Getting Crushed

A crush can be great. I've said before, it's like caffeine; it can give you a real emotional boost when you need it. When your crush actually speaks nicely to you, it can send you to the moon.

Like caffeine, it can also get you really, really messed up if you overdo it.

The problem is, "crush" is seldom precisely defined. It's usually used to mean a state of infatuation, with a connotation that the feeling is one-sided. Hard to imagine two people with a crush on one another, isn't it? Because then they'd be in a relationship of some kind.

This begs the question, "Why can't you have a crush within the context of a relationship?" You can remain infatuated, certainly. So why is it not a crush? Two people could conceivably have a mutual crush and not know it -- it happens in half the romantic comedies out there -- so it's not simply having it returned that keeps it from being a crush, it's something to do with the nature of a relationship.

The answer, I posit, is that a crush is by its nature a fantasy. It is fueled entirely by infatuation, which is an emotion, rather than by love, which is a way of relating. A crush is therefore never something you have on a person, it is always something you have on your fantasy of that person. Once you enter a genuine relationship, you begin to abrade the shell of fantasy you've constructed and expose the genuine person within. This can go bad in various ways.

First, obviously, is a lack of functionality, through ignoring real-world issues and opportunities in your preoccupation of the fantasy. But this is a danger inherent in any fantasy, and is on that grounds only a minor point of mine right now. It's like pointing out that a danger of fishing is that you can get a hook in your hand. You just have to pay attention to things.

Moving on, there is the danger of simple disappointment when the person does not live up to the standard set by your fantasy. Because they almost never will. For a person who lives outside of his or her fantasy world, however, this can be overshadowed by the genuine merits of the person, which can be a delightful surprise.

Of course, the subject of the crush might not have merits the fantasist particularly values, but the person who knows fantasy from reality can accept this, with some disappointment.

The greater danger is with the person who allows the fantasy to take greater importance than the reality. When this happens, there can no longer be pretense that the crush is a feeling about someone; it has clearly become something you are feeling at someone. Such an insistence upon one's own fantasy is both objectifying of the subject of the infatuation, and aggrandizing of one own interests and desires -- to the point where one can become offended that the real person dares to be different from the vision.

This is compounded because, unless genuinely psychotic, the disillusioned person will on some level realize that he or she has created the problem, and will likely feel embarrassed. Depending on how public he or she has been about the fantasy, and how public the disillusionment, these feelings of embarrassment will vary. Given that the person in question has already exhibited an emotional disconnect with reality, it is then common of these feelings to be converted into and fused with the above feelings of bitterness and betrayal.

This is where it can get ugly.

You see, the rational thing to do when you make a mistake is of course to learn from it, accept any consequences you cannot amend, move on and grow. This is true of inappropriate infatuation, misplaced trust, failure to pay a credit card on time, or a bad stand-up routine. But this particular problem has arisen from irrationality. So it all too possible for the "wounded" person to want to get even, to repay hurt for hurt.

This stage is the critical one. This is an emotion deathtrap. Because, remember, the hurt already comes in part from feelings of self-recrimination. On some level, the person knows that any actions now taken to harm the subject of the once-infatuation, now-anger, are unjust. Thus, any further actions are simply going to feed into feelings of self-loathing, which can then be redirected back at the target. (And at this point, "target" is the right word.) There can therefore be no satisfaction or improvement derived from this course of action, only increasing bitterness and hostility. One becomes a scorpion stinging itself in anger, only the stinger passes through another on the way.

I'm not sure what I hope to do with this blog. Maybe just what they call "consciousness-raising." I'm not trying to reach any given demographic. I just have a feeling it would be best if we all remain conscious of he human talent for self-deception. And the need to know ourselves. And know when to tell ourselves to wake the hell up.

I've learned that if you starve a crush -- refuse to fuel the fantasy any longer -- it soon dies. Personally, I find a friend -- or lover, if it comes to that -- far more satisfying than a fantasy any day. But you can only do that if you remain the master of the fantasy, not the other way around.