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I’m besotted with a woman at work and it’s tearing me apart. She’s smart, sexy, funny, absolutely gorgeous – and way, way out of my league (as well as being a few years older than me). I have to build myself up in the lifts before getting out on our floor, just in case she’s already there or I see her and start blushing like an absolute idiot. I have to take deep, calm breaths whenever I walk to make myself a coffee, so that I don’t fall apart if she happens to be in the kitchen at the same time as me. I can’t even talk to her. I just go mute and stupid and forget my own name. Her effect on me is obliterating.
I feel like a schoolboy and it must be completely obvious – I go to pieces whenever she brushes past me. One mate at work said she’s single and I should just ask her out, but the thought of her finding out how I feel about her is horrific to me. I would die. I don’t know why people enjoy having crushes – this honestly feels like torture. Please help.
In Agony
Dear Agony,
“My love is as a fever, longing still.” Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147 – one that has always struck me as perfectly encapsulating the horror and despair associated with unrequited love (or lust).
The pain of longing for someone who has no idea of your strength of feeling for them – or who doesn’t feel the same way in return – has the power to make us completely miserable. It can feel like sickness, a disease, something you want “rid” of.
Obsessing over someone can render us sleepless, endlessly ruminating about what’s been said (or unsaid), analysing every glance. We become body language experts of our beloved. It’s hellish. No wonder the English poet and playwright Samuel Daniel, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, also wrote: “Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing” … and “love is a torment of the mind, a tempest everlasting”.
Why do we feel so sick and self-loathing? I think it’s because we’re searching for the illusion of being perfectly in control, at all times. We hate to admit we could be so easily derailed, so distracted, so dependent. We feel like fools.
Crushes make us feel both elated and terrible for precisely that reason – we become angry at ourselves for being so weak and so smitten. We see it as a failing. As immature (which is probably why you reach for the term “schoolboy”). We speak to ourselves cruelly. And that’s where I think you need to be careful.
I’m concerned by the way you demonise yourself for doing absolutely nothing wrong. You say you’re “stupid” and an idiot, describe this woman as being so far “out of your league” that you’re… what, like a worm?
You are no worm! You are a flesh and blood human being of passion and of feeling. It’s courageous to say out loud – to me, to a friend, to yourself – that you fancy someone. Admitting how we feel makes us vulnerable. It feels precarious and full of risk. But there’s so much beauty in it. When you say you have a “crush” what you’re really saying is: “I’m alive.” And my God, how glorious it is to feel so alive. How much better it is, in the end, to feel this angst and adrenaline, the pain and the excitement and the thunderous giddy thrill than to be deadened and cynical and shut off and immune to everything – even joy.
But I do want you to remember that when we “crush” on someone we often tend to put them on a pedestal. This woman may be all of the things you say she is – sexy, funny, smart – and more, but she’s still a person. She has her own insecurities, traumas and anxieties. She’s not immune to avoidance, attachment issues or self-esteem problems. No-one is. She may even have felt exactly as you feel now.
Does that mean you should ask her out? Unless there are HR rules around office relationships or an uneven power dynamic (if she’s your boss, or you are hers), I’m usually a fan of the “why the hell not” approach – especially if you keep it light (a coffee, a walk). You could slip her a note at her desk if asking face to face is too intense; you could be honest and tell her you’re shy but that you’d love to get to know her. You could also say there’s absolutely no pressure, but that you think she’s great and you’d kick yourself for not giving it a shot.
At best, she will say “yes” and then you’ll have the chance to see that she’s human, after all, just like you. And if it’s not romantic, you may have found a friend. Either way, your nerves and sickness will decrease.
At worst, she’ll thank you kindly, say no and you’ll feel horrendous – for a while (and if she reacts more negatively than that, then it will still help you get over this obsession – because nobody wants to date someone who’d be so cruel. It will help pop the bubble).
Later on, I think you’ll see this whole experience for what it is: a gift. You’ll have made her feel good about herself, which is worth it when you think so much of her to begin with – and you’ll have opened the door to something rare and precious: hope.
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