Demonized for Crushing on People-A Common Stigma?

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CockneyRebel
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12 Oct 2022, 12:32 pm

I had a crush on my grade 7 music teacher. A true Bow Bells Cockney. A girl in my class kept on telling me that it was wrong to have that type of a crush because teachers are married. That teacher wasn't married or dating. It made me feel like a bit of a freak.


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himmellaufen
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12 Oct 2022, 3:34 pm

Yes, behaving in a clingy or a stalky way is stigmatized, even if you mean no harm. People are like "be nice, but not too nice" and "be close, but not too close"



ToughDiamond
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12 Oct 2022, 7:28 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
Why would other people know who your crush is?

Having a crush is never a problem, assuming it's quiet and private.
Being demonstrative about your feelings is another matter altogether.
Most people are completely repelled by unwanted gestures of love.

I think that's more or less correct. It hardly ever did me any good to share the overwhelmingly strong feelings I used to get when I was getting romantically involved. So I learned to bottle it. It might have been different if I'd had a friend or two who was sympathetic and discreet, but such people are probably quite rare. I suppose a good counsellor or therapist might be the only help for it. I very gradually became more the master of such feelings rather than letting them master me, and to fall in love less readily. I learned that getting infatuated with somebody I barely knew was absurd, and very likely doomed to failure and disappointment. And it's often seen as a sign of great inferiority or contemptible weirdness among judgemental people. It's a shame it's that way, because having to hide intense feelings seems downright unhealthy.