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Unrequited Crushes: How do you remember them?
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Yeah, I don't really like it as a term either.
Let's see... June 2005 until this year. So yes. (Spoilered for long and slightly depressing.)
She was amazing; she liked pretty much everything that I did, laughed at my jokes, thought that I was interesting, and was equally interesting in return. I knew then that I had to meet her, if only to defuse the intense infatuation that had formed.
It turned out over the next few months of conversation that she had trust issues thanks to the shit boyfriend previously, and I got unjustifiably pissed off and worked up about the whole thing, so deleted her from my MSN and vowed to get over her forever. I then had a brief dalliance with another girl I'd met on the conference, but it turned out that it was a complete rebound thing, which crushed my fragile 18 year-old ego even more and heralded in the Age of Fucking Annoying Whiny Teenage Angst (resulting in an award-winning poem, but that's not the point).
Once I'd removed her from my MSN list, I then added the first girl, as I realised that in the grand scheme of things, being overly wary of a guy she's largely known from the Internet and is too fucking suave in typing for his own good is small potatoes. Since then I've tried to meet up in her home town for Christmas shopping (only a few stops away on the train from where I live), at comedy concerts, and at an awards ceremony she was invited to; every time, something got in the way, either on my end or hers.
This New Year's, I attempted to meet up with her to celebrate, as I wasn't doing anything and her friends were taking far too long getting their shit together. We were so close to going up to London together, but I had to be vetted by her friend before I was allowed to come. Midday New Year's Eve, I'm texted and told that I hadn't passed whatever criteria her friend had, and I spent New Year's walking on my own with a bag of fish and chips on the seafront before singing Auld Lang Syne over MSN with an old school friend.
I decided at that point that I had simply been fucking blind, and she never wanted to see me in real life; she was comfortable with the harmless, smooth-talking idiot she knew online. I think I'm OK with that, but I'm fairly sure that I'll be suggesting that we meet up somewhere the next time the opportunity presents itself, only to be disappointed yet again.
I've had plenty of other crushes (some briefly reciprocated) in the past three years, as well as a long-term girlfriend, but I don't think I'll ever get over Basingstoke Amy, the one that keeps on getting away. In a way, I don't mind it; the long hours we've spent talking online have more than made up for the disappointment that she doesn't feel the same way about me, and at least she knows how I feel, which is more than the rest of my crushes do (although I'm such a clueless fuckwit that I've probably made it abundantly clear).
TL;DR: I still haven't got over a girl I haven't even properly met, and I'm a slightly pathetic romantic who spent too much time on MSN in his late teen years.
Yeah, hindsight kicked me in the ass a couple of years after. In grade 12 I was in an art class to get the credit for the college course I needed and a girl that I'd known practically my entire life was in it with me. Sat next to me everyday. A year prior she'd been going out with a guy a couple years older then her and their relationship ended pretty roughly and I was there as a friend for her when she needed to talk. She was a really cute brunette, very nice body.
So anyway, about mid-way through the year we're in class and we start talking as usual and out of the blue she tells me she was reading a book at home. I asked her what book. Her response and I quote "How to give a guy a blowjob". My response, "...". I was with a girl at the time so I just sort of froze up. She just laughed my response off. When I look back on it, it was sort of that nervous, omg I am so embarrased he's not into me laugh. Hindsight is, after going through a horrid three years with the girl I was with, I should have stopped dating her and asked my classmate to illustrate what she had read. :winky:
Don't feel too bad, you're in good company. A girl flat-out grabbed my head and kissed me on the mouth for a good couple of seconds, and I figured she'd accidentally run into me (the room was dark).
:picardpalm:
Infatuation.
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It was painfully obvious she was interested in me, and she lit up any time she was around me, and the same for me. She moved away that summer and I was heartbroken.
I liked this one girl when I was in Kindergarten. We played soccer and kicked each other in the shins, but she was shy otherwise. Didn't really talk. We didn't have the same class until high school, but she was still really shy. She got cute as a button though. I never made a move, but she was willing to talk to her friends like a normal person. I clammed up though and couldn't ask her out (and not seeing her outside of class made it difficult to do the small talk routine first). I still regret it to this day.
I later saw a picture of her on facebook 5 years out of high school. Apparently she did a sport in college and oh my god the hotness. Soooo much regret. Too bad I moved away.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
She's also going to become a single mother in a month or two. And yet there were still fleeting thoughts of, "I could help bring the kid up! We could be a family!" Luckily they passed in a few seconds, and I was back to absent-minded infatuation.
Sweet story, Kate.
*edit- Last girl I crushed on before I found my wife:
First time I met her, I probably should have known it wasn't going to work- she was at my friend's place, and we found her bra on the chair before they both came out of his bedroom. These facts were stricken from my brain once I met her, though. My buddy had a tendancy to get involved in no-strings relationships a LOT, and it never really occurred to me that I might not get a chance to date this woman.
We talked that entire first day- and it only made her more interesting to me. Alas, after a few months, it became obvious to me that starting something with her was not an option. We became very good friends, though, even after she moved back home to Washington. Funny enough- turns out she hooked up with another good friend of mine after HE moved up there.
I got to chastise her drunkenly over the phone at Octoberfest. Heh.
while I was depressed and closeted I had two girls express interest in me.
One was in middleschool, she did the usual thing of getting her friends to ask me out for her. She even wrote a poem for me. I remember feeling awful about it. She liked me a lot but I couldn't return the feelings because I was broken. I probably would have accepted, I liked her a lot as a friend, but as such I had to say no to her advances without being able to say why.
The other was in highschool and she straight up asked me to the thanksgiving formal... a miniprom I guess. I was terrified she would ask me to dance and she didn't, thankfully. I had the same feelings as before - she was funny and quite attractive but I just couldn't return the feelings. I felt like there was something tremendously wrong with me, and I felt very guilty and upset about it in both cases.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
This sounds too much like "obsession" which, you know, isn't wholly inaccurate either. I'll know the right word when I see it.
I'm torn between going into the details (because this is the unrequited crush thread after all) and not doing that because honestly it's H/A Girl Thread material and I'm not doing that. Seems like the kind of thing that should probably wait until it's in the past.
Also, anybody who hasn't needs to read Araby by Joyce. Sorry if it's already been mentioned. Talk about a depressing story about losing your youth. Fuck.
I think the weirdest part is how love works. Like, how at a certain time in your life you can be 100%, head over heels, infatuated with someone, and then at another point in your life look back and say "What was I thinking?"
In college, around the beginning of junior year or the summer before, I had a crush on this girl, Katherine. (She will never read Penny Arcade so I'm safe. And plus she knows about the crush because of how this story ends.)
Katherine was attractive, nice, funny, etc. I never really thought about her in that way until one night at the end of sophomore year when she offered to come along and keep me company as I developed photos in the dark room for my photography final portfolio. So I agreed and we walked down on a beautiful spring night. My college's campus was just gorgeous so it was a pretty scene.
We spent a fun night laughing and joking in the dark. We then took a walk around campus and talked for a long time, then went back to our separate dorms. After that night I figured she was interested in me. She had given off all the signs. This led me to, for the first time, think of her as someone I might date. Then summer hit and I had all summer long to let it sink in.
By the time I went back to college at the beginning of junior year I had developed a full-on crush. I thought about her all the time. I went through scenarios in my head of asking her out. I finally psyched myself up enough to do it. I went up to her room under the pretense of hanging out to watch TV and eat some snacks. We did so and then I posed the question. She politely let me down, and said she didn't think of me that way.
Complete and utter horror followed. I had no idea that I had misread her signals. I was certain she was interested. That certainty was the very thing that had fueled my infatuation. But I was completely wrong.
She was by this point a very good friend, so it was very, very awkward for a long time after. But then it started to fade, because this other girl that I had had a thing for years before, Jess, became single and I went for it with her and she said yes and that got my mind off it.
But the weirdest part is I still hang out with Katherine a lot, because she lives right by me. And I have absolutely no attraction to her now. I just like her as a really close friend. And it kind of freaks me out that I could be so head over heels in love with a girl that I now have zero romantic interest in. She's the same girl. She hasn't changed. She just doesn't interest me anymore.
And that is scary. It's like looking through the scaffolding of love and seeing the workers scurrying about, trying to put the tools and unfinished pieces away before you catch a glimpse of them. But they're too slow and so you see the disturbing truth: that love is a drug that fuels itself with repeated thoughts and musings, and is reinforced when you think someone likes you back, and escalates to absurd heights sometimes. And logically speaking, it's all arbitrary.
Fuck, I just got the chills.
Not uncommon. My best friend of 10 years is a girl I was initially very attracted to. She wasn't attracted to me - plus she was going out with a cool guy at the time - so I put my sexual attraction aside and we've become, well, like brother and sister almost. Forever friends, at least.
Also, your story made me realize that the girl I mentioned on the last page found out I had a crush on her. How? Well I guess in the 90s, ICQ was a big thing still. I was chatting with her on ICQ and I wrote "because I love you" at some point, but then I deleted it, and wrote something else instead.
Hey, guess what? In ICQ, you can set it so you can see other people typing in real time. It wasn't like you write a message and then send a message. It was real time, character-by-character chat. So she saw what I wrote. I was...aghast, to say the least.
Still...
I guess it was better to get it out in the open.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Since then I have at least made the step to only be turned down by people who live within a 20 mile radius. That's progress I can believe in.
I've done worse. Because I'd been mercilessly tormented by 4 or 5 older girls in high school (I'd skipped a grade too so I was a year younger than everyone else) between the ages of 14 and 17 I went through this misogynistic phase where outside of a few close friends, women didn't exist and the ones that tried to get me to notice them annoyed me. If a girl chased me down and tried talking to me, I'd blow her off. If a girl and her friends walked up and gave me her number I'd say "whatever" Then go home, and throw it in the trash. If someone told me a girl liked me, I'd say "No" and the girl (who'd been listening nearby) walked away with a wounded look on her face.
Looking back I kick myself sometimes. Especially over the 23 year old med student who was crushing on my loser ass when I was 17. (we shared a mutual friend for anyone who's wondering.)
Christ do I ever kick myself.
I had the exact same thing happen to me. She was a sweet girl, but just not interested in her that way. But, I'm a dick, and I decide that it's hilarious she would even think of going with me, so when I tell my friend I'm all "ZOMG You'll never guess who asked me to prom LOL" and he gets this horrified look on his face and says "I was going to ask her to prom". I felt like shit after that.
Anyway, after a while, my flatmate convinced me it wasnt him... So I was left with this (pretty full-on) letter. I used the name and figured out that he was in one of my lectures. The poor guy, I didnt know who he was, and we'd certainly never spoken. I called out to him after a class and as he turned around when I called, I assumed the name was right... and asked him if he'd left a letter in my bag. He was really shy and awkward about it - and I told him it was flattering, but I had a girlfriend and that I wished him the best of luck. I never saw him again.
I always thought that it must have been a hard thing for him to do. I hope he had better luck in future attempts.
So I met her in my chem lab, we were actually lab partners. She was a year younger than me and pretty much just my type. Long black hair, a petite body and a nice face. We talked a lot and I finally got her to agree to go on a date with me. Date was meh, mostly because we chose the one theater in town that doesn't take credit cards and I had to go get money. Also hadn't been on a date in ages, was twitchy and kind of was anti-social. Actually she asked me if I had any gay thoughts at one point, probably thinking I may have been gay or leaning that way. But we had a couple more dates, some physical wrestling and playing and some hanging out but just didn't work out. I figured I fucked up and started to move on.
Over a year we had still been talking off and on. I had gotten and broken up with a girlfriend who later became of one my better friends and just kind of kept going about my life. I still liked her because she was damn sexy but never thought of it much. Come that year one of my best friends and a mutual friend of ours passes away just before my 21st birthday. We talk about and she comes to my b-day dinner thing and says we should hang out more. She also says her comp is broken and being the person I am go to fix it.
I go over to her house and we wrestle as usual, she shows me a chain mail vest she made and a few other things, which leads to her stealing my shirt at some point. I don't think much of it, since that is just kind of how we are. I go home and my roommate and his new girlfriend ask how it went, thinking it was a date. I just told them what happened. They talk me into thinking I have a second chance.
This is where I frack up, try to push for the relationship. She gets uncomfortable and blocks me on aim. And we just become polite strangers to each other. I learned from that point to stick my I know whats going on, not what fuck you people are imagining crap. I had a class with her the next semester, too. She cut her hair and looked like a fucking super model the whole time. Rather frustrating.
On girls I should of not been such a retard during high school on I just look at my year book.
One girls name was Jane. She was a friend who had a crush on me. She was cool, liked programing and we even took a course together at the local community college one summer. But I never asked her out because in our high school she was one of the "weird" kids. And I didn't want to look like I liked them. Fucking high school. Later saw a picture on face book, she went from kind of frumpy/plain to be fucking hot. And I missed that. A few others I missed my senior year because I thought that a senior dating a freshman or sophomore would be icky so I never asked any of the cute freshman/sophomores in my theater class out who had a crush on me.
Have I mentioned, I was a fucking retard?
Wow, in all sincerity you're a pretty stand-up guy.