in: Dating & Relationships

7 Crushes = 7 Lessons Learned

Feelings aren’t always reciprocated, but we will still have gained something from the experience. Krystal Baugher shares lessons learned from past crushes.


I’m not a playa I just crush a lot. And by a lot I mean that every day I have a crush on at least one if not 10 people. Yet, some crushes linger. Some crushes stick to my heart hard and long like a stamp sticks to a letter.

These are the top seven crushes of my life (thus far), these are people who when I think about them now my heart still races a bit and I get a smile on my face. The kind of guys that if they called me up right now and said “Krystal I’m in love with you,” I’d say, “yeah, buddy, it’s about time.”

Perhaps sometimes it’s better to just leave it as a crush, take the positive aspects that they possess and try to incorporate those things within one’s own life. Maybe admiring from afar paints a better picture and the fantasy of possibility makes them larger than life, and thus makes life all the more magical and fun.

Here’s the Low Down On My 7 (biggest & baddest) Crushes and the 7 Lessons They Taught Me

Hello, Mr. Baseball Pants

It was my freshman year of high school and every morning I would walk into the building and find L sitting on the floor in the hallway reading a book. Every day we would smile at each other and say hello, then I would meet my friends to give an update on the book he was reading and how he said hello. My friends would roll their eyes and tell me to just talk to him. But to me, that was beyond intimidating. He was basically the hottest guy in our school, regardless of grade; and not only that, but he was smart and his butt looked good in baseball pants.

Finally, after weeks of “hellos” I did it.

I sat down beside him and had a conversation.

We became friends and I’d stop by and chat with him in the morning on random occasions, but nothing ever romantic developed (even though I always wanted it to).

On my 18th birthday my friend put together a book with letters from all my friends on why they “thought I was cool,” and in it he wrote about the first time I sat down next to him in the hall and how it made him feel good for the first time since he had started at our school.

I nearly died thinking about what could have been and what now, never will be.

Lesson Learned: Even the hottest, smartest people may not realize how hot and smart they are; sometimes it takes courage and great risk to go after your heart’s desire. Even if it doesn’t pan out into anything it was better to try than to be left wondering.

O, OMGing

It was in those early days of my liberal arts education, we were all craving for more, wanting to get as deep as we could on things we couldn’t quite yet grasp. We were all about the philosophical and it was cool to be bored with the mainstream. It was another house party and I was trying to keep up with the times—thus, bored out of my mind.

I stepped outside to step away from the nonsense of drinking games and that’s when I met O. Well, I didn’t meet him right away, first I overheard him being a total dick to some drunk guy who eventually walked off. I giggled under my breath then said something that I probably thought was super clever at the time. His mohawk was pink and he was an artist (technically a graphic designer, but I won’t debate that here) and he liked to get deep. We waxed on into the night and then nights and more nights until I proceeded to cheat on my boyfriend with O. I decided I was probably in love with him. I knew he wasn’t in love with me, so I cut off the sex, then I cut off my hair. Months later I ran into him at a bar, I was drunk and I told him that I had loved him for a week. He said he knew that, but he wasn’t ready then, and now that I had short hair he was over it. (Talk about crash and burn.)

Lesson Learned: They say that if the guy is a dick to other people, eventually he’ll be a dick to you, and though that is exactly what happened I still admired his honesty. Though I believe in tactfulness, he taught me that it’s refreshing to speak one’s mind and never lie (or attempt not to anyway) about thoughts, feelings or intentions.

D is for Dark & Dreamy

I, like every warm-blooded breathing person on the planet, have a major thing for people in bands. Yet, this “thing” I had once was different somehow from all the other times. I was captivated by him in a purely creative passion sort of way. It was as if instead of playing the music, he was the music. All of his deep dark emotional range came through in his songs, but only in his songs. Everywhere else he was just a regular guy—slightly narcissistic like all lead singers—but regular enough. It was what he put out into the world that made me want to make things, to bare what I felt to everyone else too. It was always more the idea of him than him in reality, but the idea was very strong, so strong that it made me end it with my then boyfriend and focus on my own creative growth.

Lesson Learned: Wholehearted passion is one of the sexiest traits any person can have and when you see it, when you feel it, it’s contagious and more powerful than anything else.

A+

He had a name like a lovely little poem. I imagined our time together would be like an avant garde blues song, weird, sultry, passionate—yet that time never came.

Lesson Learned: Sometimes beautiful words aren’t enough. Poetry is an ideal, action is the reality.

No Hard Deadlines with D

I was half way up a mountain when I got the phone call. An editor wanted to meet me about freelancing—and he wanted to meet that very day. So, I hopped, skipped and jumped off the mountain and got ready as quickly as I could for an impromptu interview. I got there early and every time a guy walked in I thought it was him; the old bald guy, the guy overdressed for Boulder wearing a tie, the sexy salt & peppered hair gentleman on his laptop in the corner, I had no idea who I was meeting, let alone what he looked like.

Finally he arrived; at first he seemed like a typical Colorado native, plaid shirt, brown hair, terrible shoes, but then we started talking and I noticed this sparkle in his eyes, there was something mischievous in the way they twinkled when he talked. There was an immediate attraction, but I had a boyfriend (and he had a girlfriend) and I needed a job, so I put the thought away. Of course, I enjoyed running into him around town and it happened that way off and on for two years. Then, one day, after I had moved to Denver, I was perusing OkCupid and I saw him. I was like, whhhaa! He’s single now and I’m single now… must make this happen. I did, and we lived happily ever after. Just kidding.

Lesson Learned: With patience comes the things (or in this case, people) you want most.

S Stands for Super-Duper

I went to this hipster house party in Boulder; he lived there and was being a gracious host to everyone who entered offering a cup for the keg or a nibble of some pot spaghetti. A band started playing in the kitchen, I found a spot to sit on the counter and when I looked up, I spotted him sitting on top of the refrigerator, wide-smile headbanging. It was the smile first that got me (and a good one works on me every time); later as we continued to hang out as “friends” the crush grew and grew and grew and I did nothing about it—which is rare for me because I almost always go after what I want. I was intimidated by his kindness, his compassion, his generosity, his zest for adventure, his daringness—at the time I felt I could never measure up to that. Then, the day I was planning to tell him how I felt, I found out that he had decided to move to Thailand. Yeah, maybe shouldn’t have waited so long with that one.

Lesson Learned: Enjoy every moment, every breath, every big beautiful smile that shines your way.

& Then There Was J

I remember the exact moment it went from “just friend” to “mega-crush.” We were all out together drinking beer, my boyfriend was conversing with someone else, so J was left to entertain me. He told this story about how every day when he got off work, even though he was working on a film dedicated to exposing the dangers of overfishing, he’d go and eat sushi. Like, a lot of sushi.

At first I was shocked that he not only did that, but he was willing to tell other people about it. Then I was like, this guy is being real. He was a genuine, authentic human being—and that was super sexy.

He revealed this vulnerable flawed characteristic that exposed his simple charm and honesty—and I liked it. It’s much more rare than it should be.

Lesson Learned: Be bold and generous with vulnerability, because our flaws shape our uniqueness yet create a stronger connection with others.

In the end they all helped to shape and remind me of traits that I’d like for myself: courage, passion, action, mindfulness, honesty, patience and vulnerability. Whenever I feel that I’m currently lacking in one of those areas I think of the person who exemplified the trait the most and I try to channel that into what I’m doing.

Yeah, I know I’ll never be with any of those guys and that’s okay, that’s not the point. I want to be challenged and changed by the people I meet—and these crushes did just that, and there’s something quite beautiful about the whole thing.

[image: via Andrew Stawarz on Flickr]

About the Author:

Krystal Baugher

Krystal Baugherlives in Denver, Colorado. She is the founder of Go Eat a Carrot, a website dedicated to exploring the worlds of pleasure and politics. Find her on Instagram to stay up to date with all of her shenanigans.

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