Half the time I crush, what I want — or what I want to want — is not possession, but instead a respectful and completely unilateral relationship to the idea of someone else.

Limerence is a program running in the background of your days and nights, arranging your impressions in the shape of your fixation.

Anyone who’s made a habit of admiring strangers knows how badly they can remind you of who you miss.

The internet has a way of literalizing obsession, beaming your crush into your private space, during your private moments, producing the vertigo of potential contact.

if you never lose interest in other people, you’re never exactly alone.

“Crushes offer a singular power to make concessions to the scary idea that things change,” Reid writes, “and that’s what makes the unrequitedness worth the rush. In the end, all I want is the practice of crushing itself.”

The great irony in limerence, of course, is that in chasing the idea of someone else you only wrap yourself up in you.

Crushes map life over with meaning and joy, and I’d always choose heartbreak over boredom.

“limerence,” the “condition of cognitive obsession” that marks a serious infatuation: the intrusive thoughts, the wild ups and downs triggered by your perception of their perception of you