Is It Love?

Does crushing on someone mean that you're in love?

Written by Clarissa Siah

Growing up, infatuation is a familiar feeling that we have all experienced.

• Infatuation refers to “an intense but short-lived passion or admiration for someone or something”. This refers to your crush or “eye-candy”.

• An “eye-candy” is someone whom you find attractive but not looking for a serious relationship with.

I entered secondary school in 2011.

As a young teen growing up, it’s not difficult to notice the more “good-looking” guys around in the school.

One guy caught my eye.

He was almost the perfect boyfriend material, or so I thought. He was tall, a basketball player and two years older than me. He was my crush and “eye candy”.

In 2014, we spoke to each other and got together.

At that moment, I realised that he was not as perfect as I thought he’d be. He was a jerk. He’d make me cry myself to sleep each time I saw him flirting with other girls.

At 16, this was my biggest heartache.

Despite that, I continued dating him thinking that our “relationship” and feelings would progress and mature. He was so irresponsible to the extent of denying that we were dating when others asked about me. After every argument, he would give up and become uncontactable. He turned to others for comfort instead of talking things out to fix the issue.

That was it. I had to move on.

In 2016, I met Dexter.

I had a lot of difficulty in trusting guys after my previous “relationship”.

One day, Dexter and I sat down and had a long talk. Instead of forcing me to be in a relationship, he took the time to understand my previous experience and got to know me for who I was. A few weeks later, we decided to take the leap of faith and got into a serious relationship.

It has been about two and a half years since we got together and every day is a new chapter full of surprises. Every day, we are learning more and more about each other.

In relationships, arguments are inevitable, the difference was the effort that we both put into this relationship. We understood each other’s perspective in every argument we had and eventually, we compromised for each other.

To me, that’s what true love is.