There are many perfectly reasonable fixations at Brown: The campus turkey that always shows up just in time for finals, the endless supply of sugary cereal, the wildly cool professor who you are convinced might just be the smartest person in the world.
But then there’s the kind of obsession people won’t usually admit to others — at least not without nervously laughing and following up with a quick “but it’s not that serious.” It’s the obsession of a crush that has slowly and methodically colonized your mind until you are but a vessel for romantic delusion. It’s distracting, and usually a little humiliating. It’s also one of the most human experiences we might have.
A reader wrote to me recently with a question that felt uncomfortably universal: “I feel constantly preoccupied and quasi-obsessed about a crush, and I don’t know what to do. It feels like a lot of my life revolves around this feeling, and I feel like it’s seeping into being more harmful than hopeful. What should I do?”
Having a crush this intense doesn’t mean you’re unhinged or delusional. It’s actually tragically normal. If you’ve experienced these feelings, you aren’t the first, and you most certainly will not be the last. Your brain has decided that this person, for whatever likely evolutionary reason, deserves your complete attention. It’s also not your fault. Neuroscience is involved here, but we don’t have to get into that. Discussing your dopamine receptors is not helpful when you have no control over them.
Here is the honest thing I will tell you: Crushes can be fun, but they can also turn on you with scary speed and precision. What begins as a whimsical spark can morph into a bleary, intrusive hum that lurks behind every thought you have. You start designing your walking routes around the possibility of seeing them. You refresh their Instagram story like someone tracking a natural disaster. You convince yourself that their three-word text (“haha yea true”) is code for a love confession that simply hasn’t matured yet.
This is when a crush stops being a hobby and starts being a hazard. So what do you do once you’ve reached this phase?
You start by telling yourself the truth: That your crush is not a cure-all for the shapeless anxieties of your life. Being with your crush will not fix your GPA or your sleep schedule or your relationship with your roommate. It will not change the feeling that everyone else has their life together, while you routinely eat dinner at 10 p.m., standing up. It will not rescue you from the parts of young adulthood that are, by nature, confusing and uncomfortable and occasionally dramatic.
Sometimes, we become obsessed with our crush not because they are extraordinary, but because the fantasy is such an excellent escape from the rest of our lives. You get to imagine an alternate universe where your feelings make perfect sense, and the future unfolds just like your nine-year-old self imagined. Who wouldn’t want that? But these fantasies rarely live up to our hopes.
If your crush is consuming you to the point of harm, it might be time to perform a romantic reality check. The trick isn’t to “stop liking them,” because that advice has rarely worked for anyone. Instead, you need to widen your world and let your crush recede. Give your own life enough weight that your crush stops floating at the center of it. Focus on your friends, your routines and your personal joys instead of the possibility of being kissed in a frat basement.
Start small. Remind yourself of the people who already like you: your friends, your lab partner, your wildly cool professor. Do the things that make you feel most like yourself — not the self you imagine they would want, but the self who exists when you aren’t trying so hard.
If the obsession is fueled by uncertainty — and it often is — consider clarifying the situation. You don’t have to confess your feelings, but try observing their behavior with more neutrality. Are they actually giving you signs? Do they treat you differently than they treat others? Or are you filling in the blanks with hopes that, while sweet, are not necessarily grounded?
And unlike the acceptable obsessions, this kind of fixation feels far more private. Obsession feeds off the dark. The minute you bring it into the light of conversation, its power diminishes. So yes, tell someone you trust. Friends have a way of gently — or not so gently — bringing you back to reality. They remind you of timelines and patterns and the red flags you elegantly edited out of your fantasy. Being witnessed interrupts the illusion.
And if the signs are there — if there’s actual reciprocity — maybe it’s worth taking the leap and having an adult conversation. But if the signs are not there, or if your crush is doing more harm than good, I want you to remember something: Once the fantasy dissolves, reality has room to reassemble itself in gentler, more accurate ways. You start noticing the parts of your life that blurred while you were busy focusing on one face. You remember how good it feels to laugh with your friends without secretly hoping a specific someone walks by. You regain access to the full spectrum of your personality, not just the curated, “crush-friendly” version.
Of course, sometimes the crush doesn’t disappear. Sometimes the person becomes just another character in the ongoing sitcom that is your life. But the point was never to exile the feeling. The point is to stop letting it take over your mental real estate, and to remember that you are allowed to have a full, vivid life even while harboring a soft spot for someone who may never reciprocate. Your crush is not the protagonist of your story — you are.
If you have questions about sex or relationships that could be discussed in a future column, please submit questions to an anonymous form at https://tinyurl.com/BDHsexcolumn. Anusha Gupta ’25 MD’29 can be reached at anusha_gupta@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
