Dear Anna,
I’m a 20-year-old male, and I’ve had an enormous crush on this girl since New Year’s (We’ll call her Z). Z isn’t the girl I want, but my heart thinks otherwise and prevents me from moving on to other people. It’s almost as if she’s cast a spell on me and I can’t escape. I know for a fact that I don’t want her and could never accept her for who she is. I don’t want to fight this unstoppable force any longer. How can I overcome this?
—Spellbound
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Dear Spellbound,
You should stop hanging around with so many damn wizards, for starters.
The way I see it, you have two conflicting forces tugging at you: Your irrational, emotional self (aka, the heart) that wants what it wants and everything else be damned, and your logical, rational self, which tells you, “This girl and I aren’t actually that compatible and would not work as a couple, hence, I should not pursue her.”
If you’ve seen any movie, heard any song or read any book about love, I think you know which side wins out every time.
Love is a drug—and we’re all hapless junkies.
What can you do? A few options. You can take the “out of sight, out of mind” approach. If you can avoid her, do it. Don’t hang out with her, don’t text her, block her on social media—take a complete heart hiatus. I’m not sure how much time you’re spending with her currently, but the cutting-her-out-of-your-life method does work, eventually. Just ask your grandma, who would really appreciate it if you called her back this year.
Or! Or. Follow your heart and ask her out already. Then you’ll know for sure and you can stop wondering how it might have turned out. You can stop the endless what-ifs that are slowly and mercilessly unraveling you.
Love is a drug, but so is possibility. Sometimes it’s the not-knowing that drives us crazy, that makes us obsess and speculate and daydream. Sometimes it’s best to burst those fantasy bubbles we’ve built up around a person. Sometimes the only way to free yourself from love’s clutches is to burn the whole damn thing to the ground.
Right now she’s a person you’ve made up in your mind—a girl who casts spells, a girl you can’t escape. It’s time to engineer your own escape. Tell her how you feel about her and make it real.
Light the match. Feel the burn.
Anna Pulley is a RedEye contributor.