failure and it always involves what, on the surface, seems quite simple: just talking to her.

I’ve never been particularly good at that.

My nerves often get the best of me, my throat closes up, my tongue goes numb and my brain just freezes. More than once over the years, I’ve been able to do little more than squeak out a weak “hi” when face-to-face with the object of my irrational affection.

Looking back, the only times I used to do well with talking to women was when I did it accidentally or when I was in a totally self-destructive mood and didn’t care about the risk. More recently, I’ve tried to harness old lessons to ease the anxiety without being oblivious or seeking my own annihilation.

The trick, for me, is to be honest in my goals. All I really want is for that potential friendship to become something real. Any romance that may occur would be an extra added bonus. I’m not preoccupied by “gettin’ some” or any other typical male motives. Without those in the way, the blow to the ego from a rejection is a little bit less.

Why? Because first, I’m not putting myself on the line. A rejection of a non-sexual nature doesn’t assail any of the basic, animalistic desires that drive us all. Second, it allows me a psychological “out”–I can simply say “Well, she just misinterpreted what I was trying to do… she just thought I was another guy hitting on her.” That places any blame on the communication process and not either person, letting it be looked at much more objectively. And third, well, I fully realize that it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get another date or another friend. One and/or he other would be nice, but only if the other person is in to that idea, too.

With little to lose and everything to gain, I get an extra little boost that helps me overcome the innate random anxiety of taking that chance. The rest of that push comes from sheer force of will and knowing, from years of experience, that no matter what, the interaction to come has to be better than other interactions I’ve had.

The worst thing that usually happens is the attempt to strike up a conversation or to get to know her better gets read as a standard pick-up line or an attempt to bed her. It’s a bit difficult to not be read that way with every other guy she meets having those goals. A little persistence and a lot of honesty of intent can go a long way, though.

I’m about a month and a half away from what I hope will be a successful “official” launch of the Without Being Crushed website. Needless to say, I’m a bit nervous.

But I always get like that when I start making plans.

I really should know better by now.

One of the worst things I ever tried to do while pursuing any of my crushes was to try to plan out how an interaction would go. I’d get myself all worked up over everything that could go wrong and, sometimes more so, over things that could possibly go right. Half the time that prevented me from doing anything–I was just too worn out!

The other half of the time I learned pretty solidly that no matter how thoroughly you plan, it never goes quite like you’ve rehearsed.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to be prepared for how things may go. On the contrary, being aware of contingencies is one of the best things you can do in business or in relationships. What you can’t do is get so attached to a certain pattern that you freeze up when you deviate from it.

Most of life is improvisation. If you’re going to go all in, you have to be comfortable working without a script. You have to know yourself well enough to switch gears quickly to keep up with what reality throws at you. Knowing what may go on helps with that. Being able to adapt comes from a willingness to learn.

Whenever I got myself stuck on what the script was going to be for a conversation, I stood a good chance of freezing up when the other person didn’t deliver her line quite the way I had planned. Once I got over my expectations for what the responses would be, it got a little easier to follow through on my initial plans. Not always to the letter, but at least to an end.

Over the next month and a half, I expect to do a lot of improv here. Past that official launch date, I expect things to get a bit chaotic. I hope to be surprised (in a good way) on how I ride those waves and on what they bring in with them.

Regardless of how it goes, it’ll be learning experience–just like every last one of my crushes.

Earlier today, a friend of mine and I were chatting about my How to Crush project and she started asking some pretty good questions. So good, in fact, it ended up reading like a real interview. Thankfully, I was smart enough to save a copy of that conversation. Here’s the first part of it. (Thanks, Steph!)

You have been open about having not been in the dating game for a while now. so why should anyone take romantic advice from you?

It’s really not about romance. It’s about relationships. The most important one being the relationship with yourself. Romance–real and imagined–is just a tool to learn more about yourself… And by doing so, be better able to understand your interactions with others.

Are you okay with yourself?

I am very OK with myself. Which is why I can be happily single for nearly a decade.

Are you not okay with others? What i’m getting at is so what are you waiting for then?

I am very OK with others… which is why I have such a wonderful group of friends. What should I be waiting for? There’s nothing to be waiting for. I’m not really wanting anything, relationship-wise, right now.

Because…?

The only reasons I’d go out and get myself all tied up in a relationship now would be to:
1) Get more stories to tell or
2) Because I suddenly feel the need to.

So you’re not, like, anti-relationship or anything.

Oh, hell no! Relationships–romantic or otherwise–are fantastic things. They’re natural and human things. They help us define ourselves and help us grow.

But, just like many things that are natural and often helpful, they can be damaging, too. We’ve all seen people go through incredibly destructive relationships. We all know people who get into relatioships that everyone around them knows will be destructive… and yet, they are oblivious to that fact.

In this culture we are pushed to think that being in a relationship is the only way we can be happy– the only way we can be normal and sane. That’s just wrong. It’s not the only way to be happy. And it is just as normal to be happy being uninvolved.

Or, it would be if the external pressure would let it.

But that all goes back to the so what are you waiting for question again. You’re not anti-relationship. Without discounting that you can be happy single, don’t you ever want to be in a relationship or have sex again? After ten years, you know that you can be perfectly happy single, but how will you know if you can be happy in a relationship or not if you don’t try it again?

I’ve been in relationships and I’ve been happy in them. I’ve also seen a whole lot of people go from relationship to relationship and remain miserable. No matter how hard they try, they just can’t make it work. The most successful relationships I’ve ever seen are those between two individuals who feel complete in and of themselves. When people like that come together, they create a pair that can last.

So you’re waiting for that special complete someone who’s not a lunatic?

Well, I’m waiting for a distinct feeling of need to be in a relationship… but that gets into my personal metaphysical beliefs on how my life works. Everyone has a slightly different set of rules, wants and needs that they have to reconcile. I neither expect nor encourage people to go through everything I have in order to get to a good “happy place.” But I have found that some techniques seem to work for a lot of other people. The main one being: Pay Attention!

So besides the lack of good stories to tell, what would make you need a relationship? Do you just wake up one morning and you’re like “Damn, I need a woman”?

Not “a woman.” It would be “that woman”–someone specific. And it would probably happen in the course of meeting her. At least that’s how it’s worked for me in the past.

So you just haven’t crossed paths yet?

We may have… but people change. I’m not the same person I was a year ago.

For the me I am now, it may be a different woman than it would have been for the me a year ago. Maybe she wasn’t the person she needed to be to get involved with me yet..Maybe our paths haven’t crossed at all. Therein lies the adventure of it all!

Interesting.

And that is really where the basic rule of “Pay Attention!” comes in. You have to be aware of who you are and the difference between your own wants and needs–and the wants pushed upon you by society. You have to be able to confidently say “No, not just yet” when you know that a relationship isn’t right.

For me it’s not so much paying attention as listening to what I’m thinking

That’s paying attention! Paying attention to the internal monologue that directs us.

We usually know a whole lot more about ourselves than we’re willing to admit to anyone–even ourselves. It can be very scary to be really honest with yourself. Most of us are full of things we don’t like.

So what happens when you’re basically okay with yourself as a solo project but you don’t particularly want to be solo while at the same time you don’t want to settle for just anyone?

That becomes a question of balancing out the two potentially conflicting “wants” there.

You “want” to be with someone–but not just anyone. That in and of itself can cause some internal conflict.

But then the whole thing gets even more complex because then you have to take into account the wants of others.

Mis-matched wants and needs are one of the biggest causes of relationship problems I’ve ever seen. Or experienced.

This would be where I point out that I’m a big fan of recreational relations–be they simply dating or sexual in nature. They can be fun, wonderful and educational things. They’re just not my thing. The mindsets required for them don’t match with my own wants and needs.

I know, for example, that if I’m in a relationship, I need to be in that relationship for the long run. I’ve been pretty good at recognizing when a romantic relationship won’t be a long run kind of thing (which is most times).

That skill–a skill because it can be learned–has saved me from a whole lot of pain and suffering… and gained me a whole lot of good friends.