How do you know?

Hello, people that might be reading.

I would just like to throw this question out there. How do you know if someone likes you or doesn’t like you?

Anyone?

So you have a crush….

So you have a crush on someone? That terrible, ecstatic feeling has grabbed a hold on you and you are suddenly not the same person anymore. Take heart, my friend, because we’ve all been there. That special someone walks into the room and our eyes seek him/her out immediately. All of a sudden you can’t find the right words to say and your normally cool facade slips away to reveal a stuttering, nervous fool while the person of your (latest) dreams seems oblivious.

I am nowhere near as aware of how I think and how I act as when I have a crush on someone. My head starts swirling around that person and I find myself imagining kisses, sex,vacations and even the ring on my finger when that other person just mentioned that we should have dinner. All of a sudden I feel as if nothing in my wardrobe is remotely good enough for a first date and I go off in search of something that looks good on me so that he will like me more.

But I’m also ridiculously hard and analytical towards their behaviour. I usually know quite quickly if someone is interested in me or not, just by looking at their behaviour and this is how you will know it too.

1. He makes an effort to get in touch with you. I don’t know about you guys but when I like someone I tend to do things to make them like me, like sending an email with a website they might like, a funny text message or find a reason to bring myself closer to him if he’s in the same room. I’ve noticed that when guys like me, they do the same thing. If that isn’t happening, your crush doesn’t have a crush.

2. She asks questions about your views and your life. When you have a crush on someone, you want to know how they think, what they are interested in, what they do. You do this to find out if you are a match, if he is interested in the same things as you are or if you can discover something new that will bring you closer into his world. Or to put it in a different way, when you have a crush on someone, you should want to peek into their world, give them a glimpse into yours, even trying to bring those two together. A person that doesn’t ask you questions about yourself, but rants on and on about her problems doesn’t have a crush on you as much as she has a crush on herself.

3. She will put herself in a better light for you. I’ll admit that this particular point is a double-edged sword which can go into lying about particular qualities (thank you, Barney in How I Met Your Mother). However, when your crush knows that you have a crush, but doesn’t feel the same way, they will slip some interesting points into the conversation that it might do well to listen to. Things like “I will never find true love” or “I’m too busy to have a normal relationship” aren’t your cues to say to yourself that it’s your job to change things. They are your cues to leave. If your crush has a crush on you they will either not say “I will never find true love” or they will say it, be immediately embarrassed and apologize in an adorable, flustered fashion. That’s it. Just think about when we say these things. We say them to ourselves or friends when we are feeling vulnerable and lonely, or when we want someone to back off a bit on the emotional front. “I will never find true love so please stop trying because I really don’t think about you like that” is one version. “I will never find true love but you can still be my girlfriend/boyfriend” is definitely not another. Would you want it to be? When we have a crush, we take care of our appearance, watch what we say and how we do things to appeal to the one we like. Messages like the ones above do not appeal to me because they tell me outright that I have been judged unimportant. Nice, huh??

4. He will do things to make you happy. Like making sure you are warm enough. Actually looking at the street salesman with flowers and turn to you with a question in his eyes. Asking you if you want water. A girl with a crush might venture into the kitchen and cook or bake just to make sure you know that she can. All the small things that tell you that the other person wants to take care of you in the same way you want to take care of them. If you find yourself being the only one spending money and time on your crush, and the only times you find yourself smiling during the day are when you are giving something to him, your crush doesn’t have a crush. So put your credit card away. Cancel the DVD. You deserve the same attention as you are giving and if that is not happening you need to get the message and move on.

5. He will notice little things about you. Like whether you like normal vs diet Coke. Or if you always take two steps back when you see a clown. Or if you like a certain type of beer to go with your Sunday football. A person with a crush notices these things because he will have a passion for knowing more about you and wants to become an expert. It’s the top-down approach to personality processing, i.e. liking the big picture (you) and wanting to know more about the smaller things (little things that you like). A person without a crush will not even notice that you changed your hair, let alone your reaction to clowns.

It’s strange that when a crush develops, our whole existence that before has pointed towards truth, beauty or simple money, all of a sudden evolves around one person. We classify everything according to interested-not interested scale, and all the other person’s actions gets interpreted according to YOUR feelings. Which is why it is hard to be objective about their behavior. Hopefully these 5 points will help guide you towards judging if your crush deserves more of your time.

Take care, friends.

Getting over him

As with any old thing, crushes and relationships wax and wane, start and end and leave a wake of experience in your heart. The feelings of sadness that are inevitably felt after such a passing should not be fought but accepted as a part of the process. After all, it’s okay to be sad over losing something that was a big part of your life for a while. Forcing it to come back, however, only ensures its even hastier departure.

But sadness isn’t the only emotion that we feel when getting over someone. To me, breaking up means going through the five stages of grief, as well as going through withdrawal symptoms after being hyped up on brain love chemicals for as long as you and your crush were together.

Here is how to spot them:

1. Denial; Thinking “This didn’t happen, I can fix it, he mustn’t be serious….etc”. This is the biggest, longest and hardest stage to get over, and it can last for weeks. This is the stage where getting back together seems only a matter of time and where couples often do get back together. Crying (at least for girls) and checking one’s phone seems mandatory as well as putting on nice clothes, nice make-up and seeing if that works to get some attention. I say this is the hardest stage to get over because there is no logic that can influence someone in denial, no soft spoken words to snap you out of the delusion of possible reunion and wishful thinking will fuel your days. Only time will fix it and the fact that the other person doesn’t want to return.

2. Anger: “How the f*** could he?” It depends on the person, but my anger stages are usually pretty short. Being angry takes up a lot of energy and the love you still feel will probably take some of the anger away. Also, anger will eventually lead to…

3. Bargaining: The “I will change” stage. I didn’t realize I had entered that stage until I found myself on a train after the second time I broke up with my ex and I realized that I had pushed my understanding and acceptance to the limits. I had been willing to bargain the things I wanted out of a relationship just to be with him. After that I of course found my way to:

4. Depression: We all know this stage. Just being sad and grieving. Getting drunk and comparing. But here your brain and your heart knows that getting back together is not possible any more. So you found your way towards healing and:

5. Acceptance: You stop fighting with yourself. Your day dreams stop having the element of making the other person regret leaving you. You stop yourself in those daydreams and think “This is an exercise in futility. The other person doesn’t love me, he/she has moved on and so should I.”

Denial, anger, negotiation and sadness can all blend together, creating a fantasy world where your previous crush is imagined to crawl back begging for forgiveness. If your crush is still contacting you, their behaviour can also be interpreted as reconciliation efforts during that process. Your heart is still in the game here and you will not want to let go. The best way to deal with this stage is to just allow yourself to fantasize your crush crawling back, while realizing that’s not where he is. Reality will always be different from your fantasy.

For me, having a broken heart has been the most difficult thing I’ve been through. I thought I was over it and then it knocked me down when I least expected it. These stages of grief blend, disperse into the corners of my heart and then knock me down when I’m doing something new. But I know I’ll be over it eventually. And the next relationship will be better because I will have experienced something beautiful and know how it should look like.

Take care friends.

No crush here, Facebook style

Bolstered by my recent readers (yay, fellow wordpress bloggers and friends) I figured I’d give out a little example of how easy it is to spot non-crush behavior.

Setting: You on Facebook on a Wednesday night.

You: Wow, there is the girl I like. Best to say hello.
        …..*poke* Hey!! How are you?

Her (10 minutes later): Hey. I’m fine. How are you?

You (10 seconds later): I’m ok. Did you see that thing that you are interested in and I’m not but saw and it made me think of you? Wasn’t it great?

Her (5 minutes later): Yeah, it was ok.

You (5 secs later): Ok

At the risk of underlining the obvious, a girl/guy that is interested in you would never leave you hanging like that for ten minutes. She’ll be just as eager to speak to you as you to her. So if you see that there is some serious time between your message and your crush’s response it’s time to find another crush.

The crush crash course!

Tomorrow is my birthday. This fact is nothing special, except this year that I’m saying goodbye to, i.e. my 31st one, is the one in which I got my heart broken for the first time. It happened a week ago on New year’s day, and I am of course still dealing with all the consequences of the break-up. But since it is my birthday tomorrow, I figured I would write the blog post that has been sitting in my heart, head and bones for more than a year and give it to the world. Because even though I am experiencing my first broken heart, I have had too many crushes to count, and in a similar vein, too many crush crashes. You know, the ones where you like a boy/girl and spend forever thinking that they like you back only to discover that the only reason they keep calling is because they need your help with updating their computer. So how do we know if we are not liked back? It’s actually pretty simple in my experience. So here they are, the few golden rules that I have learned and which I call: The Crush Crash Course.

1. A guy that likes you will let you know by texting, calling, want to buy you presents and  improve the quality of YOUR life (you know, like you want to do when you like someone). In a similar vein, a guy that does not like you  will not give two shakes and a tophat about that stuff. He might send you a text message here and there but you will not be on his mind. So be careful not to interpret these occasional text messages as genuine interest. This is something we all have a propensity (called confirmation bias) to do due to our psychological make up and can be easily avoided if you know how to handle it
2. He/she likes you if he/she makes an effort to get in touch with you. I don’t know about you guys but when I like someone I tend to do things to make them like me, like sending an email with a website they might like, a funny text message or find a reason to bring myself closer to him if he’s in the same room. I’ve noticed that when guys like me, they do the same thing. If that isn’t happening, your crush doesn’t have a crush.
3. He / she likes you if he/she asks questions about your views and your life. When you have a crush on someone, you want to know how they think, what they are interested in, what they do. You do this to find out if you are a match, if he/she is interested in the same things as you are or if you can discover something new that will bring you closer into his/her world. Or to put it in a different way, when you have a crush on someone, you should want to peek into their world, give them a glimpse into yours, even trying to bring those two together. A person that doesn’t ask you questions about yourself, but rants on and on about his/her problems doesn’t have a crush on you as much as he/she has a crush on himself/herself.
4. They will put themselves in a better light for you. I’ll admit that this particular point is a double-edged sword which can go into lying about particular qualities (thank you, Barney in How I Met Your Mother). However, when your crush knows that you have a crush, but doesn’t feel the same way, they will slip some interesting points into the conversation that it might do well to listen to. Things like “I will never find true love” or “I’m too busy to have a normal relationship” aren’t your cues to say to yourself that it’s your job to change things. They are your cues to leave. If your crush has a crush on you they will either not say “I will never find true love” or they will say it, be immediately embarrassed and apologize in an adorable, flustered fashion. That’s it. Just think about when we say these things. We say them to ourselves or friends when we are feeling vulnerable and lonely, or when we want someone to back off a bit on the emotional front. “I will never find true love so please stop trying because I really don’t think about you like that” is one version. “I will never find true love but you can still be my girlfriend/boyfriend” is definitely not another. Would you want it to be? When we have a crush, we take care of our appearance, watch what we say and how we do things to appeal to the one we like. Messages like the ones above do not appeal to me because they tell me outright that I have been judged unimportant. Nice, huh??
5. A guy/girl that likes you WILL try to get into your pants. There may be titillating moments, where your crush will lean into your personal space and look like he/she is about to kiss you, but nothing happens. Or they might wear something or do something that points towards serious interest but again, nothing happens. The “nothing-happens” part here is key. Because we all need to wear stuff, do stuff and occasionally we all need to lean into other people’s personal space irrespective of whether we like them just to communicate in a loud place. But if your crush has a crush on you, the “nothing-happens” will turn into “something-happened” pretty fast. If it doesn’t, then your crush doesn’t have a crush.

For better ideas it’s good to read He’s just not that into you by Liz Tuccillo and Greg Behrendt, which should have become a standard literature for dating situations in my view. But that book ignores the feelings that play such a pivotal part in a crush situation because ultimately we are not just rational creatures, but feeling ones.

A touch of magic

It makes me wonder….

I think that whether we know it or not, we are all looking for a touch of magic. That little remnant of sparkle, uncertainty and glitter that makes you believe again and carry on towards the extraordinary factor of life. Maybe that’s why we look for love for so long, because it gives us hope for the magic in life.

It makes me wonder where this impulse came from, this fascination and hope for something extraordinary. Did we evolve from being in a state of awe of everything around us, or is it just a need that comes after being pleasantly surprised once?

To thyself be true

To write, to find inspiration is not easy. But to find that you are willing, to set a time for yourself to place words on to paper (or the electronic version of it) is even more difficult.

Your life plagues you with dilemmas. You want to feel valued in the real world but your confidence fails you. You want to feel love from the people of your kind but you don’t know how to reach them. So your mind fills you with ideas but to deliver them is impossible. You are not yourself in this world, because who you are is not needed, and you don’t know if it is wanted at all.

My mind is filled with ideas. I want to tell the world how normal it is to feel afraid, to feel unsure about being yourself. But the good, and also the sad, thing is is that you are not alone, that there are other people that share your dreams and your wishes and you only need to find them. They will find you, love. Your true self can only be held back for so long and then it will break through.