The other day I was eating a cup of ramen paired with pickles from the jar on my roommate Paulina’s floor, talking to her about a recent piece of gossip we had just received. It involved one of our guy friends and his romantic life … or lack thereof. Eventually, we started talking about past crushes we have had.
We spoke about what constitutes a crush and how, when we get crushes, we get delusional, mostly as a bit, but partially for real. We both cherish fabricating ridiculously long scenarios, excitedly going to our friends after major developments in our relationships (making eye contact in the dining hall) and calling them our husbands even though we have no classes together and they don’t know we exist.
Suddenly, I realized that I could never imagine a college-aged man being as unhinged about a crush as me. I couldn’t imagine a man seeing his crush at Milk and Honey and quickly grabbing his friend’s arm saying, “Omg do you think she came here because she knew I was gonna be here today?” I had to wonder, “What happens when a guy has a crush on a girl?” In search of answers, I’ve interviewed a few of my guy friends to ask them this incredibly important question.
The first interview I had seemed promising. While he is the opposite gender –– presumably subjected to some alien form of crushing –– I saw a lot of similarities between how my friend Remy and I experience and define crushes.
“It should be impactful enough for you to define, like, maybe not define yourself, but define that period of time using that person,” Remy (code name, of course) explains. “Romantic feelings being involved is a given.”
But while Remy and I have a similar emotional intensity, I noticed that we process things differently. When I have a crush, I spiral over every little thing they do. I think about whether their text meant anything, if the way they talked to me was flirty, etc. Remy, on the other hand, tends to overthink his own actions. “I was less like, ‘Am I delusional?’ and more like, ‘I don’t want her to think I’m being weird,’” he said.
This felt like such a subtle but important difference. For me, a crush is an external obsession. For Remy, it’s an internal review.
I did find one more similarity, though: when we get confused about our crushes, we both go to friends of the same gender as the person we like. “Maybe you [his girl friends] can glean some information about what she thinks of me … As a girl yourself, please enlighten me,” Remy said.
After interviewing Remy, I expected everyone to describe their emotions with that same depth. But most of my other guy friends, unfortunately, did not.
My friend Pichu reinforced my preconceptions. “Well, either I talk to them [his friends] about it or I don’t. I don’t act different,” Pichu said.
I was baffled. For me, acting differently is a big part of the crush experience. I make playlists, I change my route (only slightly, I’m not that crazy) to class and I make sure not to wear a plain T-shirt and jeans just in case I see them later.
But upon closer examination, I realized that my guy friends aren’t emotionless husks; they just express their crushes differently. Most of them said they usually develop feelings for people they already have established relationships with. None of them was the “go up to a stranger and ask them out” type. Crushes, for them, are developed out of familiarity, not fantasy.
For example, go up to one of your male friends and ask if they are attracted to one of their female friends. I’ll bet you the answer is yes.
While they might know for sure when they like someone, they don’t always act on it. “I’d be pretty sure when I want to pursue it,” Pichu told me, “but that doesn’t necessarily translate to action.”
Though terrifying in nature, sometimes we are forced to confront the issue of confessing to a crush. Pichu’s interview reminded me of something I really resonated with, which another one of my guy friends mentioned in passing. When talking about confessing to a crush, he told me that he was in a place where he’d rather hear a “no” than have never asked. It struck me as the emotional midpoint between Remy’s cautiousness and Pichu’s restraint. Full of hope, but realistic.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that crushes are a form of temporary insanity that unites us all. Whether it’s me jogging around the block waiting for my crush to respond to my text or Remy agonizing over if he said anything that might’ve come off the wrong way, it’s all the different sides of the emotional coin.
We might experience it differently, mine loud and messy, theirs quieter and internal, but it’s still felt in the same way.
So maybe men do get crushes in the same way as I do. They’re just really bad at explaining it.
Tom Cat hopes that everyone enjoys how all of the people they write about are named after fictional rats/mice.
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