DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So I am having problems with a friend. They are really close to me, almost like a brother. But lately they’ve been getting on my nerves as well as everyone else in the friend group. The thing is that he has a crush on one of our friends who doesn’t feel the same way but refuses to believe they don’t like him back because of the way they worded their text that they sent to tell him they don’t see him that way. It was fine for the first few months but it’s been getting worse.
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At first it was just collecting photos of them on their phone. Then they made phone and watch wallpapers. They’ve even started wearing their crush’s favorite color and buying their crush’s cologne.
But since school got out they’ve gotten really “snippy” about anything. They snap at anyone and everyone and everyone is getting tired of it. At first we thought that it was because their sister-in-law was 9 months pregnant, even when she was overdue. But when it continued after the baby was born I told them that I know that their attitude wasn’t because of the baby. So they confessed to me it’s because they haven’t been able to hang around his crush at all since school let out. Everyone is tired of this attitude. I talked to another friend and said that their crush should tell my friend straight out that they don’t like them like that but my friend said that their crush tries to be too nice about it because they don’t want to be mean. What do I do?
Sincerely,
Over the Obsession
DEAR OVER THE OBSESSION: Inconvenient crushes are bad enough when either you’re the one with the crush or the one being crushed on. Those crushes become infinitely more frustrating when the person with the crush decides to go ahead and make it everyone’s problem.
Fortunately, this obsessive crush is the “makes someone really annoying to be around” kind, not the “I’m going to find you’ve been stealing their hair from the salon to make a shrine” kind. As frustrating as your friend is being, it’s the sort of behavior that’s mostly just embarrassing and cringe-y, and it can be important to keep that in perspective.
So what’s going on here is that your friend is dealing with what’s known as “limerence”. Limerence is a type of crush or infatuation that’s defined by its obsessive nature – there are frequent, even constant intrusive thoughts about the other person, the way that those feelings get in the way of their everyday life and responsibilities and how everything eventually gets brought back around to the sufferer’s feelings about the person they’re crushing on. Everything reminds them about their crush in some way, shape or form. The clouds look like their crush’s face, the scent on the wind smells like them, the song that came up on Spotify is all about them, etc. And it all comes down to the near-obsession with trying to get together with their crush. Which is actually part of the problem.
One of the hallmarks of limerence is the way it f--ks with people’s emotional stability. The limerent’s mood seems to be almost entirely dependent on how things are going with their crush. If they feel that things are going well, they’re happy, even euphoric. When things are perceived as going badly, they become moody, depressed or even waspish, lashing out at the people around them in their frustration. The lows tend to come a lot faster and harder because, frankly, someone dealing with limerence is almost always dealing with a one-sided attraction; the person being crushed on often may be unaware or deliberately tries to avoid addressing the topic.
This is actually pretty common when both parties are young, especially when they both are in the same friend group. A lot of time, the person being crushed on often doesn’t want to say anything because of (understandable) fears that addressing the issue directly might cause tension among their friends. The problem, however, is that trying to ignore the problem or pretend it’s not happening doesn’t actually fix anything. And that’s part of why things have gotten so frustrating for you and your friends.
Here’s the thing with your obsessive friend: his crush isn’t doing anybody any favors by trying to be nice or being worried about being mean. The fact of the matter is that being “mean” in this case is actually going to be the kindest option possible. Trying to ignore his crush or soft-pedal any rejection is only going to make sure that he’s going to keep obsessing. If anything, the absence of a firm and direct “no, it’s never happening, please stop” is going to encourage him to keep holding on to his crush. Much like someone who thinks they’re stuck in “the Friend Zone”, they’re going to be looking for reasons why their case isn’t hopeless and all they have to do is hang on a little longer.
Limerence turns people into amateur oracles and haruspices, looking for signs in everything they see, no matter how obscure or absurd. They will dig deep into the guts of every glance, vocal intonation, precise word choice or song lyric in order to divine meaning, intent and – most of all – hope. If there is the slightest crumb of interest, an atom of change, then they will latch onto that like a lovesick lamprey and clamp down for all they’re worth, resisting reality’s attempts to dislodge them. It doesn’t matter how obvious the crush’s lack of interest may be in the macro; they’ll focus like a laser on the teeniest tiniest particle that they can interpret as telling them that they’re getting closer.
This also means that none of you all are going to be able to shake him out of this. It’s almost trivially easy to invent reasons why you’re all wrong about how his crush feels about him. It doesn’t matter how absurd the reasoning is, because this is not about reality, it’s about what he wants to believe. Motivated reasoning is a motherf--ker, and your buddy has all the motivation in the world to interfere with his reasoning. As long as he can ignore the signs to the contrary, he can hold onto the dream that she’s eventually going to return his feelings.
So, as much as his crush may want to avoid the confrontation, she’s really the only person who can smack some sense into him. She’s going to have to tell him, straight up, in as simple and direct terms as possible that this is never going to happen. It needs to be simple and as straight forward as it can, with absolutely no softening of the blow. Any sort of verbal softener or qualifier is only going to be exploited like the devil revealing a loophole in a contract. This is why she needs to be blunt almost to the point of rudeness. Anything else will fit too easily into his desire to find wiggle room. If she says “I’m not interested in dating right now”, he’s going to focus on the “right now”. If she tells him “not in a million years”, he’s going to respond with “so you’re saying there’s a chance…”
Her telling him needs to be like a knife: short, sharp and strictly to the point. She doesn’t like him like that. She’s never liked him like that. She’s not going to like him like that. And if he doesn’t actually get over his crush on her, she’s not going to be able to be around him, be his friend or otherwise be part of his life. It’s going to be hard – nobody likes having to put things in such cold, blunt, binary terms, especially to a friend who’s only real offense is to be handling his feels poorly – but it’s necessary. Without the splash of ice-cold reality to the face, his limerence is going to linger until it fades on its own, which can take months or even years in some cases. And until it does, he’s going to continue making it everybody’s problem.
(Ask me how I know. Go on, ask…)
Now one thing to keep in mind is that while his crush needs to be cold and blunt in her refusal, that doesn’t mean that you all should be cold and blunt to him, especially afterwards. This refusal is going to hurt, a lot. Part of what’s going to help him recover from that pain, not to mention getting past it and to the point where it becomes a rueful, slightly embarrassing “God I was such a f--king dork” memory, is going to be the love of his friends. You all don’t need to reassure him that there’ll be someone else eventually or any of the usual post-rejection/post-break-up cliches, just reminders that he’s loved and cared for. That means not saying “we told you so” or getting on his case for being so annoying about his crush. It’ll be a lot better to say “Yeah, we agree, it absolutely sucks that someone doesn’t love you the way you wish they did. But you are loved, you are loveable and as much as it feels like this is going to hurt forever, we promise you that this is going to pass.”
He’s going to have a sad about it. Let him; this stage is rough, but it’s the emotional equivalent of hydrogen peroxide on a cut. This is ultimately about the pain of letting go of an impossible dream and realizing how much time you’ve lost chasing it. As he lets things go, he’ll reach acceptance that much sooner and hit the stage of being a little sad but also a little wiser and he can start to forgive himself for loving not wisely but too well. And with a little luck and newfound maturity, he and his (soon to be former) crush can go back to being friends and this will be an incident that you all will laugh fondly about in the future.
Good luck.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com