From dust you were born and to dust you will return.
Every Ash Wednesday we burn things from our exes and ex-crushes. This one is no different. I did some reflecting while preparing and came up with this.
Ryan-ESFP. This was my first college crush. Ryan was in my first college class and lived in another dorm but would come over for parties and touch me on the arm. He was a super, super adorable football player because he didn’t think he was adorable. Then he went home for Christmas break and lost 20 lbs and quit football and became ‘scene.’ I still see this person around today and anytime I talk about him with people the conversation is always ‘what happened to cute Ryan?’
What happened? He got kind of icky?
Kyle- INFJ. He was a senior when I was a freshman and his presence in my intro to logic class delayed the beginnings of the Lolz Dolls’ friendship because I kind of just stared at him like a puppy dog instead of socializing in this class. Anyways he was really nerdy in the cutest imaginable way (I think he has a Ph.D. and J.D. now). He was really nice and had no social skills and made jokes about existential quantifiers and I was so intimidated that I couldn’t even talk to him. We went to dinner at a professor’s house and it was maybe the most anxious I’ve ever felt because I was the youngest person there by three years and at least one degree and my outfit was too trendy and nothing ever happened because I was so afraid of sounding stupid around him and he went to grad school out of state.
What happened? I was too nervous to talk to him.
Adam-ENFP. I met this guy in a class in college and he spun me out BAD. We’d meet in the graduate school library (away from the pleby undergrads) and argue about phenomenology and pneumatology and I’d never met anyone that was on such a similar intellectual wavelength—not because we were interested in the same things but because we thought about them the same way. We went to a Zen Buddhist temple to learn how to meditate and to lectures at the U of M. It was the beginning of a great relationship except he was also really insecure and mean. The first time he met the other Lolz Doll he chastised her for making a politically incorrect (but personal and self-deprecating) comment. He thought it was dumb that I went to parties and started making comments about how I wasn’t very smart or a very good person. Obviously, I had an adverse reaction to this and we became arch enemies and we had to enact Lolz Doll revenge on him a few years later. Years later we were invited to what we didn’t realize was his brother’s birthday party and we drank a liter of vodka in the pantry and then yelled at him in front of all of his friends. Which could be embarrassing for us except duh we killed him with logic.
What happened? I’m not sure if this is an ENFP thing. Maybe he was bipolar.
Joe- ENFP. This was another guy I met in college. He was the first person I thought I could like for a long period of time because he had the two absolutely essential ingredients of anyone who wants to date one of us: he was really smart and deep AND he could chilltfo. He was a really hilarious extrovert that a lot of people wrote off as a bro, but as soon as he made people laugh enough to like him he stopped making jokes and got real serious about all the stuff he wanted to figure out about life and how much he thought about his relationships with others. Then we’d go watch a band. He was a really great person but we didn’t meet until a few months before graduation and we knew he was moving across the country soon and he did and we tried to keep in touch but that never works.
What happened? Bad timing.
Adam2- INTP. This is a guy I met at work. We had a very flirtatious relationship which was a little inappropriate given our age difference and work relationship. Nothing ever progressed or got too serious. I still flirt with him when I see him around.
What happened? Not enough momentum.
Matt- INTJ. This was a friend I had that I ended up having a lot in common with and I was operating under the mistaken belief that if you have that much in common with someone you should just love them. So, I tried to make myself love him even though he was kind of a bummer to be around and thought I was kind of a crazy person. This didn’t really work out and ruined our friendship.
What happened? No interest in making anything happen by either party, really.
Brian-ESFP. I knew him for about a year and a half and had less than zero interest in getting to know him. I was riding a bumwave because now that I was an adult and not in college no one I met was really interesting or deep or fun, just watered down bros waiting to get married and move to the suburbs. So, ignored this guy because he seemed like a bro and then one day he told me he liked house music which all his married friends probably made fun of him for and thought he was stupid (which I related to). So we started talking and hanging out and my hopes got really high about there being great people outside of an academic environment. He wasn’t the smartest or the funniest person I knew but he was nice and I liked liking him. I had a crush on him literally forever because the stakes of making a move were too high (this is why I prefer to crush on people who aren’t embedded into my group of friends/daily life) so it just went on forever until I found out he was dating a girl who had short hair and was really ugly so he was too embarassed to tell anyone about it. I don’t really know how I could have developed such strong feelings for a bro, or why he didn’t just hint that he wasn’t interested or that he was dating someone or why it hurt so bad that chose some ugly, boring girl instead.
What happened? Too much talk, not enough action.
Tom- ESFJ. I dug deep into the dark underbelly of my social circle to pull this guy out. He was different from all the other guys I have ever crushed in that he wasn’t smart or interesting. Mostly, I wanted to date someone to get over another guy and he was incredibly funny so we started hanging out. His social circle was a 180 from mine and it was weird to see someone feel like a foreigner at a booth at Lyle’s (maybe the most welcoming place in the world). It was a novelty for awhile but I was anxious for him to serve his purpose (getting over this other guy) and his neuroses buzzkilled like 3-5 social events before we stopped hanging out forever because he didn’t like me back. Which is fine because I still definitely have the upperhand; the first time he hunt out with us he non-ironically took notes including such things as “Tao Lin is cool”, “be afraid of robots”, and “Missing White Girl Syndrome”.
What happened? He didn’t like me and was too neurotic to just have a fling anyways.
