Recently, some of my friends have been lamenting the lack of good crushes in their orbit as of late. All in their thirties, the majority married, they found themselves longing for old crushes who’d faded from their social circles or workplaces, taking their crushability with them. Which got us thinking: What makes for the perfect crush, anyway? And are they really harder to come by as you get older?
To answer the second question first: Probably. Much like making friends when “old,” finding a good crush becomes, if not harder, at least a different game. When you’re younger, there’s a virtually endless conveyor belt of possibilities for crushing and befriending, because you tend to be in the same place for many hours day in and day out for years. That stable yet constantly rotating cast of people—classmates, new friends, new friends’ older brothers and sisters, at least one good-looking teacher—eventually gets whittled down to the people you’re actually friends with, work with, or see in your everyday life when you go to the same coffee shop, post office, grocery store, bar, dry cleaners, etc.
Gone is the rich, endless brook of crushability babbling past your daily existence. Your current circle of potentially fresh crush meat is so much more limited. As is, hopefully, your tolerance for the phrase “fresh crush meat.”
That said, let me address some things here in an attempt to define a good crush:
Can you crush on anyone?
Technically the entire world is yours for the crushing. If you live in a city with a reliable public transportation system, I’m told the appeal of subway stranger crushes is limitless. I glimpsed this truth recently on my first trip to London and Paris, when every four minutes the universe offered up subway car after subway car full of people, just sitting there, ready to be rated, many of them exceptionally crushable and with very good hair. As someone who grew up in the car-obsessed South, I must say that while you could presumably pluck just as many stranger crushes from a freeway traffic sprawl, it’s not exactly the safest activity to participate in while driving, not to mention nowhere near as fun as the hands-free experience of simply looking people over and deciding to love them fully and completely for a good three minutes.
However, this one-time crush sighting has a short shelf life. It won’t get you through boring patches in a relationship or a dull day at work, because by the time you get to the office you’ve probably forgotten all about that one dude sitting across from you on the train.
What about celebrities?
Celebrity crushes are great, safe, and easy to nurture, as they are ubiquitous in the world. But therefore, they are the “bowl of oatmeal” of crushes. Please, you think Chris Pratt is hot? Yawn. Tell me something actually exciting, something mildly inappropriate, something strangely uncomfortable. Plus, it’s hard to imagine that a crush shared by millions is very satisfying.
Are you talking about single people crushing too?
Of course! But also, when single people crush on each other, that’s a much more likely prelude to actual dating—or it at least has the possibility. The perfect crush is always a little bit out of reach.
That being said, if you are a single person crushing on a taken or otherwise inappropriate person you actually know—someone that can’t know your real feelings or else you’d get very embarrassed—keep reading.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
