Crushes have nothing to do with love

I've known a lot of girls in my lifetime, and I have gotten my silly heart hung up on a whole bunch of them. And it seems like all the girls in my life, the ones that matter anyway, have fallen into two columns.

There are girls that I've had sickening, maddening crushes on. They are attractive to me in every sense. In their presence, I feel woozy and trip over my words. I never know what to say or how to say it. I admire everything they do or say. I find myself mildly obsessed with their lives. This is, for the most part, entirely unhealthy.

Then there are girls I'm so comfortable with that it's like we were joined at the hip. We get along like milk and cookies. We talk every day as if we haven't spoken in 15 years. And uniformly, I've been entirely uninterested in these girls, save one. It's not that they are unattractive, and it's not that they haven't been interested in me. It's just that I had my mind on other things, I guess.

I often gripe that a lot of women I know are interested in everything about me, but not me. There is nothing so annoying as having a girl describe her ideal mate, and she describes you down to what color boxers you're wearing. But you know that if she was presented with the choice between you and being locked in a foot locker full of spiders, she'd have to think about it.

I've had a pretty pitiful love life, and I have a whole list of people and situations that I enjoy blaming. But maybe it's because I've been trying after the wrong girls all along. Maybe it's because the women that are right for me are not the ones that I've been chasing after. Maybe I'm just as guilty of chasing after something I don't really want. And maybe I need to rethink the last ten years of my life.