If I had to label my approach to dating, it would be “chronic crushing.” Nothing makes me romanticise life quite like a crush. The frequency with which I form a crush probably deserves to be studied so let’s just say rose-tinted glasses are my favourite accessory. In school, I’d secretly hope for a cute boy in class just to motivate myself to show up. Every day at work, I quietly wish HR hires a charming co-worker—think along the lines of David Corenswet’s Clark Kent—to make long hours slightly more bearable. Then, there’s the airport crush, the kind where you lock eyes with someone at the check-in counter and secretly hope fate might just seat you side by side on the plane.
But don’t get me wrong, despite my tendencies to fantasise about love, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a relationship person. And, honestly, God forbid anyone tries to label me as male-centric. But there’s just something about having a crush that makes life feel so fuzzy. That begs the question: if having a boyfriend can feel a little embarrassing, why does having a crush feel so right? From the thrill of a crush to the reality of a boyfriend, where does it all go wrong and why does the magic seem to fade the moment things start getting real?
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Mira Yoon, psychotherapist at Annabelle Psychology, helped me make sense of why a crush feels so much more fun than being in an actual relationship. Yoon explained that “crushes activate the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine,” and that every imagined scene or tiny moment of attention “keeps that dopamine-driven reward loop going.”
The thrill of not knowing
Add to that, there’s a level of uncertainty in the process of crushing that makes you anticipate more. Does he think I’m cute too? Does he like me back? We ask these questions to ourselves, not because we want to know the answer, but because we want to savour the feeling of not knowing. Yoon explains: “Anticipation and uncertainty get the brain into a state of constant guessing, which keeps dopamine flowing.” According to Yoon, “the psychological effect of ‘maybe’ or ‘maybe not'” puts the brain into reward anticipation mode, which feels more exciting than the thing itself.
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Why we idealise our crushes
It’s not just the uncertainty that keeps the crush alive—it’s also the version of them that lives entirely in our imagination. Yoon explained that when we have crushes, we don’t really fall in love with the person themselves, but with what we imagine they could be. Apparently, idealisation is a defence mechanism, something the brain does when it notices one charming detail and decides to fill in the rest with pure imagination. According to Yoon, people “focus on positive traits while neglecting flaws” and then build the rest of the person out of hopes and aesthetic preferences. In other words, I’m not really in love with them at all. I’m in love with a carefully edited version of them that exists entirely in my head. Reality, of course, rarely shows up so obligingly, especially when reality thinks “wyd” counts as a conversation. I guess you could also extend this to why celebrities always seem so much more crush-worthy than anyone in real life. The truth is, they’re so far removed from your everyday reality that your brain has all the space it needs to obsess.
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Safety in fantasy
What’s the deal with fantasy? Why is our brain wired to think this way? Are we all just hopeless romantics, or did we read too much fanfiction growing up? The answer is simpler than it seems. Yoon explains that “fantasy provides an escape.” It lets us craft a world where everything goes our way, where emotional needs are met without hesitation and the possibility of getting hurt is removed. She also notes that fantasy often gives us “comfort, validation and excitement far more consistently than real relationships ever could.” Crushes live in the space between imagination and reality. They let us feel excitement and hope without pressure and they colour everyday moments with a quiet thrill. Even if nothing comes of them, they remind us that a little longing can make life feel more vivid.
So where do we go from here? Do we keep ourselves in an endless loop of crushes, even if it’s not exactly reality and maybe a little indulgent? Or do we reign ourselves in and settle for the bare minimum? Maybe the trick is to reframe all that daydreaming as a kind of manifesting. If we can imagine a love that feels flawless, doesn’t that mean it exists somewhere, waiting to be found? Or maybe the truth is simpler: crushing never really stops, and that’s part of the fun.
