Crushes are stupid (Rant)

[Aggrax]

My brain is dumb

So, I started going to a DBT group a little while back and I met some interesting people. One of them was a woman about my age that we will call K. One day, while sharing something, I offhandedly mentioned that I play Pathfinder. Turns out, she's also in to Roleplaying and wanted to start playing more Pathfinder. Another member of the group chimed in and said they would be interested in playing as well, so the end result is that K and I are going to be running a Pathfinder group. Since we were going to be doing this together, she gave me her number and we've texted a few times. She's a really cool person and I will fully admit to having a pretty big crush on her.

Now, I know that acting on this would be super inappropriate and honestly at this point in my life any kind of relationship is a bad idea. It's just super annoying that my brain keeps second guessing every single interaction I have with her.

[Prajnaparamita]

My brain is dumb

So, I started going to a DBT group a little while back and I met some interesting people. One of them was a woman about my age that we will call K. One day, while sharing something, I offhandedly mentioned that I play Pathfinder. Turns out, she's also in to Roleplaying and wanted to start playing more Pathfinder. Another member of the group chimed in and said they would be interested in playing as well, so the end result is that K and I are going to be running a Pathfinder group. Since we were going to be doing this together, she gave me her number and we've texted a few times. She's a really cool person and I will fully admit to having a pretty big crush on her.

Now, I know that acting on this would be super inappropriate and honestly at this point in my life any kind of relationship is a bad idea. It's just super annoying that my brain keeps second guessing every single interaction I have with her.

Aggarax, also keep in mind that the vast majority of DBT groups forbid you from dating other members of the group--I can't know for sure your group rules but I assume it's the same on that as well. (In fact mine goes so far as to forbid us from having friendships beyond the level of casual acquaintance with our other group members, which is harsh but I sorta get it, we're there to work and everyone needs to feel equal, and not like there are exclusive cliques or favoritism among members.) So you're not wrong by recognizing that acting on this crush would be inappropriate, but I would also hope that this isn't something that you beat yourself up about. K does sound like a cool person, who shares in your interests and it sounds like there really aren't a lot of people like that in your life at the moment, so it does make sense that you might end up latching onto with super intense crush feels for the first person in awhile like that who would come into your life. And you know what, that's okay! I've done the same thing myself often! So yeah, you're not alone in this, it's okay to have a crush, you seem to understand that this isn't a crush that really should be acted on and hopefully you can be kind to yourself and accepting of how you're feeling so you can eventually let it go.

[reboot]

Aggrax, crush feelings will fade with time. It sucks when it is happening, but they will pass. One thing you might want to do is closely examine your feelings for K. Is this sexual attraction and a romantic crush? Or are you having a rush of friendship/nonsexually attraction feelings because you are connecting with someone after feeling isolated for so long? If it is the second case, you are not having a crush, you are super excited about making a friend who happens to be a woman and finding a small group of "your people". It can be easy to mix up the two feelings if the person is of a gender you are attracted to sexually, but they really are two different beasts.

[Aggrax]

Aggarax, also keep in mind that the vast majority of DBT groups forbid you from dating other members of the group--I can't know for sure your group rules but I assume it's the same on that as well. (In fact mine goes so far as to forbid us from having friendships beyond the level of casual acquaintance with our other group members, which is harsh but I sorta get it, we're there to work and everyone needs to feel equal, and not like there are exclusive cliques or favoritism among members.) So you're not wrong by recognizing that acting on this crush would be inappropriate, but I would also hope that this isn't something that you beat yourself up about. K does sound like a cool person, who shares in your interests and it sounds like there really aren't a lot of people like that in your life at the moment, so it does make sense that you might end up latching onto with super intense crush feels for the first person in awhile like that who would come into your life. And you know what, that's okay! I've done the same thing myself often! So yeah, you're not alone in this, it's okay to have a crush, you seem to understand that this isn't a crush that really should be acted on and hopefully you can be kind to yourself and accepting of how you're feeling so you can eventually let it go.

I also pretty much assume it's the same. No one explicitly told me and I never explicitly asked, but that rule being in place just makes a lot of sense to me personally. And the fact that she is the only woman I know that shares a lot of my interests is definitely a factor. I want to try and keep calm and wait for this to fade, but I second guess myself a lot whenever I do things. Like, if I text her something I think she'll find funny, am I doing that as a friend or just because I have a crush? Am I acting obviously different around her or not? I know I'm probably over thinking it but that's just what comes to mind most often.

Aggrax, crush feelings will fade with time. It sucks when it is happening, but they will pass. One thing you might want to do is closely examine your feelings for K. Is this sexual attraction and a romantic crush? Or are you having a rush of friendship/nonsexually attraction feelings because you are connecting with someone after feeling isolated for so long? If it is the second case, you are not having a crush, you are super excited about making a friend who happens to be a woman and finding a small group of "your people". It can be easy to mix up the two feelings if the person is of a gender you are attracted to sexually, but they really are two different beasts.

That's definitely something to think about. I've never really had to explore that before because all the women I've had crushes on before either emphatically hated me, dropped out of my life right after I realized it or were so different from me once I got to know them that there hasn't ever really been any room for crossover between those two feelings.

[Werel]

I want to try and keep calm and wait for this to fade, but I second guess myself a lot whenever I do things. Like, if I text her something I think she'll find funny, am I doing that as a friend or just because I have a crush? Am I acting obviously different around her or not? I know I'm probably over thinking it but that's just what comes to mind most often.

Agh, that second-guessing your own motives is a tough part of waiting out a crush. A rule of thumb that might work for you is "would I be doing this if Person X were [gender I'm not attracted to]?" Would you be texting a new male acquaintance you really liked about something he might find funny?

IMO, asking yourself "am I acting different around her" too frequently will drive you nuts, because crushes send social paranoia and self-consciousness into overdrive. The answer your jerkbrain will give you is probably always going to be "yeah you're acting like a big obvious dummy!! YOU DUMMY!!" So focus on keeping calm, because anxiety is the thing that'll make you act noticeably different.

That's definitely something to think about. I've never really had to explore that before because all the women I've had crushes on before either emphatically hated me, dropped out of my life right after I realized it or were so different from me once I got to know them that there hasn't ever really been any room for crossover between those two feelings.

Did they emphatically hate you before you had a crush on them? And did they drop out of your life as a result of becoming aware of your feelings, or just through unrelated circumstances? If you're suspecting that things go sideways whenever you express your feelings (consciously or no), maybe there are ways to figure out what's happening and prevent it this time.

edit: Sorry, Aggrax, I just noticed that this is tagged [rant]-- feel free to ignore all the advicey stuff above and just have some ughhhhs of sympathy!

[Aggrax]

Agh, that second-guessing your own motives is a tough part of waiting out a crush. A rule of thumb that might work for you is "would I be doing this if Person X were [gender I'm not attracted to]?" Would you be texting a new male acquaintance you really liked about something he might find funny?

I want to say the answer is yes, but then I think that "of course you do, it easily resolves your problem."

IMO, asking yourself "am I acting different around her" too frequently will drive you nuts, because crushes send social paranoia and self-consciousness into overdrive. The answer your jerkbrain will give you is probably always going to be "yeah you're acting like a big obvious dummy!! YOU DUMMY!!" So focus on keeping calm, because anxiety is the thing that'll make you act noticeably different.

Well, I spent about 2 hours alone in a room with her yesterday as we set up the Pathfiner group and I don't think I came off as weird or anything? So yay I suppose?

Did they emphatically hate you before you had a crush on them? And did they drop out of your life as a result of becoming aware of your feelings, or just through unrelated circumstances? If you're suspecting that things go sideways whenever you express your feelings (consciously or no), maybe there are ways to figure out what's happening and prevent it this time.

edit: Sorry, Aggrax, I just noticed that this is tagged [rant]-- feel free to ignore all the advicey stuff above and just have some ughhhhs of sympathy!

No worries, advice is totally appreciated. I never told the ones that hated me that I had a crush on them and as far as I know they never found out. As for the one that left, I'm not really sure. It was a bit of a weird situation. I never outright told her I liked her, but I came pretty close, so I'm 90% sure she figured it out.

[Prajnaparamita]

I also pretty much assume it's the same. No one explicitly told me and I never explicitly asked, but that rule being in place just makes a lot of sense to me personally.

Wait wait wait a second, there isn't anything about not dating other group members in the group guidelines for you guys?! I'd be really shocked if that was the case, that's like therapy interfering behavior 101! Actually, have you been over the group guidelines yet? Did you enter in the middle of a module or something?

Sorry to go off into DBT talk here, it's just as someone who is in a DBT group as well, I'm really surprised expectations like that haven't been made clear to you--even though I entered in the middle of the distress tolerance unit, I still got an overview of the group guidelines from the woman who did my intake so I knew what was expected of me before I entered, and I'm really surprised that they wouldn't do that for you too.

[Aggrax]

Wait wait wait a second, there isn't anything about not dating other group members in the group guidelines for you guys?! I'd be really shocked if that was the case, that's like therapy interfering behavior 101! Actually, have you been over the group guidelines yet? Did you enter in the middle of a module or something?

Sorry to go off into DBT talk here, it's just as someone who is in a DBT group as well, I'm really surprised expectations like that haven't been made clear to you--even though I entered in the middle of the distress tolerance unit, I still got an overview of the group guidelines from the woman who did my intake so I knew what was expected of me before I entered, and I'm really surprised that they wouldn't do that for you too.

Yeah, I just kinda came in during the middle of a module and didn't go over any kind of guidelines or anything. Like I said before, it didn't come up when I was talking to my therapist and I just assumed it was a rule from the start.

[Robjection]

Probably best to verify it at some point though, because you know what they say about assuming; it makes an ass out of u and ming, and ming doesn't like it when people make an ass out of him.

[Aggrax]

Listen, Ming knows what they did and until I and the entire city of Debuke, Iowa get an apology I will continue the ass making.

*EDIT*
Seriously though, I'm not entirely sure how I would bring this issue up. I've been a part of the group for a while now and didn't have any questions before and I don't want to invite some awkward questions by asking "so hey, what's the policy on dating in the group?" or something like that. I'm not exactly the most subtle person around, so I don't think I could bring the idea up without it being obvious.

Another thing I'm currently worried about is if I am texting her to often. Like, in the past three days I've had two text conversations with her, partly because she always responds to me. Most of the time with other people I text they don't respond for a while or they just ignore the text entirely. I'm worried that she thinks I'll be upset if she doesn't respond so she texts back to be polite and then has to wait for an end point to the conversation to stop talking. I don't think there were any points that were obvious "okay I don't want to talk anymore" texts before the conversations seemed to end, but I'm not exactly super observant or good at reading these things.

[Aggrax]

Okay, so the group I'm in meets on Thursdays normally. Due to working a temp job last week, I wasn't able to attend, so the next time I'll be going is the 21st. I do go to the same building on Monday the 18th, but I don't know if the person leading the group would be available to answer any questions I have. I'm still not sure how to ask about this without making things awkward though.

I'm going to see if I can cut back on texting her, since I'm the one that's always starting conversations, so I worry she's just being polite and doesn't actually want to talk to me.

[Amygdala]

Okay, so the group I'm in meets on Thursdays normally. Due to working a temp job last week, I wasn't able to attend, so the next time I'll be going is the 21st. I do go to the same building on Monday the 18th, but I don't know if the person leading the group would be available to answer any questions I have. I'm still not sure how to ask about this without making things awkward though.

I'm going to see if I can cut back on texting her, since I'm the one that's always starting conversations, so I worry she's just being polite and doesn't actually want to talk to me.

Maybe not a bad idea. I always like a good, balanced back-and-forth in developing new relationships of any caliber. But who knows?

Have you found out anything new?

[Aggrax]

I have not. I still haven't figured out how to bring up the topic without things getting super awkward and given how long I've been in the group I don't really know how to bring them up.

We've talked quite a bit more through text, same as I would any other friend. I feel like the crush has faded quite a bit at this point, so I'm a lot less anxious about things.

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