Feeling yourself falling for someone new might be fun at first, but it’s only a matter of time before the butterflies in your stomach start getting squished. Developing feelings for a new person has its happy moments, but you also have to deal with these truly sucky parts too:
- You forget how to act like a normal human. Why is your face turning bright red just because he said hello to you? What the hell was that high-pitched giggle that came out of your mouth when he said that dumb joke? Was that word salad that just tumbled off your tongue REALLY supposed to be an actual sentence? Of course the moment you need to look and act like a sexy vixen to woo your crush, your body decides that it would be much better to de-evolve by a million years.
- You get irrationally jealous over everything. He’s probably — no, definitely that girl standing five feet away from him in that group photo from 2012. Also that girl who waved to him in the library yesterday. Also, that girl who told him “bless you” when he sneezed. Crushes bring out a special type of crazy in people who may or may not be jealous to begin with, regardless of the fact that we have no right to lay claim to a person we aren’t even dating.
- The smallest things make you elated… He smiled at you and the angels started singing. He texted you first and the heavens themselves opened up to cast their light down upon you. He hugged you and the shirt you were wearing became more sacred than holy water. Before, it took at least good pizza and a new Game of Thrones episode to make your day. Now, all it takes is ~him~. Congrats! You’ve finally turned into that rom-com stereotype you’ve always hated.
- But they also devastate you. When he laughed at your joke, his eyes didn’t crinkle in the corners, and you’ve seen enough detective shows to know that it was therefore a FAKE laugh. The world crumbles beneath your feet. Your heart shatters into a million pieces. You resolve never to tell a joke again as long as you live.
- You become paranoid about your own behavior. You realize you’re so nervous around him that you keep breaking eye contact, so you try to look him in the eye more when you talk to him. But then you feel like you’re just staring at him too much, so you break eye contact again. But then you’re worried that he’ll notice that you keep switching between solid eye contact and looking away, so you’re not sure what to do with your eyes and begin to loathe in-person interaction as a whole.
- You overanalyze everything he does. He offered you a stick of gum, which means that he wants your breath to be nice and fresh when you guys inevitably make out later. But he also could have meant that your breath has been killing him and that your decision to accept the gum is the only thing that saved him from running away from you. There’s no way he offered it to you just because he’s nice. That would be crazy.
- You become blind to other romantic prospects. When your crush is serious, even a marriage proposal from a Chris Hemsworth lookalike wouldn’t be enough to catch your eye. On one hand, it’s kind of nice to only have your heart going crazy over one person, but on the other hand, you might end up ignoring a lot of really awesome (and sexy) people because you only have eyes for the person that still hasn’t responded to your text from two days ago.
- You turn into “that person” who’s always staring at their phone. You’re constantly waiting to hear from him, so you become a victim of the “phantom buzz” that happens when you think your phone is vibrating when it really isn’t. When someone — anyone — other than him messages you instead, you’re instantly filled with rage. How dare your loving grandmother toy with your emotions like that?! You might even start challenging yourself to hold off for EXACTLY thirty minutes before looking at your phone again, but that makes it even worse when you finally check again and haven’t heard anything from him. Ugh.
- You become a little bit of a stalker. You’re not exactly hiding in his bushes at 3 a.m., but you might not be above biking past his workplace on your way to get coffee just in case he happens to be walking out of the building when you pass by. Online, though, you really crank it up a notch. You’ve looked through his entire Instagram, decoded every single Facebook status he’s put up since you met, and only occasionally find yourself thinking about how creepy you’ve become.
- You feel like a hormonal teenager all the time. You haven’t been this boy-crazy since you were, like, sixteen. And yet, here you are, a bomb ready to explode in tears of either joy or sorrow depending on how things go with your crush today. You’ve worked hard to grow into the independent woman you are today, so finding yourself in this pit of emotional immaturity is insanely frustrating… but also kind of fun.
