You’ve survived the first few moments, where you were just head over heels for someone you didn’t know at all. You mustered the courage to introduce fantasy to reality and yourself to your crush. There’s only one more set of “moments” to go: the last few.
Of course, crushes can go on for a long time. Even Grown Up Crushes can linger as you decide if there is a friendship lurking amid the heady hopes and heart-thumping dreams. Those first few moments and last few moments may be separated by months–or years!
Inevitably, though, they do come around and you’re left with a choice to make.
There are only three ways a crush can end: You forgo romance and instead revel in a good, solid friendship; you take the plunge and dive into romance; you decide it was just a passing interest and go your separate ways.
As you disabuse yourself of the outlandish fantasy elements of your crush and bring your view of the other person down to a realistic level, you will learn a lot about them. You will also learn a lot about yourself. As the you work through the process, you should get a clear picture of where you fit in their lives and where you fit in theirs.
Finding Friendship
Most of the time, if you’re being honest with yourself about your crushes, you’ll find most of them make better friends than lovers. After all, there was something there that caught your interest and as long as it was more than just “Wow, she’s hot!” you probably have things in common.
If you’ve been working Grown-up Crushes for a while, you’ll have already discovered that Friendship is just another form of Love–a form not cluttered with all the trappings of Romance or the pressure of dating. If you’re open to it, Friendship can provide you with just about everything you need in a relationship.
Friendship is a good thing. Nothing is lost and you gain more time to explore one another’s lives. And who knows, maybe as time passes, you and your former crush will grow more as people and end up in the right place to explore those long-ago romantic feelings. (That leads into a discussion of the Friend Crush, of course, and won’t be fully dealt with here and now.)
Plunge Into Romance
In a handful (or more) of cases, your crush will be more than happy to explore romance with you. This is the way we hope all crushes will end when we start them. That hope, though, can cause us to make poor decisions.
Many times I have seen people fall in love with the idea of being in a relationship. They focus on the idea and not the reality that there is another person involved in the relationship. Another person who has to be just as willing and able to be involved. If you get into a relationship before introducing enough reality into the fantasy of your crush, you may very well be in for a rude awakening when reality finally creeps in.
But, there are lessons to be learned regardless of why or how the relationship starts. The only thing to be lost by taking the plunge into romance is the fantasy.
Hit the Road
Through getting to know someone you were crushing on, you may discover that the reality doesn’t contain any of the fantasy that once caught your attention. You may discover that even friendship would a stretch with the real person.
In that case, it is important that you give up the crush and accept the reality. If you’ve been paying attention and really being honest in your pursuit of a Grown-up Crush, you know you won’t be able to “save” or “fix” the reality of the person to make them match your initial fantasy. Any relationship based on one person trying to change the other–for better or worse–is doomed to failure.
That doesn’t mean you can’t still be genial to your now-former crush. By all means continue to be social with them. But try not to send mixed signals, either to yourself or to them. If you can’t handle the discrepancy between the initial fantasy and reality, it may be best to just stay away from them all together.
In the End
The last few moments of a crush can be painful or joyful and they can stretch out almost as long as those first few moments if you’re not careful. But if you’re honest with yourself and make your decision from the heart and not from the fear in the pit of your stomach or the noise in your mind–if you are decisive and willing to take the risk–the transition from crush to actual relationship can be quick and relatively painless.
