The Painful Anatomy of Adult Crushes

A confession: I have a crush on someone.

As a 20-something years old woman, I feel a bit silly admitting that. I have the word “crush” strongly associated with teen magazines and high-school gossip. There is little room for crushes in the grown-up world. Once you hit adulthood, dating does become much more complicated, but it also becomes way more straightforward.

As kids and teens, we develop crushes rooted in our fear of rejection and spend weeks, months, or even years trying to come up with elaborate strategies to make the objects of our interest notice us and fall in love with us without actually, you know, talking to them.

It’s a part of the maturing process for many of us and reminiscing of those oh so innocent times can bring back some cute, nostalgic memories, although we know how real and serious it was for us back then.

But for us adults, we don’t typically develop serious, long-lived crushes anymore. Nobody has time for that, we get straight to business. We pursue, date, get to know people, form relationships, and accept the harsh truth that something could go wrong at any stage of this process. Rinse and repeat. We don’t spend too much of our precious time picking flower petals, daydreaming about whether someone “loves me, loves me not”.

That’s why crushing as an adult is so mind-blowingly pathetic.

Truth is, there are very few kinds of people in this world we absolutely can’t have to the point that shooting our shot is not even worth it. But I guess it’s in human nature to be drawn to the forbidden fruit. Here are the most common reasons for our adult crushes never getting out of the crush-zones.

#0 Your crush is a celebrity that doesn’t know you exist

Just kidding (or maybe not, please call me, Zico ❤). Those kinds of crushes are fun to have, they’re mostly healthy and tend to not be that painful at all. Who doesn’t have a celebrity crush? That’s why celebrities exist in the first place. But hopefully, this is not the kind of crush that keeps you up at night fantasizing about what it would be like to be with them. Hopefully.

#1 It’s societally inappropriate to pursue your crush

Your boss is really funny and hot? Ha. You’re out of luck unless you‘re planning to be switching careers real soon.

But this goes for any kind of a formal relationship we might have with our object of interest. Our bosses, employees, coworkers, professors, students, clients, or therapists are all mostly out of question unless we are ready to deal with the possible repercussions in the form of social disapproval and maybe even be labeled a creep or accused of harassment.

Not saying that it can’t work out — I know people who have met their partners at work and they are doing just fine. It happens more often than we like to admit. But it is logical to prioritize reputation and livelihood and having a professional relationship with the person they are interested in romantically does keep many people just crushing.

#2 Your crush is already in a relationship

If the object of your interest already has a significant other, you will find yourself in some seriously hot water.

You literally can’t pursue that person without digging yourself a massive grave. Making a move would make you a homewrecker, that move being successful would make them a cheater, and we all know the rule of thumb — if someone’s willing to leave their partner for you, it is very likely that they wouldn’t be shy of doing the same to you in the future.

And so, they remain a sad, heartwrenching adult crush. The best we can do is to selfishly wish for their relationship to fail, as only then it becomes appropriate for us to start finding out whether they would want to date us at all.

#3 Someone is unavailable

Maybe they live far away from you. Maybe they travel a lot. Perhaps they work a lot and can’t invest in a relationship at the moment. Or they might just be unavailable emotionally right now. And maybe your crush is perfectly available but one of the aforementioned things applies to yourself.

Whatever the reason might be, your life circumstances just don’t match.

We like to think that where there’s a will, there’s a way, but when it comes to relationships, timing is one of the key components for success. And if time is playing against you, there is often no point in seriously pursuing anything.

Like in all of the cases above, it can work. But the odds are low and the amount of effort that has to go into it is huge on both sides. So it’s no wonder that many people in similar situations choose not to take the risk of revealing their feelings and just wait for them to go away instead.

. . .

Crush is just another word for “not meant to be”

When it comes to sex, it’s usually easy. Laughably easy, I’d say. But unfortunately, getting physical with someone doesn’t necessarily erase their crush status. I’ve come to realize that sleeping with your crush doesn’t make the bottled up feelings go away. It’s nice, but it doesn’t ease the pain. Confessing, asking them out, and getting a clear yes or no answer would. But, as we know, that is not always possible.

Neither does it help to just date another person. Because, and I have also learned this from experience, it is totally possible to have feelings for someone while still thinking about your crush from time to time and wondering what if. It’s annoying. It’s saddening. It’s childish. But it’s a real thing.

But the worst part about adult crushes is that we know better, and we understand that they’re probably never going to work out. Life is not a fairytale, happily ever afters are rare, and putting human beings on an imaginary unwarranted pedestal in our hearts is not healthy.

Even when, or if, the stars align and we magically manage to start a relationship with the person of our dreams, by the time it happens, they have been in the crush zone for way too long. There is no way for them to live up to the idealized version of themselves we have created in our heads while admiring them from afar instead of getting to know them as a person and a potential partner. It’s a losing game, always.

Somewhere, deep down, we recognize that. Most of us leave the hopeless romantic approach somewhere at school. And so I might as well end up on my death bed one day in the far future, leaving a partner and some kids behind, and still think “I wonder what it would have been like had I married my crush instead” before dying.

At the end of the day, the most depressing thing about crushing on someone as an adult is just that. Being an adult and knowing better.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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