The Art of Intense Affection

By: Lik Hang Lam

DISCLAIMER: These are simply my opinions on love, I have researched a fair amount about the psychology of love and these are just my opinions, the choice to take this seriously or not is up to you.

Love is unexplainable, even if you’ve got the world’s most renowned scientist to explain it for you, they probably wouldn’t be able to. ( Don’t quote me on that ) The best explanation I can give you is that love is an unexplainable phenomenon that occurs when one has developed an incredibly intense affection towards another. Once we reach puberty, you’ll start to develop a true crush, don’t mistake this for your childhood crush though, crushes back then are usually minor and we tend to look for a cute face, disregarding their personalities and what more they have to offer, because of this, childhood crushes usually never last as people get “tired” of the same face which makes it easier to get over.

Love is probably implemented in our brains from an unknown god, because it’s the motivation that drives us to reproduce, and the big idea behind that is to prevent the human society from dying out. Let’s be real, you wouldn’t want to reproduce with someone who’s assigned to you right? The mutual feeling of love must be there. But those who rejoice for love are deceiving themselves and those around them because love is risky, If you dare to walk up to her, you’ll start to get thoughts like, will she like me back? Is she just being friendly, or is she flirting with me? Does she just flirt with everyone around her? Sooner or later you’ll be doubting yourself, am I good enough for her? Does she have a boyfriend? Does she even like me that way? All these thoughts are eventually going to drive you crazy, and before you’ll know it, instead of being productive and going outside for a jog, you’ll find yourself huddled in bed sobbing for countless hours on end.

When falling in love, you’re instantly blinded. This means that you’re probably going to waste all your time and effort on one single girl, and every other girl is simply going to look unappealing for you. Sure that is good if you’re actually in a relationship, but if you’re crushing on someone hard, you forget the other “fish in the sea” Your crush probably isn’t the only one who has that cute smile and a great personality, yet you choose to ignore those around you that actually might reciprocate your feelings towards them. The effect is even worse when you’ve gotten to know one another well, but are still unsure if she feels the same. You’ve got to remember that you aren’t dating, if she doesn’t seem interested even after you have pursued her for several months on end, then it’s probably time to let go.

Once you start developing a serious crush, your brain automatically starts fantasizing about the possible future which you guys can have, once that happens, it’s really hard to turn back. In your brain, those fantasies will feel real, so if she does decide to reject you, you’re gonna feel like all those memories that you’ve “created” with her have all vanished. All those good times you could be experiencing her, all the great things you could’ve done together are now impossible and the best thing that you can do is just forget about her, or be normal friends with her. Many people feel like being regular friends after being rejected is a good thing to do, because your crush is going to feel like you’re an understanding person and can cope with these situations with ease, but it’ll hurt you a lot. When becoming friends with her, you might be thinking that she’ll open up to you or something like that, because even though she rejected you, you still can’t let go of her. I’m going to be honest if you, the chance of that happening is very rare. Why? Well when you’re becoming friends with her, you’re not going to act all lovey-dovey. You’re going to treat her like a regular friend, and if you treat her like that, she’s going to friend-zone you. I’d only recommend this if you honestly don’t mind being friend-zoned and you have a clear intention of only becoming friends with her because if the reason you want to “just be friends with her” is because you can’t let go, it’s probably going to hurt even more when she gets a boyfriend.

Sometimes, you’ll even start to feel like you’re getting more distant with your friends. You’re going to spend all your time and effort on this one girl who you don’t even know if she likes you or not, which will drastically affect the time you have to hang out with your friends. All the time wasted on DMing her on Whatsapp, Google Hangouts, etc. Constantly locking and unlocking your phone to see if she has replied. And bam, countless hours have passed and you’re still in that same spot, locking and unlocking your phone to see whether she has replied yet. At this point, you might even send some follow up text messages asking her why she hasn’t replied yet, you might even get mad for no reason at all. Then before you know it, days have passed, weeks and still no reply. You start getting frustrated and flood her with a ton of follow up texts asking her why she hasn’t responded, and when she does finally reply, It amounts to nothing. All this time wasted unlocking and locking your phone could be used to do so much, yet you find yourself sitting there, staring at your phone in awe for countless hours nonstop. If this happens, there are really 3 possibilities. 1. She doesn’t like you and wants you to get the message 2. She’s the president of the United States and is incredibly busy. 3. She’s toying around with you, she knows you like her and finds your follow up texts humorous for her because she knows how much you dread for her.

So if you’re one of those people out there, get a life. Seriously! No matter how cute or how nice she is, you should always prioritize yourself first. If she doesn’t reciprocate your feelings towards her, just forget about it and move on. It probably won’t be easy, but life has so much more to offer you. And who knows you might meet your perfect partner one day.

Image: Animation 2021 | Horimiya | Season 1 Ep. 1 — [ENGSUB]. (2021). Retrieved 22 January 2021, from https://medium.com/horimiya-s1e1-ep-1/animation-2021-horimiya-season-1-ep-1-engsub-5cf568bccc26