Advice

On how crushes begin and end

I had just the most outrageous crush on someone at work for like a year. Then, I woke up one morning, and it was just gone. I was over it, like that, and it stayed that way. How does that happen??

 

It ends the same way it begins, with a little neurochemistry and timing. Also, cognitively speaking, a crush starts out as raw emotion, then becomes a set of feelings, which then develop into thoughts. If those thoughts don’t develop into actions, eventually the underlying emotion fades, and once you’re done thinking about it, the crush is over. You wake up one morning and the feelings are gone.

On a side note, if you understand the cognitive/emotional process and have some control over your emotions (easier said than done), then with a little self-discipline, you can effectively end inconvenient crushes on your own schedule.

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4 thoughts on “On how crushes begin and end

  1. Rose says:

    If you want to get a crush on someone, go do something scary with them (watch a scary movie or something). The cortisol from the fear triggers dopamine and makes it more likely your brain will decide to spark a crush-rush. Then tell them you want to play a game: gaze into one another’s eyes without saying anything for 4 minutes and see what happens. Then maybe go out salsa dancing to get some body contact. After the movie, the gazing and the dancing, if you aren’t passionately crushing on one another, you don’t actually like each other that much.

    I got a huge crush on someone accidentally just by dancing with them too often at a weeklong music and social dance camp. This person happens to be nice, and a very good dancer. We danced together 4 or 5 times every night. By the end of the week I was high as a kite on dopamine and adrenaline…butterflies in the stomach, heart pounding, strong desire to cuddle and not let go. The whole nine yards. Total absurdity. We’re both married and this person is 20 years older than me.

    Even though we all went home and never said a word about it, the funny part is that the dopamine is so damn addictive I don’t want the crush to stop. It’s absurd and distracting but it’s also pleasurable. It’s been a few days now since I got home and the potency has died down a little but it’s definitely not gone.

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