On Women Crushes

Instagram is the perfect place to digitally keep tabs on men you find attractive and the women they’re currently sleeping with, because it plays out somewhat like a reality television show. Your crush is the protagonist. The person they’re sleeping with is the b-plot of this current season. Through stories and photos, you’re able to track the evolution of their relationship—from the first time they tag them as the photographer of a specific shot, to when they make it “Instagram official” with a cute selfie, to when the bottom falls out and the thirst traps start. It’s that real-time drama that I find totally addicting.

But, if I’m being perfectly honest with myself, as I’m wont to do in my writing, there was something a little more sinister behind my light Instagram stalking. Since I didn’t yet have the emotional intelligence yet to separate myself from my crush, I took every new flirtation with a girl as some kind of memorandum on me. In other words, I would obsessively compare myself to the women my crushes would date, and wonder why I couldn’t be more like them.

I can remember the first time I did this almost exactly. It was long before Instagram was invented. I was in high school, and I had a massive crush on this emo kid with lip gages and a total Warped Tour haircut. The problem was that he didn’t like me—no matter how many rubber bracelets from Hot Topic I layered on my wrist. He was dating another girl, with long, straight, dark hair and a penchant for vintage band t-shirts. They’d sit out by the smoker’s corner next to my school and make out between classes.

I couldn’t understand. What did this girl have that I didn’t? So, subtly, over time, I started mimicking some of the things I thought would make me more like her. I started straightening my hair. I picked up smoking—a habit I’ve, thankfully, quit. I tried to change myself into the type of woman I figured, by his example, that he’d want to date. It, of course, didn’t work. Once the two of them broke up, he didn’t come immediately running to me.

After that experience, you’d think that I’d learn that you couldn’t change yourself into a person your crush would want you to date. And I did, to an extent. When I’d meet a guy who I was interested in, and he would wind up dating someone else, I didn’t change the way I looked or acted as I got older. But the desire to compare still existed. So every time I’d see a new woman in my crush’s life, I’d instantly think “what does she have that I don’t?” I’d wonder what made her so desirable compared to me. And while this impulse faded as I matured, it would still pop up unexpectedly, the question acting like some kind of internet troll in my mind.

The last time this happened, though, there was a shift. One of the men I have a passing infatuation with starting spending time with a woman whom I’ve never met, but for reasons I won’t go into here, has always kind of bothered me. I couldn’t believe it: This dude who I’d been lusting after, flirting with, and making extended eye contact with (God, would you listen to me?) was choosing to be with this woman who I absolutely could not understand. It boggled my mind, and triggered my impulse to compare myself to her.

But something interesting happened. Since this was a woman who I never wanted to be like, because of what I’d experienced of her via her social media account, I found that I wasn’t comparing myself to her the way I would have someone else. Instead, I had a much more logical mindset about the whole situation. If this is the type of person he’s interested in, then I’m not sure he’s the type of man I want to be with, I thought to myself. I will never be like this woman. And that’s a good thing.

The second I allowed myself to think those thoughts, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. My crush no longer felt monumental. Instead it just felt like the conduit to a lesson that I had to learn.
Since then, I’ve been trying to adopt that mindset in all aspects of my life—not just my romantic life. It’s silly to compare myself to the women that my crushes date, because it’s an unrealistic and unproductive thought pattern to fall into. It sets yourself up for unhappiness down the road. Why should I change myself to become someone this other person would like? Shouldn’t I find someone who likes me just the way I am?

So I continue to work on not comparing myself to the women my crushes date. The mindless Instagram scrolling of those women, however? Still fair game, in my eyes.