Auntie SparkNotes: How Can You Tell if You Have a Crush?

Dear Auntie,

I am a sophomore female who is utterly confused by crushes. By which I mean I’m not sure I’ve ever had one. I have no problem with the idea of having a relationship, in fact, I really want one someday (with HND? my hormones say yes please) and am sure that one day I will find a nice boy/girl and fall in love, but…

Well, therein lies the problem. How am I supposed to know if I am gay or straight if I don’t even know what attraction feels like? When I see celebrities and models (in pictures, not in real life, of course), I don’t feel anything 99% of the time. There have people I think I may have had a crush on, but the attraction was so fleeting that I doubt it. In my own brain I peg myself as “probably bisexual, but needs more evidence.” I’m young, I know, but don’t you think that most incoming juniors (which I will be soon) will have had crushes, if not relationships? In my mom’s opinion, I am too caught up in my own angst and self-harm (yes, I have a therapist, yes, she thinks I’m better, no, I don’t feel any better) to see other people in that way, but I call BS on that theory.

Recently (as in, this week) I have discovered that a particular androgynous girl has a smile that…well, gives me butterflies, if that’s not too cliche. I don’t even know her name, so needless to say this is all very new to me, and may not be a crush, but it did get me thinking. I am completely fine with the prospect of me not being straight, have totally accepted it. In fact, I’m worried about the opposite problem. I don’t really have friends, at least in school, but most of the females I’m around are gay, bisexual, or wishing that they were because straight people are just so uncool.

It’s not really about my maybe-gayness–it’s about the crushes. I am wondering if I could have convinced myself that I’ve been having crushes, because I’m starting think I’m a space alien who can’t have crushes. For the past year or so, I tried to figure out this whole orientation business by doing what I think for many comes naturally—looking at the females at my school like a creeper, and trying to determine who I find attractive. And lo and behold, after who knows how many almost imperceptible attractions and crushes, I might actually have a crush on a real actual girl.

Is it a coincidence? I haven’t done this creepy ogling with boys, should I make an attempt to? Do I like smiling androgynous girl? She smiles back; does she like me? Should I try to flirt with her more? Am I gay? Is it too early to tell?

I honestly, seriously want a loving relationship, so I clearly have some romantic feelings in me. Do people fall in love without having crushes? Do all people find celebrities attractive?

And, most importantly:
How can you tell if you have a crush or feel attraction?

Well, let’s see. According to my reference materials, the first sign of crush or attraction is a fever, along with sweating and muscle pain. As the crush progresses, you’ll experience gastrointestinal symptoms like nausea or diarrhea. And when it’s full-blown, you’ll start hemorrhaging blood from various orifices as all your internal organs start to liquefy into a sort of sludge-like…

Hey, wait a second. This isn’t a description of what crushes feel like! It’s an informational pamphlet about the hanta virus!

But all joking aside, and even if there were a handy pamphlet available for your purposes (“How to Tell if You Have a Crush or Just Bad Gas”) I must tell you, Sparkler, that I wouldn’t give it to you. Because the last thing you need is to keep analyzing the every stirring of your heart in an attempt to distinguish a crush from an attraction, or an attraction from a nascent ebola infection. You are thinking this to death. It’s time to stop, and just let yourself feel.

Or in other words: Are you gay or bi? Is the androgyne with the cute smile your first certifiable crush-with-a-capital-C? Is that feeling in your stomach attraction, or interest, or the urgent rumblings of that burrito you just ate for lunch? The answer is that it does not matter, and that it’s just not necessary to define your feelings in order to acknowledge them and follow them wherever it is that they’re going. And since you find all the crush-related labeling utterly confusing and unhelpful, trying to do so is a particular waste of time that would be better spent actually living your life. In fact, starting now, I’d like you to start making all your relationship-related decisions on Caveman Mode.

HOW GIRL WITH SMILE MAKE FEEL?
GOOD?
GOOD.
TALK TO GIRL. SEE WHAT HAPPEN.
IF TALK GOOD, MAYBE NEXT STEP PIZZA.

Because who gives a rat’s patoot whether other people get pantsfeelings about celebrities, etc., when you could be getting to know an interesting person over a delicious meal?

SIDE NOTE: For the sake of curiosity, the answer to your question is no, not everyone finds celebrities attractive—and even for those that do, there’s still a discrete and important difference between finding a celebrity attractive and being attracted to celebrities. You don’t have to feel any particular way about Sam Heughan, for example, to appreciate the aesthetics of a moment like this.

And look: Is it too early to know if you’re gay? Well, yeah. Of course it is—not because nobody can know their orientation at your age, but because your orientation is still a mystery to you, personally, which makes it too early to know if you’re gay, or straight, or bi, or exclusively attracted to men who look like labradoodles. That pleasant, twisty feeling you get from your androgynous maybe-crush could be evidence that you like girls that way; it could also be a blip on your radar that’s unique to this one particular person. (As someone who used to occasionally crush on cute lesbians but is now 100% married to a dude, I can tell you that the road to understanding your sexual identity is not always a straight line.) (Pun intended.) (Ow, stop hitting me.)

But this is why it’s high time that you stop peering into your own bellybutton and fretting over what you don’t know, and start working with the information you already have. There is a person right in front of you who makes you feel something interesting, even if you’re not sure what to call it—and if she’s smiling back at you, there’s a good chance that you make her feel something interesting, too! You don’t need to tag and catalog your emotions to see if they lead anywhere; you might even have a much better time if you don’t.

And I promise, darling, that you will eventually come to a point of comfortable, confident understanding when it comes to your orientation, and that you have many rewarding and wonderful relationships in your future. People who are open to love, as you are, do not struggle to find it. But if it’s really important to you that get there sooner rather than later, that’s one more argument for getting out of your own head, letting your heart take the lead, and allowing experience to reveal to you what all the overthinking and analysis in the world never will. Because when it comes to knowing yourself, living is the best teacher there is.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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