I saw a tweet years ago that argued a crush is just a lack of information, but I find that to be a little bit pessimistic. Also, factually untrue. I have had plenty of crushes that have maintained themselves even after obtaining information that should have stopped it in its tracks all together. A tad dramatic there, in reality I’m very picky and that’s reflected in my pretty meagre track record of dating. Not to sound unsought and sorry for myself, as that it definitely not the case (there are plenty of suitors!), but I average a few dates a year. I won’t mention the state of the dating climate again, don’t worry. Whilst it has a small part to play, I think it’s also a product of how I was raised. My mum was very stern when it came to rules about dating. I was under no circumstances allowed to date before the age of 16. It wasn’t a religious thing, but instead a deep-rooted fear within my mother based on the experiences of her teens that any romantic involvement with the opposite sex during my early adolescence would, to put matter-of-factly, derail my life. I had the entirety of my adult life to date; she would tell me. Not that I was protesting much, and in ways now I’m thankful that I wasn’t subjected to things beyond my years at an early age. I understand her reasoning, but along with other life experiences, it bitterly shaped my view on what it meant to actively want a romantic relationship.
My first ever crush was at the age of about five for a boy named Tyrese in my year one class. Both me and my best friend were obsessed with him. During our lunchbreak one day, we agreed we wouldn’t let a boy come between our friendship and promised neither of us would be angry at the other when one of us ‘married Tyrese’. I remember bumping into him later aged 11 at an open day for a prospective secondary school and holding back a smirk when the memory of this conversation sprung to the front of my mind. My most aggressive crushes to date however were both in my teens, in each year of sixth form. A mixture of hormonal overdrive and a general social ineptitude at interacting with the opposite sex (due to an all-girls school education) were largely to blame. The first started pretty quickly into the academic year of year 12. He was a tall, long-lash-having boy with button brown eyes who wore his hair in single plaits. We met in maths class. He was about 6ft1 which seemed so much larger to my then 5ft8 frame. We sat next to each other during the induction day and when we had our first official class in our regular classroom, the seating arrangement (though I’d like to put it down to fate) meant he sat at the table to the left of me.
Walking into class was a treat. Each time I’d hope he’d ask to borrow my calculator or need help on a question so I could shyly mumble in response and then daydream for the rest of the school day. I was enamoured. He had a cheeky smile, was overtly south London-like in his demeanour, and he made me laugh. We added each other on Instagram but still acted shy in front of each other for many more of the classes we endured. Conversations were minimal, but each interaction was somehow victorious, and I felt I had so much to write home about to my friends, despite in reality exchanging just a handful of sentences with my beau. A few months into the school year, he invited me to a house party for his birthday, but with all my friends busy and I far too nervous to go alone without a social crutch, I chickened out and told him I couldn’t make it. After that we didn’t speak much. Sometimes he’d get on my bus home after college and grin at me as he’d bop down the top deck stairs to get off. We’d share the odd look at each other in hallways, and of course we always had our maths class… but that was about it. By the beginning of Year 13, he was kicked out of college for insurmountable cases of bad behaviour, and that was that.
My next immense crush came somewhat unexpectantly, and relatively slow-paced. The pressure of A levels looming, the manic drafting and redrafting of my university personal statements, and UCAS application meant there was no time for matters of the heart. I had grades to maintain and universities to receive offers from! Then, as they often do, those similar feelings came up again. This time, around late spring, it was a guy who I always saw at my platform waiting for the same overground to take us to Clapham. I knew he went to my college; I could see his lanyard peeking from his jacket or trouser pockets each time we waited separately at the station, both usually running late. Strangely, I never really noticed him in the school corridors, canteen, or foyer, but once I noticed him that day, it was already too late. Boarding the packed train to Clapham Junction, he stood diagonal from me, with a book in hand and a streetstyle inspired outfit. He was tall and ethnically ambiguous, meaning that depending on which angle you looked at him from, he could pass for Middle Eastern, mixed race or Latino. He turned out to be mixed race and Caribbean like me.
After realising he also did maths after being seated in front of him for my first maths exam of the season, I knew I had two more encounters left with him before exams would be over, I’d have left college, and as a result would most likely never see him again. Two more tests Chloe, two more chances. I remember vividly the day of my third and final maths exam, acutely aware that it was my last chance to say something to this guy before I would be out of opportunities to speak up.
As if through magic I thought he could telepathically sense my romantic feelings for him, and he would make a move. Despite the big talk I was giving to friends about my plans to just “go up to him and say hi”, I knew when it came to it, I would do nothing of the sort. I was 17 and oh-so shy, who was I kidding? The day came and went. After a few spooky cases of bumping into each other multiple times (fate, is that you again?) on our way home despite me catching up with a friend in the library post-exam, leaving, then having to go back because I accidentally took her Zip card, that was it. I sat on the upper deck of my bus home sulking and quietly whispering a voice note to my best friend on how, despite the universe’s attempt (vis-à-vis the numerous instances of bumping into each other) to get me to finally talk to him, I did nish.
But love was back, because he found and followed me on Instagram just before my 18th birthday. We went on a date a few weeks later after I came back from holiday. I was sun kissed and probably the darkest I’ve ever been, subsequently feeling gorgeous (thank you, Greek sun). We went thrifting together in East London before grabbing a bite to eat and chastely hugging goodbye once the date was over. After months of pinning and an actual date(!) my feelings were even more intense. I sickened my friends with details of our conversations, I blurted out things along the lines ‘ahh he’s so funny’ and ‘he’s just so cool’. Of course, I never made that apparent to him. We ended up talking consistently for a good while but never seemed to make it to our second date. Despite falling prey to breadcrumbing, but at the time being none the wiser due to a total lack of experience, I kept on with Mr Clapham Junction. The final straw was when he abruptly cancelled our date an hour before we were supposed to meet, and just as I was about to leave. It was done, and I was gutted.
Some months later when I was at least a term into university, we spoke again, and I asked if he ever had any interest in seeing me again, or if our cahoots were purely down to boredom. He was shocked at my bluntness. He told me that he cancelled our date last minute because he didn’t have the money to take me out and was too embarrassed to say. If only he knew I was a modern woman and was totally fine with going Dutch. I was almost angry that he couldn’t have just been honest all those months ago, it would have saved a lot of time wasted feeling sorry for myself.
Outside of intense teenage fever, there have of course been other crushes and subsequent dates. There was an on again off again relationship with dating apps throughout my early twenties, the meeting of eligible bachelors whilst out (as nature intended) and some dead-end talking stages through answering DMs. Standouts are of course the guy in his early twenties I went on a date with at 19 who was insistent on clarifying that I could pronounce his French name. The pretty, curly-haired man I spoke to for a little while who I met in the smoking area of a bar. He complimented me almost incessantly (my love language is words of affirmation) and would rest his hand on the nape of my neck when we got lost in conversation over our favourite musicians. Last year, days before Christmas, I met a guy so handsome it was almost silly who I couldn’t help notice was staring at me, and who I couldn’t help but stare back at. We went on our first date just shy of New Years and then embarked on a Winter Tale, the seasonal opposite of a summer romance. We kissed constantly, and never ran out of things to talk about when we’d eventually pause for breath. By February however, our Winter Tale was over.
Later throughout this year, there was some excitement mixed with intermittent disappointment. There was the guy who was a little too excited upon finding out I was some inches taller than him, and for the same reason, I struggled to take him seriously. There was also the other handsome actor I went on a date with in early autumn who was sweet and had eyes that fluctuated between hazel and olive green. I met him during a time when I could have really used a good laugh, which he provided. Ultimately, it was a tough period for me when we first started speaking, and so my heart wasn’t in it.
Though I joke in my group chat and to the ears of colleagues that I yearn for a relationship, particularly now during the colder months, deep within my psyche is the antithesis of this sentiment. I find the desire of seeking romantic companionship to be inherently counterintuitive. It’s as though I carry this guilt with me that overtly wanting a companion, particularly as a heterosexual woman, reveals an uneasiness with oneself, a lack of self-assuredness and even a tad of pick-me-ism. Almost as if wishing to be in a relationship is an anti-feminist feat. ‘What about self-love, platonic intimacy, the magic of friendship, and the wonder of community?’ my brain cries when I find myself taken over by the craving after seeing one too many couples on my Instagram explore page. Don’t be a pick-me!
Rationally I know this is outright silly. It is not indicative of contempt for oneself to want to be in a relationship, or to crave romantic companionship. In moments, I have shamed myself, and admittedly other women, for wanting to find romantic solace in someone. Perhaps it is rooted in my upbringing and the catastrophising of relationships I listened to growing up. It is also informed by the knowledge of how harmful it is for women to centre men, or rather male attention, in their lives. Largely though, as an old friend pointed out, this dismissal of desiring a relationship comes from bearing witness in one way or the other to the horrible ways various men in the lives of women I love have hurt them. Since a teen, I have had multiple friends suffer through abusive relationships with unrelenting partners. Subconsciously, I think I put off dating because of that.
It’s not the prospect of a relationship that causes me to recoil (quite the contrary, I love love), but rather the notion of wanting one that makes me a little uncomfy. The need for it. Through striving for independence and denouncing the need for romantic relationships since, from a young age they seemed to be quite a destructive force, I may have veered off too much to the other side. Now, I am actively trying to unlearn shame around wanting one. At my core, I am a lover girl, and that is achingly apparent through the books that I read, the music that I consume, and how deeply I feel, however much I try to suppress it. I am but a romantic with a tendency to intellectualise my feelings, sometimes to the point of pathologizing the very human need for romantic connection.
I remember sharing with a friend in 2022 that my ‘heart was open’ to dating now, since both emotionally and executively I simply wasn’t in the space to do so two years prior (Covid, degrees etc.). By 2023 I was welcoming love in, and I confidently announced to each of my female friends that 2024 was the ‘year of love’. In a haze of my own romance, each time I was given updates on dates going swell or reciprocated crushes forming fast I’d chime “what did I say, it’s the year of love!”. It wasn’t, but that’s beside the point.
I feel held by the finest of friends, I have a family who care about me beyond my own comprehension, and the lifelong practice of self-love is something which I wish to sharpen with each passing year. All of this to say, love can exist in multitudes. It is not necessary, or constructive, to view the desire to be in a romantic relationship as the by-product of some sort of internal shortcoming or accredited to a lack of something in other areas of one’s life. There is no shame in wanting to be loved.
Gucci Cosmos exhibit at 180 Studios, 2023
Queencoc0 Talks 
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