As a queer woman, it’s impossible not to sometimes have crushes on straight women. I’ve had crushes on female friends, coworkers, and strangers, and I can tell you that catching feelings for a straight girl is a huge pain in the butt. I know I can’t do anything but I have the feelings regardless. Ugh!
- It’s total unrequited love. Alright, I may be being dramatic when I say “love,” but IT HURTS, OK? Yeah, I’m not actually dating these women, but my feelings are still involved and it sucks when they’re not reciprocated. The other person either knows and is disinterested or has no idea at all. This causes feelings of guilt, shame, remorse, sadness, anger, etc. It ends up being quite the commotion in my heart and mind.
- It might be partly about wanting what I can’t have. I don’t know if a big part of having a crush on a straight girl is wanting someone who’s out of my reach. I can tend to go for emotionally unavailable people, and who’s more unavailable to me than someone who isn’t even attracted to women? This is probably an unhealthy thing I do but I can’t imagine I’m the only queer girl who feels this way.
- I oscillate between wanting her to know and not. The thought crosses my mind that I should just tell her and see what happens. This thought is quickly replaced by another that says, “What a terrible idea, she can never know!” Part of me thinks that there’ll be a positive outcome and the more rational side of my brain reminds me that I have a crush on a damn straight girl. I generally opt for keeping my feelings to myself.
- I interpret things as signs when they’re really not. A gentle brush of their arm against mine, kissy faces in text messages, spending lots of time with me—these are all things that I can interpret as signs that the girl is interested in me. Despite knowing that she’s straight, I’ll get my hopes up and see these little things as indicators even though I know logically that they aren’t. My brain likes to get my hopes up anyway.
- I get a bit angry that my feelings will come to nothing. I mostly get angry at the world/the universe/God for giving me these feelings that can go nowhere. I feel as if it’s unjust and I feel wronged. I may also get slightly angry at the girl, though I don’t let it show. I get upset that she’s straight and sometimes I may feel like I’m being led on even though that’s totally not the case. Most of this fuss I cause is just me butting heads with and not being able to handle the truth.
- I start thinking I could change her. There’s this evil little voice in my head that says, “Spaghetti’s straight until you get it wet!” I know that’s terrible, but my brain goes there. I think that if she just experienced being with a girl, me in particular, she’d realize that she actually likes girls. Again, logically I know that I’m being nuts, but the crush makes me think wild things that generally just aren’t true.
- I have some tiny hope in my mind that it’d work. Perhaps I go through the five stages of grief when I have a crush on a straight girl, one being denial. Have we established the fact that I get some far-fetched ideas yet? Sometimes I have this hope in the back of my mind that eventually she’ll come around and somehow it’ll work out and we’ll be together. I know I need to squash this hope real quick to maintain my sanity (and dignity).
- I try to find things about her that may make her gay. This is kind of silly, but when I’m trying to rationalize how she might actually be gay, sometimes I find things about her that could be a sign. For example, she has an undercut, she wears a lot of flannel, or she wears snapbacks backward. These little indicators don’t actually mean that she’s gay of course since anyone can do these things, but it feeds into my fantasy.
- I mostly get over it. Mostly. I’ve been talking a lot about how I get nuts, sad, and mad, but I haven’t talked about how I deal with it skillfully. In truth, I generally get the heck over crushes that I have for the most part! I’m only human and there are obviously still parts of me that ache for what I can’t have. Nonetheless, I put my big girl panties on and I try to focus on what reality actually is rather than what I want it to be.
- I’ve never actually acted on it. The only times I can think of acting on crushes with straight girls is when I was drunk and I made out with them (or attempted to). Aside from those incidents, I’ve never actually pursued a straight crush that I had. This is probably for the best because I’d imagine it’d make friendships awkward and I’d only have to deal with rejection. I’ll keep on keeping these little crushes to myself.
