One of the comments I got from last week’s tale of successfully crush revelation raised the question of what a successful crush entailed.
The simple answer is this:
A successful crush is one that helps you become a better person while causing as few new problems as possible.
That’s it.
Too often we confuse and blur the line between a crush and an actual relationship. A crush is an imaginary relationship–even if it a component of a real one.
See, a crush deals with our internal hopes, dreams, and expectations, regardless of what reality is.
A crush only has an effect on one person–the person with the crush.
In telling someone about a crush you have or have had on them, you always open the door to two things: a new, real, relationship and more complications.
From Internal to External
Many things that are just fine inside our own heads are not at all acceptable outside of it. We can fantasize all we want about strangling that annoying person at the next table who’s talking loudly on his cell phone. Actually doing it? Not really a recommended course of action.
The same is true of our crushes, but for slightly different reasons.
While there are severe external consequences for actualizing imaginings of murder, there are severe internal consequences for prematurely tossing a crush and reality together–as well as external consequences.
When it’s inside our heads, a crush only has an effect on us. It’s in a nice little sandbox and we can poke at it, prod it, analyze it, and revel in it to our heart’s content.
Toss it out into the public and, suddenly, there isn’t as much control. There are more people involved–you, the person you’re crushing on, and maybe more. There is an exponential increase in feedback from multiple sources, much of which may very well be at odds with the basic nature of the imaginary relationship that has been constructed.
Making the transition from internal to external is where we end up being crushed.
As long as we exist solely in the imaginary, there is no pain.
Harsh Reality
Sadly, we can’t exist solely in the imaginary for any length of time and still be considered functional.
Reality is a rudely persistent thing and will encroach regularly on even our deepest fantasies. Inserting it’s objective facts in place of our imagined perfections. Getting our pristine pedestals (and those we put upon them) dingy and covered in grime. Slowly, surely, and often painfully forcing us to accept what is as what is.
The pain we feel from a crush–especially when we try to act on it–is fundamentally derived from it’s conflict with reality.
This is why I advocate taking the time to ease your crush into something that is closer to reality before doing anything external with it. It makes the transition easier and can teach us a lot about yourself along the way.
Before you can really begin to mold your crushes, though, you have to have a solid starting point. You have to have at least a basic understanding of who you are right now.
Well look at that a bit in this week’s other posts.
