The_Face_of_Boo wrote:
It is a sign of desperation - which is common among aspies.
While I was probably 'desperate' (even though I despise that term), that wasn't until I was 29 and took the first person to actually tell me they found me attractive. When I was in school (and even pre-school!) I tended to become obsessed with a particular girl only to be devastated when I found something I didn't like about them: one for example cut her beautiful long blonde hair off and dyed it a hideous light purple, another turned out to be rude and inconsiderate. I quickly moved on to the next crush though and never felt bad for being single as I wasn't really ready for a relationship.
Quote:
I spent three years in my teens crushing over a girl who wasn’t interested just because she said something kind to me once
It was more like three months but yes, I crushed hard over someone who actually said a nice (non-romantic) thing to me as it was about the only time in Junior High a girl actually didn't say something nasty to me. Turns out she was not a nice person but I was blinded by the compliment. It's easy for someone surrounded by water to call someone stuck in a hot desert for hours desperate and irrational for wanting water.
Mona Pereth wrote:
I don't know if the following suggestion would be of any help to people who are crush-prone and tormented by same: At the first sign of an impending crush, nip it in the bud immediately by reminding yourself of how little you know the person, and by reminding yourself that what you've started to crush on is only an image in your head, not the actual person. The actual person might be absolutely wonderful, or they might be utterly evil underneath their charming exterior, or they might be any number of things in between, and in any case they might be incompatible with you in any number of possible ways. You just don't know yet.
Very true, but easier said than done with my younger self. For example, even though it was drilled into my head at my first job that a shoplifter could literally be anyone and there is no "standard" or stereotype, I could not wrap my head around the fact that the young, attractive woman (or man) who was well dressed and well spoken with perfect hair and teeth was actually nothing more than a thief and was ripped off more than once. When I was online dating, I could not accept that many of these attractive women were actually nasty people under the surface and were single for a reason. No matter how many times I would repeat this mantra I would continue to be blindsided again and again and blame myself for their nasty behavior rather than accept that looks can be deceiving.
Mona Pereth wrote:
wonder to what extent the crush-proneness of many people is natural vs. to what extent it is a result of (or at least exacerbated by) the influence of pop culture. "Love at first sight" happens in movies all the time because a movie is only a couple of hours long; hence there's just not enough time to show a relationship developing in any reasonable way.
That's probably what happened with me: when you have very few friends growing up (and none of them could be considered to be psychological healthy) you tend to use movies as your frame of reference. I would pretty much act like a movie character because I had no idea otherwise how to interact with others.