Some feelings really make you doubt everything about yourself. Nothing comes close to that wild, pointless sensation though. It hits you out of nowhere. A crush. This sensation occurs every time. They call it a crush for good reason. Not only does it come from the deep emotions involved, the whole thing just crushes you. You slip into behaviors that feel completely unbalanced and you end up thinking you are insane or totally out of control. Your head dives into this messy turmoil that turns into a patterned kind of chaos. Your mind shifts in three main odd ways.
You begin to fail at holding things together. Limerence causes that shift, people call it a condition of cognitive obsession (Frenette). You fixate on just one person hard. Then thoughts of your crush rush in randomly, they mess up your whole day with that push and pull sensation. Falling so deep for someone ties into reduced adaptive cognitive control too (Langeslag and van Steenbergen). Your brain struggles more to spot and fix mistakes and it leaves you feeling like a total wreck inside. Your own ideas get twisted under judgments that push you toward choices you may not have made before.
This extra energy keeps building up in you and your drive starts pointing in other directions. You crave intense sensory input from the person you like, but you still you cannot go straight after satisfying that pull (Huang, Dong, and Zhang 54). Since direct ways stay out of reach, the energy redirects itself, it moves away from the crush entirely. You chase the urge through other outlets instead. Things like cranking up the music louder or seeking out richer food.
Anything that delivers a massive sensory rush fits. This builds an enhanced preference for strong sensory stimulation (Huang, Dong, and Zhang). You end up amplifying every part of life around you. That wild, unchecked energy drives it all. The same force makes you twist how you see the world. People in love (or in infatuation) grow way more confident about judging their feelings correctly. They stay less anchored in reality (Aloni and Bernieri 1). Infatuation builds these love schemas in your head that act like filters for every view you take. This fantasy can end up distorting your view of the crush.
Everyone holds onto these bright, messy memories from the emotional storms. I actually went through a crush myself back in the day (me when I turn into a grandpa). Anyways, storytime, I confessed to a guy. My whole body felt like it raced at top speed. He did not return the feeling at all. That flat “Okay” from him cut deep into my emotions. The hurt landed like a punch straight to the soul. I still felt that impact a full year later. I brought up the old moment in a light joke a while later and he hit me with this blank, empty stare. Then came his reply: “I did NOT remember you saying that.” That lowkey shocked me. For me, a crush means dumping all your heart out there. You pour in your soul’s fire and every raw emotion. The other side sees none of it really.
Q&A: The Experience of the Crush
The experience of having a crush is intensely subjective, but certain chaotic themes emerge when people discuss the feeling of emotional and mental breakdown. We asked a few people about the times they felt the most absolutely gone when they had a crush.
1. What’s the most embarrassing or “crazy” thing you’ve done to get a crush’s attention or as a result of having a crush?
“[When I was in] middle school, [I] started listening to Hamilton cuz she did.” – E
“I want to say, [in] middle school, [the] most embarrassing [thing] was [that] I would write fictional stories of me and this other person. [One day though] I lost it, [and then] a classmate read it in class WHILE [MY] CRUSH WAS IN CLASS. I owned up to it though.” – L
“I once submitted an anonymous message with my crush’s name in it to this Instagram page run by someone in my school district. I was in high school at the time and I really wanted to be with this person, but I think it was clear that I felt more strongly towards them than they did about me.” – P
“I don’t think I ever really did anything crazy but as a person who used to do a lot of public singing, when I was like 15 or so I had this idea in my brain that big gestures that involved singing (like in that scene from 10 Things I Hate About You) wouldn’t be totally awkward for the person they were addressed to and I was very incorrect about that.” – M.D.
2. Can you describe a time your judgment felt totally clouded because of how much you liked someone?
“[I] let [my] bestie date a girl who wasn’t good for him cuz the girl [that I] liked said she was chill.” – E
“[During] Freshman year [of] HS, [I was taking an] exam and [my] crush walked in to give papers to [the] teacher. Math, I SUCK at math, [and when my] crush walked in I completely FORGOT about the test and had to stay for lunch to finish [it].” – L
“Senior year, I started talking to this guy, I kinda knew he was not great for me, but the first thing he said was ‘I’ve got a crush on you,’ and it was so validating that my judgment just kinda disappeared. I just was so wrapped up in the fact that someone liked me, I couldn’t see anything else.” – R
“I think the biggest thing that used to happen to me was that I’d be so afraid that the person wouldn’t like me back that I was afraid to do or say anything that would scare the other person away, so I just wouldn’t do or say anything that would let them know. Which a) drove me insane and b) was its own form of bad judgement, because in a lot of cases I think the other person actually might have liked me back but I never gave them a chance to tell me, and in a lot of other cases I would have still enjoyed being that person’s friend. It was real stupid!” – M.D.
3. Do you feel a lack of control over your thoughts when you have a crush?
“[I’m a] chronic overthinker, thinking is all I do, so [I feel a lack of control] to a certain extent, yes and no.” – E
“[Maybe, because] I daydream a lot when not focused.” – L
“Yes. In the past I have had a tendency to be a little too overwhelming towards crushes and girlfriends about how much I like them. Let’s just say I used a certain L word far too soon in one particular case.” – P
“I do. Especially in the beginning. It’s like having a little parrot on your shoulder that’s only saying that person’s name or things about them, no matter what you’re trying to focus on. I don’t feel like I can stop it.” – R
“To be honest as a young person I had a real lack of control over my thoughts at all times, crush or no! When it came to crushes I think it was less that I felt a lack of control over my thoughts and more that I could control whether I shared those thoughts but I really really didn’t want to. It was a self-defeating pattern that took me too long to break out of.” – M.D.
4. Do you believe crushes can be addictive? If so, how has that manifested for you?
“[I] don’t know if addictive is the word I could use. [My] same friend as [in question] 2 NEEDS to have a crush on someone, so to a certain extent romanticizing the love is more enticing than reality.” – E
“I feel like they can be, but not for me personally, but having a crush and being in love can be. That feeling can overwhelm a person.” – L
“I think so, yes. This has caused me to be so hooked on the idea of dating the other person that I have forgotten to try and get to know them first because I hated being the only single person in my friend group. More often than not, this has taken me down a long slippery slope of feeling a sudden need to be with my crush even though I was just fine without them before and I only know the version of them that I have in my head.” – P
“Yes. I always need to have one. If I don’t have one, I feel… directionless? Like the world is dimmer. It’s more about the chase and the feeling of possibility than the person.” – R
“Hrm. I don’t know about addictive, for me. I would become deeply infatuated with a particular person over the course of weeks or months, and then maybe nobody, then become deeply infatuated with someone else. It was never a situation where I was falling in love with every girl I met or couldn’t go a week without having a crush on someone. I practiced crush monogamy for most of my life lol. Which was probably a mistake! I probably should have let myself have different levels of attachment to people.” – M.D.
5. What parts of yourself do you feel your crush represents or brings out?
“I feel like she makes me want to be the best version of myself.” – E
“[They bring out] being more outgoing, I feel more outgoing and comfy. Usually shy, but I feel like putting myself out there.” – L
“I feel like they represent all the parts of me that I wish were more visible or that I’m afraid to be. They’re like a mirror for potential.” – R
“If I think about the crushes I had before we met, when I was a Youth? Umm, I kinda had different ‘eras’ but for the most part I think they were smart, and funny, and passionate about the things that they cared about, and they were cool in the sense that they were 100% themselves and not at all troubled by being different than other people at the same school or in the same scene or who went to the same clubs or whatever.” – M.D.
6. Does getting to know the real person sometimes make the intense “insane” feelings go away? Or do they linger?
“Depends on who the person is, toxic relationship didn’t make it go away. But depends on the person, when you know a person you feel more comfy with them.” – E
“Depends on the person, junior year [I] had a crush but heard bro talk and said nvm.” – L
“It all depends on how much I liked them and how often I see them after getting to know them. If I see them often, the feelings may linger on for a while. On the other hand, the feelings may fade away if I don’t see them very much or they don’t post a lot on social media.” – P
“It usually makes them go away for me. Once you know all the weird little things, the fantasy breaks and you’re left with just… a person. Which is nice, but it’s not the ‘insane’ feeling anymore.” – R
“Both maybe? I had this really impactful experience when I was maybe 16 or 17 where I developed this crush on a girl… and within 5 minutes I was like ‘oh this person actually sucks, they’re not at all interesting to me!’ So from that point on I really only developed crushes on people that I knew to some degree. I would say the vast majority of people I had crushes on after that I still really really like, just, not in an ‘insane’ way–it’s more about really appreciating the other person rather than being overwhelmed with how they make you feel. A lot of those people I’m still in touch with, years and years later.
“The central message is this: The feeling of ‘insanity’ you experience with a crush is a temporary crisis of the self, a psychological flashpoint where your deepest desires and most vulnerable potentials are being violently expressed. It is a sign not of madness, but of intense, bottled-up energy trying to find a chaotic way out.” – M.D.
Works Cited
Aloni, Maya, and Frank J. Bernieri. “IS LOVE BLIND? THE EFFECTS OF EXPERIENCE AND INFATUATION ON THE PERCEPTION OF LOVE.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, vol. 28, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1-13.
Frenette, Rachel. “To crave is like to be in love.” Evolutionary Psychological Science, 30 June 2024.
Huang, Xun (Irene), et al. “Crush on You: Romantic Crushes Increase Consumers’ Preferences for Strong Sensory Stimuli.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, pp. 53–69.
Langeslag, Sandra J. E., and Henk van Steenbergen. “Cognitive control in romantic love: the roles of infatuation and attachment in interference and adaptive cognitive control.” Cognition and Emotion, vol. 34, no. 3, 2020, pp. 596-603.
Featured image courtesy of Kkarissaaa via the Wikimedia Commons.
