Ferrett Steinmetz talks about when it’s best to bare your soul, and when it’s best to keep your mouth shut.
When I’ve written before about how I often don’t tell women about the crushes I have on them, I got a lot of responses that were all like, “Oh, no, Ferrett! If you have a crush on someone, you should tell her!”
No; no, I really shouldn’t. And maybe, neither, should you.
Now, on a personal level, I have the issue that I crush easily, trivially, sillily; I can form a mild crush over a series of pretty pictures or one knock-my-socks-off blog post. My crushes are ethereal things – and though I hold them tight to my heart, if I told every woman I had a crush on, I’d probably spend my days in entangled in embarrassing correspondence. (A correspondence I most likely wouldn’t have time for, because honestly my poly web is pretty full as it is.)
Yet even if I did not crush easily, it’d still be a dick move to drop the crush on random people, because here’s the thing:
Telling someone you have a crush on them is an obligation.
If I go to you and say, “I have a huge crush on you,” that forces you into a situation where you have to respond. Someone’s showed up on your doorstep and dropped a big load of Unexplored Feelings on you, very like a load of dirty laundry, and now you have to do something with that.
If I go to you and say, “I have a huge crush on you,” that forces you into a situation where you have to respond.
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And it’s potentially really awkward for the crushee, especially if s/he doesn’t feel the same way back. It hurts for you when your crush gives you the “no thanks,” but there are precious few people in this world who like dashing people’s expectations. And then that poor person has the stress of trying to figure out how to gently let you down –
– or whether they can afford to let you down.
Forrest Gump knew a thing or two about crushes: they’re like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. Now, my particular crush is the kind where if you tell me, “Not interested,” I’ll shrug and ask you to a movie next week anyway, because I’ll still like you buckets even if we never do the smoochy-smooch thing.
Yet here’s the thing: even if I tell you all of that up-front, you have no guarantee I am who I say I am.
Because I could be the kind of dude who’s all like, “WHAT? You don’t like me?! Well screw you, I never wanted your friendship anyway” and then never talk to you again – thus ending a friendship that you valued, but didn’t have the chemistry of attraction in it. Or I could be the kind of creeper who never expected that you would turn me down and so meets your “no” with a seething outrage, marking you as The Enemy for leading me on, determined to screw you over now for breaking my heart.
Or I could be that kind of guy who shrugs it off with a “Sure, sure,” and then waits until you’re drunk to see if maybe you were lying about that whole crush thing. Or I could be the dude who thinks you’re playing the happy-little-denial game, and you get to watch as I move into full-on stalker territory…
Or maybe – and this is often the best-case scenario – despite all of my protests about how I’ll still totes like you anyay, once the attraction is defeated, our friendship subtly mutates from the happy evenness of “We’re buddies!” to “You hold a power over me that I do not hold over you!” and things turn terribly awkward and sad.
The problem with crushes is that people handle doused crushes in all sorts of astoundingly bad ways – and your crushee has no guarantee of how you’ll react. A dropped crush is often a variant on Schrödinger’s Rapist, where the concern of not knowing how you’ll react instills a lot of anxiety as they try to figure out just what your real intentions are. As such, dumping that crush on them just on the off-hand chance s/he might be into it is the height of bad manners. It basically says, “Fuck it – I’ll stress you out if it means I’ve got a shot of getting into your pants.”
Now, I’m not saying to never reveal your crush, because the “quietly suppress all attraction until their defenses are down” is a game played by sad jamooks everywhere. What I am saying is that I’ve met enough people – maybe not a majority of them, but enough to matter – to know that a lot of people are really discomfited when someone expresses a crush out of nowhere.
As such, I suggest that until you know they feel otherwise, consider restraining your crush.
Yes, I understand that’s more work, sifting through your interactions for signs of attraction and weighing the evidence until you come to the conclusion that they’re a) maybe possibly kinda into you, or b) maybe possibly the sort of person who’d be flattered even if they don’t respond in kind.
But the alternative is you saying, “I DON’T CARE WHAT THE FUCK THEY WANT! I WANNA SMOOCH! SO I’M JUST GONNA TELL ‘EM RANDOMLY ON THE OFF-CHANCE THAT I GET WHAT I WANT!”
There’s a word for that, and that word is “douche.”
As a general rule, until you get some signals that someone would like something – and people are emitting signals all the time if you watch carefully – it’s not a bad rule to default to not doing that thing until you know for sure they want that thing. That default behavior applies whether it’s kissing, crushing, helping someone across the street, informing them that they should dress better, touching their hair, offering diet advice, or any range of unasked-for “helpfulness.”)
Not every attraction needs to be followed up on.
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Old Uncle Ben knew about crushes: “With great crushing comes great responsibility.” If you have inclued the signs that s/he is potentially into you, then fine! Take a rational shot. You’d be surprised how often there is a mutual crushitude if you suspect there might be one. But only do it if you’ve scouted the territory.
Which is why me, sighing over a couple of pretty photos isn’t grounds enough to drop the crush. Me, having been dazzled by an essay or two, isn’t grounds enough either. I should open up a conversation, do some back-and-forth, see if we’re actually compatible before going that route.
Other people asked, “Well, if I have a crush on someone, it’s going to affect our relationship! Shouldn’t I tell them, rather than swallowing my emotions?” And yes, there are circumstances where you’re desperately in love with your best friend and need him to know, and then you maybe should just to get that out in the open where it won’t fester.
But a lot of douches do that as a way of saying, “If you’re not fucking me, then I don’t need you in my life – so are you in?” In which case you should probably just end this so-called friendship, as you’re a crappy goddamned friend. And there’s also a lot of douches who go, “Well, the chick I work with at Wendy’s needs to know about my raging boner for her, and that’s affecting our relationship!” And once again, we’re back to “I want my shot at fucking them, no matter how uncomfortable it may make them.”
Not every attraction needs to be followed up on. Consider their situation, whether it’s something that’s going to benefit their life, and whether you’re actually improving their situation… or inconveniencing them to improve yours.
That’s pretty much it. I could have written this whole essay in two words – “Be courteous” – but I felt it needed some more concrete details.
Originally published at theferrett.com.
Photo—Benimoto/Flickr
The whole conundrum shapeshifts as soon as the crusher crushes on someone else, or gets someone crushing on them, which in my life has taken as little as a week. Take it lightly, people, it’s not like any of this puts anybody under the obligation of marrying someone.
This is one of the best gmp posts ever 🙂
A few questions for the author as well as the GMP community at large: 1) Does continuing to be friends with someone after they reveal feelings that you don’t share turn you in to an inconsiderate person, perhaps even an asshole? Is there a way for the friendship to be equal once again? Or is the sharing of feelings where it is not reciprocated by the other the point of no return? These are murky waters to navigate and I presently find myself in a situation like this. I desire to be a good man and respect myself and that… Read more »
Nicholas, If I may offer some personal perspectives here, which are -I’ll be the first to admit- highly, highly subjective (in other words, your mileage may vary…), so take what you will, and take it with a grain of salt. Many years ago, there was a quote I once came across from Jean Racine’s “Phaedra” that really struck a chord with me: “There are some truths too true to tell… I have been unable to conceal things I would rather have concealed even from myself.” Revealing one’s feelings for another is a Rubicon that can’t be immediately un-crossed; for worse… Read more »
A little bit stunned and/’or shell shocked after reading the post. Maybe will comment later.
Part of having feelings -having feelings for others, and having others express feeling towards ourselves- is being able to integrate those feelings into our lives; positively and productively. No, we do not need to articulate every single stray feeling or causal crush that comes into mind- but we need to appreciate where those feelings are coming from, and do it rationally, impartially and empathetically as possible; and that being done, give those feelings appropriate expression. It’s too easy to say that ‘Everything you could do or say is going to be horribly horribly off-putting and overpowering for the other person,… Read more »
“Some of the self-flagellating moments in the article seems to suggest that it’s just better to invalidate one’s own feelings outright, rather than to risk causing someone else potential offense,”
Kind of makes you wonder how the human race is supposed to perpetuate itself.
It’s a thought exercise that’s based in the notion that the greater the gravity of one’s fears, the more irrelevant the relative implausibility of that fear becomes: it legitimizes any & all fear as equally, uniformly, plausible and potential. In other words, a potential outcome doesn’t necessarily have to be likely or credible: Regardless of how distant or implausible, it just has to be potentially existent to be perceived as particularly & exceptionally scary, in order to invalidate the legitimacy of acting any other way except through fear of the worst possible outcome. This is called the Cheney Doctrine. That… Read more »
We live in a sex negative culture where the spectre of “Schrodinger’s Rapist” is always present always. The way to deal with this fact isn’t to retreat from sexuality, or to use fancy social skills, but to reject the normal approach to sex, and assert a version of sex based on mutual respect and the need for consent to whatever you choose to do with another.
I also think this is terrible advice, it’s also pessimistic, and just proves the “Nice Guys (TM)” right. I’ve been reading Andrea Dworkin’s “Intercourse” where she explores how the act of sexual intercourse also acts as act of domination, possession and violence against women. It’s only a social construction, but in USA culture the line between sex and rape is blurred, men are expected to always be the dominant partner in sex, casual sex is often believed to degrade women, and even in a marriage we joke about how women are never truly interested in the sex itself, virginity is… Read more »
Thanks for sharing this. Really good advice! I crush very easily too. I shall be more ‘courteous’ from now on.
Don’t talk to your crush if you’re OK with being in the friend zone. For me, I pretty much have no choice because when I crush, it’s pretty obvious. I had a crush on a woman in class and everyone knew it including her. As far as remaining friends, it depends on the maturity level of both people. I’ve remained friends with people I’ve broken up with. I even got invited to an ex’s wedding, but declined to attend because it would be too weird. My crush and I were classmates and friends first. She knew I was crushing on… Read more »
I’m a girl who thinks your advice is not very good. Maybe you could’ve made a one-paragraph article that is more accurate: If you have a giant crush on someone, don’t just blabber at them, “I have a giant crush on you,” because that is what sixth-graders and others with unsophisticated social skills do. (And, this plea especially applies to people like the author, whose voicing of fleeting, “ethereal” crushes could be mistaken for not thinking there’s anything particularly special about the subject of the crush; i.e., “let’s throw sh*t at the wall and see what sticks.” I’m not saying… Read more »
Again, another article, like the one about “thirsty guys” online, where people are mocked if they aren’t good at expressing feelings.
Why is this website insisting on posting material like this?
And this is before we get into the validation this article gives to the bigoted mindset of Schrodinger’s Rapist.
Totally learned this the hard way. Unfortunately, it somewhat fell under “it’s going to affect our friendship” and “this is why you don’t listen to ‘the guys’ after copious drinking”. That aside, I was able to (somewhat) salvage the situation and friendship later. To that end, I would like to add to this that, if you do admit your feelings for someone and they don’t reciprocate, or perhaps take it really badly, there’s a lot to be said for continuing the friendship. That one instance aside, I’ve been shot down plenty (who hasn’t?), and it’s rarely stopped me from being… Read more »
They don’t ask, so you don’t tell, that way we avoid every possible complication. This is clearly a pretty good policy and has never had any negative consequences…uh, yeah, that’s right. “Be a man” and shove your feelings down to the void of nothingness, never to be explored. In fact that’s the definition of courteous– denying the fact that you are a sexual being, never taking a risk, and becoming entirely void of emotion so that someone else isn’t offended. This is a good policy.
Self-control isn’t the same thing as repression. That doesn’t mean denying anything, just deciding how best to handle it.
This is some of the worst, most wrong-headed advice I have ever ever read. Sorry, cruel-to-be-kind moment there. The world would be a better, happier and kinder place if more people were open about their (positive! lovely!) feelings towards others – and if others were less tortured and better at responding. Being told that someone has a crush on me is not an “obligation” – it’s someone being kind and paying me the compliment of finding me attractive, whether physically or mentally. There are thousands of ways to respond to that, and a good number of these are easily graceful,… Read more »
The fact is, as Ferrett said, not every attraction needs to be followed up on. There’s a lot to think about when revealing your feelings to someone, more than just “I have a feeling and I must express it” and I think that’s all he was saying.
Context is everything. With that in mind, must aver that it can be so wrong, and creepy, for a man to tell a female, “I’ve got a crush on you.” We live in a different world than men live in and the moment those words leave the lips, they impose upon us an unwanted burden that might generously be called:
How to react/not react. If some guy finds me attractive mentally or physically and can’t be quiet about his feelings, I will get a lot of gone between him and me.
Then…..how is anyone to get together?
Like so much of what is under the auspices of so-called equality, this is just pathologising normal interaction.