I have a huge crush on you

Telling people you are in love with them is a messy business.  It regularly leads to transcendent moments of joy but has this nasty habit of also creating excruciating awkwardness.  Some people trend towards just telling people about their feelings and damn the consequences and others hide it all away.  I do not have the problem of hiding things too much; if I like someone it is as subtle as a tractor trailer transporting ten thousand howler monkeys high on cocaine.  The standard romantic narrative usually includes people who are completely unwilling to risk telling each other about their feelings while everybody around them thinks how stupid they are for passing up an opportunity but in real life the reverse is more often the problem I think.

In real life people's feelings don't grow for each other at the same time or at equal rates and often feelings go permanently unreciprocated.  I read an interesting blog post by Ferrett about this problem and he advocates just not telling people about your crushes.  There is real harm done to friendships when crushes are one sided but I am not at all convinced that just secretively crushing on someone actually fixes that problem.  The cure is to not crush on them at all if it isn't happening back but that isn't exactly useful advice.  It is good to acknowledge that dumping your feelings on people isn't always the right plan but just not telling people things isn't a good solution.

The best way to think about this is to be aware of what your crushes mean to you and whether or not your words actually tell the other person the truth.  If you are like Ferrett and you have a new crush every week based on a well written blog post then telling the writer of said post you have a crush on them is just terrible communication.  What you should say is "I love your writing.  Maybe we could hang out and I could see if your conversation can keep up with your amazing prose?"  This properly indicates your level of interest and avoids loaded words that inaccurately portray your feelings.  On the other hand if you have spent half a year getting to know someone and you are absolutely convinced they are the love of your life then you can say something like "I have a super massive crush on you" and they will get the picture.

This all requires serious self awareness.  After all, in the midst of a crush our brains aren't exactly clocking in at maximum processing power.  It is critical for us to understand ourselves enough to recognize where we are on our own personal scale of infatuation and act appropriately.  We also need to know what the target of our affections thinks about these topics.  If they are given to loudly professing their love for people then dialing up our rhetoric is a fine plan but if they are reticent and shy with their emotions the presentation should be a bit more laid back.  In general if the person we are crushing on is someone about whom we don't even know this sort of thing then we really should get to know that before making declarations of undying love.

The key here is that keeping secrets really isn't a solution.  What is a solution is carefully examining your own patterns of attraction to understand the attributes of your current set of feelings and then making sure your communication gets that across to the other person.  That may involve using language that doesn't adequately describe the hormonal messiness you are currently experiencing but the point is not to pontificate but to communicate.  That does not guarantee success nor necessarily avoid heartbreak but at least it nails honesty and due diligence and in the morass of human interaction that is about as good as you are going to get.

(Disclaimer:  If you read this and think "Is Sky talking about me?" the answer is No.  Theoretical musing only.)