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Love or crush?

  
  

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Seth
05:26 / 05.03.06
I don't think I've ever started one of these threads, so I thought I'd see what happened if I did...

How do you know if you're in love with someone or if you just have a crush on them?

How do you differentiate, Barbelith?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
05:47 / 05.03.06
You only find out afterwards.
 
 
Seth
05:50 / 05.03.06
After what?
 
 
astrojax69
05:58 / 05.03.06
wards.

maternity, hospital [general], state-imposed children.


i rekkun it relates to what you think of taking them home to meet mother...
 
 
elene
06:07 / 05.03.06
A crush is a sort of fetish, or the adoration thereof, limerance. Love is something two people make. A crush is personal, love is social. Love is complex and one can conceive of it progressing through various canonical phases, growing and maturing. Love might progress from attraction, through connection, release, and alignment to trust, where each will be contested. A crush on the other hand is a highly potent fantasy, a waking dream.

The thing is, one can start with crush but eventually end up with love, if the attraction is reciprocated. On the other hand, one of the great dangers of a crush is the tendency to see reciprocation where there is none.
 
 
Earlier than I thought
08:54 / 05.03.06
God knows. I crush madly on loads of people all the time. Then, every now and again (ie, about once a century) it becomes possible that the other person is reciprocating, in which case I smoothly run like fuck. Hey, it's pitiable, but it's a life.

I have a horrible crush at present on a close friend, which I've been trying to kill by any means possible. NB, the crush, not the friend. Obviously. You know, I'm just going to shut up here.
 
 
Persephone
09:26 / 05.03.06
A crush is personal, love is social.

Oh my god, I love this. A hundred things just fell into place for me.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
09:29 / 05.03.06
I think love also has a lot of... erm... bureacracy? Or maybe infrastructure- this can include things like trust, or communication (as well as the more basic ones like, you know, actually knowing the person socially). Whereas a crush doesn't really give a shit about that.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
09:30 / 05.03.06
Yeah, love's a struggle, and crush is free. Orange crush.
 
 
SMS
11:27 / 05.03.06
My first answer:
I don't understand how anybody could be unsure about this. I've been in love and I've had crushes and the two are really incomparable.

My second answer:
Love has two interesting characteristics that I can mention in a short time. First, it is eternal, but not necessarily everlasting. That is, it transcends space and time in a non-mystical sense. The moment I fall in love, my life is reconstituted from beginning to end. My self is re-made. Second, it can attend these three stages of bliss.
1. The indescribable bliss. No prior human experiences can be refered to in order to form the concept of this bliss. It is not conceivable simply by imagining the increase of all other blisses.
2. The indescribably indescribable. This is a bit of the same, and I only mention it because I have experienced it. It's different from the first.
3. The why-would-I-even-want-to-describe-this bliss. It's basically a third stage of the last, but, at least for me, the idea of calling this indescribable was itself inadequate because it had become so distant from the notion of words.

I know this sounds a bit like gibberish, but I'm not making anything up.
 
 
imaginary mice
14:22 / 05.03.06
Love is something two people make. A crush is personal, love is social.

So there's no such thing as unrequited love?

The thing is, one can start with crush but eventually end up with love, if the attraction is reciprocated.

What if the attraction is initially reciprocated but the other person then stops loving you and breaks up with you while your feelings remain unchanged? Does the love you feel for them then automatically become a crush? Shouldn't "true love" be unconditional and not dependent on how the other person feels about you?

Love or crush?
Crush. Otherwise you wouldn't need to ask this question.
 
 
ibis the being
15:02 / 05.03.06
I love elene's post... that's the way I have viewed the difference myself for a while, but never have I phrased it so elegantly.

So there's no such thing as unrequited love?

I would say no. I don't believe love is a feeling, or feelings, per se... it requires the participation of another. Actually I should qualify that by saying romantic love. I'm not a parent, but I imagine parental love is significantly different and could be 'unrequited,' though the word would probably not be used in that instance.

Unrequited "love," and other forms of crush (though I think crush is an inadequate word) revolve around fantasies and projections of the ego, rather than genuine engagement with another whole person. I have actually been in long relationships, and certainly seen other people in relationships, where what went on was just a kind of mutual crushing, and caring certainly, but on both sides the image that each person had of the other was born much more out of who the crusher wanted to see - often some kind of preconceived notion of an ideal lover - than of the actual person standing before him/her.

What if... the other person then stops loving you and breaks up with you while your feelings remain unchanged?Does the love you feel for them then automatically become a crush?

I think the love you feel for the person at that point has probably transformed into filial or even familial love... unless you never really connected or knew/understood that person, in which case yes it's probably a crush and always was.
 
 
elene
17:27 / 05.03.06
So there's no such thing as unrequited love?

No. There can of course be impossible love, where you love each other but it's like, ... impossible. And love can take various forms, as ibis says.

What if the attraction is initially reciprocated but the other person then stops loving you and breaks up with you while your feelings remain unchanged? Does the love you feel for them then automatically become a crush?

Sorry, but it's dead. I’m really sorry for your loss.

Shouldn't "true love" be unconditional and not dependent on how the other person feels about you?

That's just exactly what a crush is.

Again as ibis says, crush is an inadequate word for this business.
 
 
iconoplast
17:41 / 05.03.06
I wish I could remember the Philosopher who came up with this. The idea is basically that love describes relationships in which the following happens:

(I think 'arousal' here does not need to be sexual)

A is aroused by B.
B is aroused by A.
A is aroused by B's arousal by A.
B is aroused by A's arousal by B.
A is aroused by B'a arousal by A's arousal by B.

... and so on.

So the moment when one crush meets its reciprocal this sort of infinite loop of mutual attraction and escalating arousals gets created. And that state is, IMO, what we mean by Love.
 
 
Cowboy Scientist
18:53 / 05.03.06
Whoa. Cool.
 
 
Jawsus-son Starship
21:00 / 05.03.06
what about if you totally dig the person mentally, but you have no physical attraction to them, and by this I mean you want to date said person, but you do not want to fuck them.

As a shallow man, this not only confused me, but scare and bewildered me to the point where I don't know what I think. Which has never happened before.

Where does this fit in the love/crush biosphere?
 
 
Seth
23:12 / 05.03.06
elene, that’s such a great post. Extraordinarily useful and it crystalises some of what I’ve been trying to do.

This is my situation without specifics. There’s someone who I’ve been crushing on since I first met her a couple of years back. We’ve been spending a lot more time together recently, and I’m not comfortable with crushing on her because it means I’m fundamentally not really dealing with her as a person. The crush is not doing anyone any favours.

What I’m trying to do now is to break the entire pattern down, to focus my attention on who I am, who she is, and how we’re relating to each other. I’m trying to make this as accurate as possible to what I understand the reality of the situation to be, which entails a lot of personal judging and weighing. If I just have a crush on her I’m neither going to reveal it or allow myself to act on it. If my feelings stand up to all this testing and are deeper than that, if they’re reciprocated and there’s a chance of compatibility then I’ll broach the subject.

I’ve been infatuated with someone before and been in a relationship with them. I will never, ever, ever do that again. My sense of self-preservation is too high having hurt myself really badly in the past. Infatuation and crushing which one acts upon are not conducive to mental health and are nothing like love. So I’m going to try to be thorough with myself. I have a friend who is just telling me to go for it regardless of the consequences, but I can’t do that in good conscience because I refuse to live my life based on feelings alone. What happens when the feelings go or change? I’m not interested unless there’s a chance of building something. As it stands I’m not convinced there is, which is why I haven’t properly acted on how I feel.

SMS, are you trying to win an award for the single most unhelpful post ever?
 
 
Shrug
23:18 / 05.03.06
I've always regarded a crush as something quite transient, where you might crush someone one day you might not the next. Something frivolous. Or, maybe, a crush is more about the myth of the person, a slight (often brief) fetishisation of their physicality or personality, than any considered appreciation of their whole.

I'd regard a crush as a mini-obsession. And unrequited love as full blown obsession. As elene and others have said love needs validation/corroboration to exist.

Love, I think, has to last a certain amount of time (that time subjectively contingent to getting to know your paramour to an acceptable level). I don't think that short entanglements can produce a true love and also disbelieve in love at first sight. To bring in James Blunt's theory on it..... (ah ha ha, no!)

Love, for me, is fully informed, a crush is not.
 
 
SMS
23:52 / 05.03.06
SMS, are you trying to win an award for the single most unhelpful post ever?
Certainly not. I express my regrets. I hope it is this submission alone that you refer to. Has no one else experienced the reconstitutive power of love? I can kind of understand how the bit about the bliss would not be as helpful (although it's been my experience, and I'd say that having it really resolves the epistemological problem, even though talking about it doesn't), but I'd think that the reconstitution of the self would be a very key distinction between love and mere infatuation.
 
 
elene
07:43 / 06.03.06
Hi Seth,

hey, thanks! I'm glad you found it useful.

Seth, you're a really sexy, intelligent, competent, caring man. I'm sure your feelings are strong and I think you're going to be hard pressed to hide them. On the other hand I very much agree that a relationship based on just one person's passion is hell. I think ideally one would lock one's crush up in a comfortable fantasy where it can feel fulfilled all on its lonesome, and then go about trying to develop a relationship with the other person.

I think you're doing the right thing, but try not to waste energy rowing with yourself about this. Be your normal, impressive self, and when the time is right let her know you care.

Hope it works out, and that she's worth it.
 
 
Lysander Stark
09:19 / 06.03.06
Part of me glibly thinks that the old Louis Armstrong litmus test applies-- if you have to ask, you'll never know... By which I don't actually mean never, but that when one knows, one knows (or when one has known, one has known). Which is not much like Louis' quote, but I do like that quote...

Ideas of love change and have changed so much. It is odd to read Shakespeare or EM Forster or Thomas Hardy or Jane Eyre and to find such different views or beliefs, which in many ways were dictated by the different habits and social constraints of their ages. Love and crushes are necessarily different in our age of more, often shorter relationships, of sex, of friends of the opposite sex... There is little precedent for us, in a sense, hence the confusion on this matter. I remember my grandmother telling me how romantic it was that one of her unsuccessful suitors followed her around a lot. We call it STALKER, she calls it lovely. Was he the victim of a crush? Of love? Did such things exist? Was his target sex or marriage? Does that make a difference in itself?

One of the big questions with love and crush, though, is a nuance within one of those words alone-- is there a difference between love, and being in love? I would posit a big yay on that. Despite the above open-ended stuff, I believe that you can love outside a relationship, love inside a relationship, and be in love in both situations, but like some nightmare Venn diagram, the situations do not always happily overlap and people can fall out of love (while still loving), or fall from love to being in love etc etc.

All in all, as this ramble demonstrates, love is a complicated and fearfully subjective thing.
 
 
imaginary mice
09:58 / 06.03.06
Given that there are different definitions of love and that many people aren't sure what the difference is between love and a crush, how do you know that your love is reciprocated? Your partner might tell you that they love you and might genuinely think that it is love but maybe they've never experienced the emotion and don't realise that what they're feeling is in fact just a crush. If love needs to be reciprocated for it to be love but you can never be sure if it's mutual or not, how can you tell that it's not just a crush?

A is aroused by B.
B is aroused by A.
A is aroused by B's arousal by A.
B is aroused by A's arousal by B.
A is aroused by B'a arousal by A's arousal by B.

... and so on.

So how do people fall out of love?


Love, I think, has to last a certain amount of time (that time subjectively contingent to getting to know your paramour to an acceptable level). I don't think that short entanglements can produce a true love and also disbelieve in love at first sight.

Yes, I agree and I would actually go a lot further than that. I believe true love means loving the very core of a person. Their actions, behaviour and looks (and I also believe their feelings for you) are secondary. Love isn't necessarily everlasting but the core of a person is unlikely to change. I would only fall out of love with someone if they did something that fundamentally changed my attitude towards them, e.g. abuse, rape, murder... Anything else (including for example becoming addicted to drugs or being unfaithful) I would argue would not affect the very core of who they are and would therefore not change my feelings for them.

I realise that this is a very strict and rather extreme definition of love and that most people would disagree with me. I've never experienced "normal", healthy love - i.e. something that is more intense than a crush but that you can get over within a few months, that doesn't result in suicidal thoughts and years of heartache. I've only ever experienced the very intense kind described above.

(I wrote this before reading Lysander Stark's post. I guess my idea of love it the outdated, Shakespearean kind that has no place in the modern world.)

I'd regard a crush as a mini-obsession. And unrequited love as full blown obsession.
I don't think unrequited love and obsession are necessarily the same thing. I also believe that unrequited love is something that you can get used to and learn to live with. I was obsessed about my ex-boyfriend for years but I managed to deal with it. I no longer think about him constantly and I don't feel the need to see him on a regular basis. Last year I considered moving to Scotland, which would have meant never seeing him again but that was never an issue. However I do still love him and I don't think that will ever change. Why should it? He's still the same person I fell in love with. He's been kinder to me than anyone else and he's the most wonderful person I've ever met. The break-up was extremely painful and it took me about three years to learn to deal with it. Since then I've been able to overcome all the negative emotions - obsession, despair, resentment, guilt, the need for closure - and now all I'm left with is love. It's pure and positive and bloody marvellous. Like a drug but without the side effects.
 
 
Mourne Kransky
10:14 / 06.03.06
 
 
elene
10:32 / 06.03.06
... A is aroused by B'a arousal by A's arousal by B.

... and so on.

So how do people fall out of love?

How do lovers not collapse into a singularity of infinite loveiness, rather?

I think love definitely either progresses with time through various of modes, or degrees, or depths, or whatever, or it will be discarded. It's more like a plant growing than like the moon rotating about the earth. For my part, at the start of a relationship I'm all, "ummh, well, do I love him, he isn't really what I had in mind ... no, he doesn't really love me, ... oh, he can't be serious, can he!?" and I'm usually right, too! It's certainly never started all fully formed and infinitely nurturing in my experience.

You know, imaginary mice, all those negative emotions - obsession, despair, resentment, guilt, the need for closure - you know they're all directed at you? I mean, you had a relationship with this man, but now it's unrequited love? I'd hate him (I really would), at least for a while.
 
 
enrieb
10:49 / 06.03.06
A is aroused by B.
B is aroused by A.
A is aroused by B's arousal by A.
B is aroused by A's arousal by B.
A is aroused by B'a arousal by A's arousal by B.

... and so on.

So how do people fall out of love?


A is aroused by B.
B is no longer aroused by A.
A is nolonger aroused by B's arousal by A.
B is nolonger aroused by A's non arousal by B.
A is not aroused by B'a non arousal by A's non arousal by B.

... and so on.

I got a bit confused with my working out, AB falling out of love, may not be fully accurate.

I also wonder what effect C would have on A and Bs relationship?
 
 
elene
10:54 / 06.03.06
Is C that naughty badger (Xoc's cute friend), enrieb?
 
 
Ninjas make great pets
10:56 / 06.03.06
I'd have to agree with an earlier poster. how - in having felt both at some stage - can you confuse love and crush?!

I've had love and desire and crush and desire. Crush can become love quite easily (and sneakily) but it's fairly easy to feel which is which if you are honest with yourself.

I think I've found that when you crush on someone you want to be near them and spend all your time on them. hang-on.. Let me rework this line of thought. Right.

Crush - external. It's all about them and how wonderful they are.
Love - Internal and external. It's about how wonderful they are and how much of a greater person you want to be because you see your potential in their eyes. (this should hopefully be true for your partner too).

a little sappy and simple but thats how I see it.

Love can be easy and hard, painful and sweet, and bloody worth it when it goes both ways.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
12:54 / 06.03.06
while I also like elene's post (and especially like the definition link), I don't think it's helping with Seth's question, as I'm reading things. Seth is asking if what ze is feeling for a person is love or a crush. Elene says that if there is no mutual relationship then it is, by definition, a crush. Seth says if it is a crush and not love then the relationship will be bad and ze will not ask the object out. Therefore Seth will never ask anyone out ever. *as I'm reading things*.
It definitely seems to me that these definitions aren't matching up.

Actually I think I like every definition of love I've seen here despite some seeming mutual exclusion. Anyway I've always gone with the idea that a crush is more selfish than love: if you crush on someone you want to be with them and be loved by them, period. If you love someone you want what's best for them, even if that means Not You. So if what you're feeling is love you should be less inclined to go through their garbage/emails or follow them around town in a disguise to see who they might be dating that isn't you. Etc. You might be miserable without them but seeing that badger C is making them smile, makes you smile.

...probably a totally disfunctional definition. Honestly, going by my track record I'm the last person anyone would want romantic advice from.
 
 
Baobab Branches and Plastic
12:55 / 06.03.06
'Love is a fog that burns away' - Bukowski

I have no fucking idea and have serious doubts about any statement that seeks to codify what love is. It could be that a crush is something deemed lesser... i.e. a statement of love that was never requited, or was easily walked away from. In which case, at best I think calling something a crush is basically just a slightly developed sense of attraction, at worst its a defense mechanism.

The argument that love is external and a crush internal: or that love is social and a crush personal is frankly preposterous. love comes a person therefore has to have a personal internal component even if it is shared with someone, codified it as 'Love', and becomes a socially recognised form that others and each other acknowledges.

I must add that all the above is coming not from a wise distance but from a fevered heart hopelessly besotted with a partner whom I believe to be the most wonderful person on the planet. My overriding internal panic over 'what is this thing that happened to us' is based on a near obsession with the person (which probably isn't that healthy) and that we're both seemingly similarly afflicted.

It could be that in some sick Freudian way we've basically found someone that acts as a mirror for our own frustrated emotional egos and so have an intense mutual crush.

But of course were I too write this in their presence I would say that my loving appreciation of their godlike being commends elevation from Samsara and into some timeless blissful void of union and individual transcendence. Pretty turgid and nauseating stuff I agree, but we're still gazing into each others eyes and being a embarassment to all our friends.

In the end and by means of dragging myself back on topic after this indulgent emotional tangent I would say simply: a crush you can reason with, love defies both logic and sane expression.
 
 
Ninjas make great pets
12:56 / 06.03.06
umm. actually.

would I be thread-jacking if I asked how to find the solution to a love/crush situation?

Say someone had fallen in love with you whilst you went out with them (you were on the re-bound) and now (some time later) you don't know if your 'in-love' with them because they are still kinda the re-bound guy in your head. definatly love them to bits cause they're great.. but 'in-love'? dunno..

What do you do?
 
 
Baobab Branches and Plastic
13:04 / 06.03.06
Love can be easy and hard, painful and sweet, and bloody worth it when it goes both ways.

You, eater of the Sweet and Sour love cake, you! *insert beavis and butthead grunted chortles here*
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
13:07 / 06.03.06
Xoc- love between badgers is ALWAYS pure, noble and spiritual. They don't have crushes. You of all people should know that.
 
 
Baobab Branches and Plastic
13:12 / 06.03.06
Xoc- love between badgers is ALWAYS pure, noble and spiritual. They don't have crushes. You of all people should know that.

As is raw animal sex!

therefore: crushes are pure, noble and spiritual QED
 
 
elene
13:55 / 06.03.06
You might be miserable without them but seeing that badger C is making them smile, makes you smile.

That made me gasp. Wow, you're such a sweet, gentle person! I ought to be like that too, but I'm not.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
14:06 / 06.03.06
Wow, you're such a sweet, gentle person!

yeah, well. finding out that B was dating C despite "not looking for anything romantic right now" did not in fact make me smile, but rather made me feel as though I'd been kicked in the stomach, which was a big clue that my feelings are not as selfless as I'd imagined. So B's probably better off with the badger than with me anyway.

Actually I do remember thinking "gee, wish B's date had gone better" upon hearing that it had included some difficulty. Maybe I'm not all bad.

Still, the whole "I want you to be happy even if it's without me" thing is probably more of an ideal than a realizable (sp?) goal. Many shades of degree between crush and love, no binary seperation?
 
  

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