The Long and Short Game

Crushes

What exactly is a crush? Can it be quantified? Measured? Narrowed to a single description? I used to think that  a crush was an attraction you felt strongly and quickly within the first months of knowing someone… Depending on the mutuality, this crush can either expand or fade (often with one-sided difficulty).

A crush feels magnetic, like everything lighting up at once… Otherwise, it doesn’t count, right?

Well, no. There’s more depth to attraction than that, as I’ve discovered recently. Hidden strands and universal shifts. I’d never accounted for friendships where attraction develops later, or where crushes are seasonal, almost, fading with the weather. I’d never accounted for my changing tastes.

As of late February, I’ve been in a relationship with my best friend of five years. I can’t get enough of her, yet the strangest thing is… not even three months ago, I never would have put this on my bingo card. Genuinely.

The subtlest shifts can usher in the most tectonic of changes.

The long game

I met my now-girlfriend (we’ll call her Emma) in our first year of university, when neither of us really knew what the hell we were doing. I’d previously been off with COVID or some other hacking spell from a drama workshop, so Emma approached me mid-session on the day I returned. She’d missed seeing me in class. Something had drawn her to me, though even then it was never anything romantic. In fact, it was somewhat chronic, seeing how it led to our crippling bubble tea addiction at the local Pearls, where we then spent the majority of our free time.

We developed a bond very quickly, having the same humour, quirks and coping mechanisms. This was exacerbated by our respective flatmate situations.

As a freshman, I lived in a hallway of eight, each having an individual and unique personality that quickly separated into cliques. We were amiable enough, holding parties, supporting one another — though towards the end of the year, the ‘incident’ happened. Without delving into too much detail, a growing wedge between two members of the hallway (a conflict I was utterly uninvolved in, I should add) forced me into choosing sides. I attempted to mediate, but because of my indecision, it was I who was treated like the villain.

I’ve rarely felt that isolated in my life. Never once did I receive an apology. Even worse, for some time, it seemed I would have to make reparations out of necessity if I wanted housemates to bunk with in our second year.

That’s when Emma started showing up. She’d been having trouble with her corridor too. Together we found a mutual escape with one another, hanging out in each other’s rooms, dancing to theatre songs, filming silly TikTok videos, drunken rants and reassurances.

She’s the reason I was able to finish my first year, if I’m being candid.

The roommate problem

With second year approaching, we mock-interviewed four combinations of housemates, only having each other as constants – this part was not up for debate. Once we’d found a third, we prowled for houses and lucked out with a sudden opening on the hill leading down from our university. Emma and I moved in for a week to test the waters, and celebrated the occasion with our respective families at a local restaurant.

What was hilarious was that my parents had actually met her parents several years before anything would happen.

As I learned recently, I had made a good impression.  Emma’s mum and dad had both been rooting for us, even as we pursued our own relationships. Many of our mutual friends suspected that we were an item too, though we never took any notice.

For one thing, now being roommates, there was forbidden territory. We were ever aware that if  we started dating and something had gone wrong — the awkwardness of still living together would probably have driven us apart forever. I hear horror stories of younger couples from our university moving in together and promptly breaking up, yet still having to share the same room (or even the same bed)! Our bond was a reliable constant, and this continued through our second year of living together when Emma and I took on substantial roles in student societies and needed a shared space to de-stress.

When you pair that with a genuine lack of physical attraction back then, It seemed impossible that we ever could have crossed a line.

Suddenly, distance

Three years flew past. Suddenly, we were back home, considering our options from different counties. I dove straight into my Master’s, while Emma took a year to pursue masterclasses and save money.

Ironically, my contact with Emma was fairly infrequent for a time. I’m still not sure why to be honest. Perhaps we were cautious of codependency? Perhaps I was just genuinely bad at texting? For whatever reason it happened, I have this distance to thank, inexplicably, for us growing even closer. Within that absence, I think something clicked into place.

The short game

The moment I started ‘crushing’, however you define it, is unclear. I wouldn’t even strictly call it a crush… just a gentle, lifting realisation. I tend to trace it back to Emma’s 2026 New Year’s post on Instagram, featuring her family during some merry late night celebrations. I made a joke, commenting how it looked like her dad was capsizing, falling drunkenly from a rather voluminous armchair and out of frame. We got to talking off the back of that. We were properly talking. I mean, four days straight, yapping every minute we could.

It was like a veil had been lifted, one that had previously only revealed half-truths. I stared at her photos for longer. I scrolled through threads upon threads of conversation, searching for notes of interest. I was soaked in curiosity, to know her better, to hear about every minute detail of her day.

Within a month, we met with some mutual friends in London for bowling and I invited Emma to come visit my home county. Within another month, she was laying on my parents’ couch beside me. That first night, we got to talking about prior relationships and encounters, especially some troubling ones where close friends had revealed their true feelings to her, causing their relationship to subsequently go cold. She mentioned how she’d never put herself in that position again.

PANIC! I thought I had zero chance. Consider also that, not even a week prior, Emma had posted a reel on Instagram talking about how soulmates can be platonic – that the universe doesn’t always deal in red strings, but blue ones and pink ones too. This, I thought, was a truly wonderful sentiment, if not a touch concerning on the whole burgeoning attraction front.

Still, I didn’t eliminate the possibility, the little clues I’d picked up. I took her out the next day to watch The Housemaid, followed by some hot chocolate in a bistro cafe. We ended up back on the couch in the evening, wrapped in each other’s arms with some animated films on the TV. The chemistry was abundant, our faces growing closer and closer, but I was terrified of making that first move! All our many years of history were riding on this one moment.

Strangely, it was Kung Fu Panda 2 that did it for us, when Emma started making random pss pss pss noises as if she was trying to beckon a cat from across the room. I kissed her then, teasingly, just to shut her up, this esoteric ritual having gone on for around a minute.

The kiss was very much returned.

New beginnings

Emma’s mentioned that her timing on the whole “I’m never dating my friends again” discussion was a bit wonky, but I’m glad she brought it up. I’m not willing to mess this up, hence my asking Emma to be my girlfriend the day she was due to travel back home. I’m done chasing loose ends. I’m done dithering.

I’ve never truly loved someone before. Not like this.

We’ve talked at length since about whether we should have gotten together earlier. Neither of us see it. The foundation we’ve built gave rise to new angles and perspectives – not so much a revelation as a new chapter. The start of a fresh page. Everything has fallen into place for us because of this timing, and I don’t think we’d have it any other way.

So have patience. Sometimes crushes can be mere infatuations. They can lead you into meaningless scenarios. Don’t get caught in the trap of feeling that love has to be explosive or dramatic as we see in films and TV and stories. Sometimes you play long games, sometimes you play shorter ones. Other times it can feel like both together. But trust me, when you’re slow-dancing to Labi Siffre with the truest extension of your soul, it feels like weaving a cocoon in the fabric of time.

When you find that special someone… you’ll know.