Dear Eric: I wanted to add to your response to “Super Crush,” the married letter writer who developed a crush on someone who works at her local grocery. This is something that helped me tremendously when I felt the same thing 25 years ago, as a young wife and mother who totally was in love with her husband. At the time, I was completely shocked at myself and took no pleasure in my crush whatsoever. I didn’t want it, I knew the person wasn’t right for me, there was nothing that explained it.
After researching it at the time, I found a book titled “Anatomy of Love” by Helen Fisher. One of the things it explained was how a crush out of nowhere is a primal experience in our brain that is caused by the chemicals in one’s brain, not because we have found our soulmate. This person’s crush probably has nothing to do with the grocery employee, but everything to do with a rush of brain chemicals that happened to occur in their particular brain coincidentally at that moment and in that space.
This helped calm me at the time and allowed me to continue meeting with him (a physical therapist) to get the medical care I needed. I was able to remind myself that this was just some overactive production of dopamine that meant nothing, and that I did not have to act on it. It was not easy, but after a few months the feeling went away.
—Been There
Dear Been There: Dr. Fisher’s book is a very interesting resource and, to your point, might calm the letter writer’s nerves. Sometimes a crush is just a crush.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
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