Advice: Dealing with Problematic Squish on Former Crush

[omitef]

Warning: Long, cringey story ahead. Knowing the background helps answer the question, but if you don't want to read it, that's also fine.

 

tl;dr: How do you deal with an unwanted squish?

 

 

 

 

Last year, I had a crush on a girl that I thought was cute, and quirky; I tried to talk to her more, and we ended up becoming friends pretty quickly, even though there were a couple of problematic differences between us:

• She was neurotypical, and wasn't very understanding when I brought up my mental health issues
• She came from a super Christian family (I know not all Christians are prejudiced against queer people, but a lot are)
• She was pretty uneducated about queer people, and sometimes made queerphobic remarks unintentionally

 

But at the time, I really wanted her to like me, so I avoided talking about my mental health and gender. Aside from the problematic differences, our personalities were pretty similar--we were both analytical, artistic, and awkward, and for awhile, I was pretty sure she did like me (I mean, she sent me poetry, blushed around me, fidgeted around me, laughed at my bad jokes, wrote me long emails every single day). After about a month of getting to know her, I asked her to prom, and she said yes, with no hesitation. 

 

Then, things started getting weird. A couple of weeks before prom, she started contacting me less and less. She wasn't as enthusiastic in conversation as she was with me, before, and all the nervousness from before was gone. Eventually, she told me that she couldn't come to prom with me, because her mother said that she shouldn't go to prom with someone, "unless it was multiple someones of her same grade, preferably ones who she considered friends." But she told me, "it would be cool if you were still there."

 

So then I went. And when I tried to talk to her, she didn't want to talk to me. And then she went to go dance with another guy, who she didn't even know. And then I left prom early.

 

She emailed me after prom, asking me how it went. I told her, civilly, that I had a terrible experience because she had basically been ignoring me. She apologized, saying that her mother "wanted her to go alone." At this point, I was seriously questioning exactly what her mother had told her, whether it had anything to with me being trans, how much she agreed with whatever her mother told her (if it was transphobic), and whether she was just using her mother as a made-up excuse to put an end to a budding romance she no longer wanted to deal with. I was furious. I felt like I couldn't trust her anymore. Later, when she asked me if we were still friends, I told her no, because I needed room to recover. And we left it at that, for about an year--until more weird things started happening.  

 

We tried to avoid contact with each other. But whenever we did have to interact, her entire face would go red. This kept happening for months, until I decided to confront her about it. I said that I "noticed she'd been anxious around me," tried to reassure her that I had gotten over what happened at prom, and offered to be friends with her again. At first, she was really enthusiastic about being friends with me, but then suddenly, she got really curt and asked me why I wanted to be friends all of a sudden. After some more discussion, we agreed that we should just work towards being stable acquaintances for now. And we did, successfully. When we talked, I was actually surprised to find out that she was much more open to talk about mental health, and more understanding about queer issues, than she was before. We still don't go out of the way to talk to each other, but we can talk without being as awkward, and sometimes, she'll bother to wave to me in the hallway.

 

This arrangement has been okay with me for awhile. Except recently, I think I'm starting to develop a frickin' squish on her. I know she's problematic, and I know we've had an awful history, except that's what makes her so interesting. I want to just talk to her more. But I'm worried, if I suddenly tried to talk to her more, I'd make things between us awkward again. 

 

What should I do? Should I try to talk to her more? Or should I just try to control my feelings so that they don't interfere with the stable acquaintanceship?

 

[Dodgypotato]

I need an answer to this as well! I'll add my story. x D

 

 

 

So.... I have this super duper awkward squish on a teacher... Creeped myself the hell out for ages before I knew what a squish was... I tend to admire pretty much any physics teacher because I love physics, and this one was really nice with me and helped me with a lot of shit so yeah... But now whenever I see him he seems to make a point at steadfastly ignoring me, not making eye contact, and only speaking to the person I'm with and never directly to me. If there's no one with me he'll ignore me completely... It really hurts... We used to be pretty damn close, and now I'm wondering if he was just pretending purely because it was his job to help me. He's must be a really good actor, though, because we used to joke around and all...

 

Anyway, yeah. Possible to get rid of unwanted squish? I need to know this as well.

 

I'm sorry you went through that, Omitef. Personally I think you should try and talk to her more, but try not to overdo it. Don't overwhelm her all of a sudden, and you should try not to give her the impression that you have a crush on her again. I have no idea why she acted that way, but you will probably have to get it out of her (why she did) before you're able to get close to her again.

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

Hmm, that's a tough situation there, but it sounds like a lot of the problem is springing from poor communication. Not only did she lie to you about prom, but you've withheld some of your feelings about her as well. I realize it would be very difficult, but setting aside some time with her to talk these things through might help remove all of the mystery behind it. If you feel scared or angry, it's probably best to admit that too, because she might be feeling the exact same thing. And when you admit to something, that makes it a lot easier for the other person to admit the same thing. "Oh, I've been pretty upset too because (insert truth here)".

 

However, you run the risk of scaring her off too. So, is it worth the gamble? You can either coast along in this tenuous relationship in which neither of you are getting what you really want. Or, you could roll the dice and one of two things happen. You lose her, and this tenuous stressful relationship. You learn the truth about each other and mend a healthy relationship together (whatever form that might take).

[omitef]

@Dodgypotato I knew a guy once, who noticed one of his students was having a crush on him; because of ethical reasons, he tried to distance himself from her to put an end to her feelings. Maybe your professor thinks you have a crush on him, and doesn't want to encourage any further development, because it would be unprofessional if he did.

 

Thanks for the advice. I think she should be pretty aware that I don't have a crush on her at this point. When we agreed on being acquaintances instead of friends, I told her that "I didn't expect much more" than an acquaintanceship. Thinking back to what I said, I'm not sure if trying to talk to her more now would make me look indecisive. 

 

And honestly, I feel like I don't really need to know exactly why she treated me poorly last year. When I was confronting her about feeling anxious around me, she told me that after prom, she kept beating herself up for the way she treated me. I know she's genuinely sorry about what happened, and that's enough for me to be able to make peace with what happened.

 

@Blue Phoenix Ace Yeah, we've had a history of terrible communication, which both of us acknowledged during the confrontation about her being anxious around me. Neither of us are feeling upset over prom anymore. At the time, when we first started building an acquaintanceship, I feel like we were much more tense because of how long we had tried to be avoiding each other, but now that we've interacted with each other more, I feel like the tension has gone. If this is her comfort level, I don't want to push her boundaries and scare her off. But if I have to respect her boundaries at my own expense, by causing myself stress all the time because I find myself wanting more, that's not a healthy relationship. I'm going to ask a couple more people for advice before figuring out what I want to do. Thank you for helping me out.