So this is kind of a reply to Tristan’s earlier post on crushes. I wanted to talk about why it always feels like your crush is so amazing that they would never go for someone like you. I really related to his post because I too have a crush at the moment. I was also literally the same way with crushes for the past three years where I didn’t have any and then something changed, and I randomly had feelings for someone all of a sudden. I’d forgotten how to react to a crush and my first instinct was to tell her, which she thought was crazy, rightfully so. Whenever she texted me, I would get that feeling Tristan described Seeing her name pop up, always looking for that yellow blinking light indicating a snapchat message from her; it would fill me up with joy.
This feeling your crush gives you makes you think they’re your whole world because of how amazing it feels. It’s not almost like a drug, it is one. Infatuation causes your brain to release hormones that make you feel that way. Namely dopamine and oxytocin. Whenever you interact with that person you have a crush on, your brain produces those hormones and the effect is that amazing feeling you get. All of that is in you. That’s not them. They’re not making you happy. Your brain has set an internal reward for yourself to compel you to mate with the person you like. It’s biological, your mind instinctivly picks someone it considers a good mate and the dopamine reward is to compel you to go after them. But when we think about our crush, we attribute that reward our own brain gives us to something that our crush gives us, and it leads us to think much higher of our crush than they really are.
The problem with this is they aren’t that amazing of a person. Most likely, they’re just a normal person like you or me, or they might even be a shitty person (our instincts aren’t always the best). But since our brain makes us feel amazing when we’re with them, we think THEY’RE the one who makes us feel that way. Sure there might be certain things about that person you may like, but a classic symptom of a crush is ignoring their flaws and creating an unrealistic image of how amazing they are based off of how amazing they make you feel. Surely someone who makes you feel amazing must also be amazing, right? Wrong. Your body is what makes you feel amazing around them. They actually have next to nothing to do with it.
It gets to the point where you think you’re not worth it and they would never go for someone like you. Someone as amazing as them, they would laugh at how ridiculous it would be.
But that’s just SO WRONG. If I had one wish it would be for people to realize their own self worth. We think so highly of others, but we never realize how awesome we ourselves are. And now I know you’re thinking, no I’m not, but that’s a fallacy because you actually are. Because the person you think the highest of over anyone, it could be someone famous, it could even be the President, I guarantee you, heck I will bet actual money that at one point they thought “I’m not good enough to be with that person” about someone else. Someone you might even think they’re a million times better than. But in their head, their brain rewarded them with dopamine for interacting with their crush and they ended up giving all the credit to that crush.
We all think that we’re not good enough, but it’s not because they’re out of your league, it’s because your brain puts them up on a pedestal equal to how awesome your brain makes you feel about them. But that’s not something any human can ever be. Nobody’s perfect, especially not your crush. So the next time you think you’re not good enough, just remember that’s just your brain playing a trick on you. You are good enough and they’re not better than you. You’re the awesome one. Thank your own brain for making you feel awesome, not your crush.
And that’s what’s in my head, thanks for reading! 😀