Armchair Therapist: I'm not a player I just #crush a lot

Excuse my French, but I’m a grown-ass woman so why do I have a “crush” on a man? And why the hell am I using that word?

I said that I wasn’t going to write another post about Friend Boy, but this one is a special request. The other day, one of my Twitter followers mentioned that she liked my relationship blogging and we started talking about a crush she has on a friend.  It struck me then that the word “crush” is pretty juvenile. Remember when you got those indescribable tingly feelings in junior high if the cute boy walked in the room? Or how you felt when you got that poster of Michael Jackson in the yellow sweater-vest? You were experiencing burgeoning physical desires, the beginnings of puberty, and decidedly one-sided relationships with people you didn’t know.  You described those feelings for a boy or a girl as a “crush” because you weren’t mature enough for love, and perhaps not informed enough to want sex, but you knew you felt different.  Your parents – and Donny Osmond – might have called it “puppy love”, which is to say it was a little obedient, a little obsequious, and it would disappear as soon as you saw another cute, fuzzy doggy.  Depth of feeling aside, another key to those middle-school crushes was your unwillingness to tell the object of your affections about your awkward feelings, choosing to share them with your friends at the lunch table in hushed giggles and secretive tones.   You wouldn’t have even thought to make your feelings known for fear of rejection, embarrassment, anxiety, public humiliation and so-forth. Then again, you didn’t really know what your feelings meant at 12 or 13, so what was going to happen anyway?

I never had the least notion.That I could fall with so much emotion. – George and Ira Gershwin, I’ve Got A Crush On You

Flash forward to adulthood and some of us (and by “us” I mean women, mostly) still approach our feelings as though we’re teenagers.  For example, when I casually refer to Friend Boy, I call him “this guy I kinda have a crush on,” at least when I don’t feel like going into details.  My Twitter timeline is replete with all manner of crush conversations at any given time, and I wanted to get to the bottom of what it all meant.  A number of women between 25 and 40 professed to having crushes on people they don’t know:  the striking female basketball star, the gorgeous politically-conscious actor who blogs about socialism.  Other women use “crush” to describe someone they don’t know well:  the casual acquaintance or person they met once and now follow on Twitter.  Other crushes are friends, ex’s, coworkers that women know well enough to care for yet refrain from calling the relationship anything but a crush.   None of the women I talked to have sex or intimate relationships relationships with their crushes, but have varying levels of interest in getting something started, if you know what I mean.

For all the childhood meanings attributed to our crushes, they tend to take over our collective minds and at least some part of our hearts and bodies.  One of my girlfriends professes to “need” a crush on someone to keep her occupied.  Said “occupation” doesn’t include spending her time with the guy she likes, just the occupation of countless braincells in the plotting of where to see the crush, what to say to the crush, what the last conversation with the crush actually meant.  Yeah, it sounds just like fifth grade.  I don’t think of Friend Boy as a crush, yet I do spend some amount of brain power pondering our non-relationship, whether I want to actually have one with him, and why he never makes any plans to hang out with me.  Even though I’m not passing him any notes in study hall, I still feel a little giddy when he calls/texts/Tweets/Facebooks me and calls me “babe.”  (Don’t judge me!)  Yeah, I think I’m a little pathetic, and my friends are pathetic too.  You’d think we could see our way to act like we’ve been dating and having sex for a good number of years instead of hiding away our real feelings and reverting to junior-high shorthand to describe romantic potential.  Or are we just hiding from relationships in general?

I’m not a player, I just crush a lot. – Big Punisher, Still Not a Player

Men, it seems, break down the crush nomenclature a little differently. A male Twitter follower described it like this: “if you day dream about sex with her its simple attraction if you day dream [sic] about GFE then its a crush“. Apparently “GFE” means “girlfriend experience“. I’ve never heard that before, which likely explains why I’m still single.  Anyway, this male crushing behavior is about having a relationship, wanting a girlfriend, seeing something happen.  I know I’m looking at a sample-size of one, but take the rap lyrics I quoted above and note that the word “crush” was actually a substitute for “fuck” in the radio edit of Big Pun’s hit song.  So, he’s not a player but he gets a lot of tail.  In this context, crushing is all about the physical relationship vs. the GFE, but it still connotes action, closure, and disclosure.  After all, Pun isn’t going around fucking a bunch of women who don’t know he’s at least interested in them for something.  Which brings me back to why the women I know – myself included – are carrying a torch for any number of people and keeping it a secret?

There was one thing I didn’t show, I love him and he doesn’t know – Zhane, Crush

One of my favorite “where are they now?” groups, Zhane, hits the nail on the head with the lyrics of their aptly-named Crush: “Will he turn around, walk away/Will he leave or will he stay if I tell him?”  Okay, ladies, we’re afraid of what will happen if we fess up to ol’ boy (or ol’ girl) that we have some romantic feelings for them.  We’re some punk-ass bitches, and I use the term with the utmost love and sisterhood.  Rejection feels bad, but so does stewing in your own juices.  I’ve given a lot of lip service to thinking about my feelings and proceeding cautiously into romance, but sometimes I’m just kidding myself and hiding behind the positive self-talk.  If you like a guy, or a girl, or a few of each, who not tell them?  If this crush you’re talking about is really about the significant-other experience (like the dudes say), then get off your ass and do something to make it happen.  If your crush is, as my friend Tanya says, something you need to entertain yourself, figure out why you MUST occupy your mind with fantasies that you don’t want to turn into reality.  I’m serious about this.  Decide if someone is worth your mental energy, then pursue them or let it drop and start thinking about something useful like where to put your 401(k) savings or how SB1070 will impact national immigration policy.  Just stop acting like a teenager, WOMAN-UP already, and go for yours.

Now I’m gonna take my own advice and spend the rest of the day getting my FTP site to work.  My tech issues might be less appealing than thinking about how Friend Boy’s hands would feel on my body, but I’ll definitely have something to show for it when I’m finished.