Dealing with infatuation?

[icantthinkofaname2]

Dear OO:

I’ve recently developed an infatuation with a girl I found on the internet who is active on sites like Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube. I’ve never met or had any kind of contact with her, so I know I can't really be in love, but I do love everything I've seen of her online. I'm absolutely mesmirized by her looks; she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, and I think has the potential to be a successful model. Although I realize that it's impossible to judge her real-life personality based on what she shows of herself on the internet, what she does show exhudes an idealistic, benevolent, bubbly, funny, outgoing personality that I find very attractive as well.

I refrain from communicating with her for two reasons. The first is that she’s currently too young for me (she's 15 and I’m 19). The second is that I don’t think I’m her type or that I’m good enough for her.

So I decided to regard her as being like an object in a museum (to borrow an analogy from a Peikoff podcast). Even though I can’t have her, I still get enjoyment from following and admiring her. To be clear, I don't get aroused to her (I can't because I would feel guilt/shame over her age); I just get drawn in by her beauty. The problem is that I haven’t been able to keep my thoughts in check and prevent my admiration from escalating into an actual desire for her, and it’s starting to cause me serious emotional havoc.

Recently some famous YouTuber, a guy in his mid-20s with over a million subscribers, saw one of her videos and “liked” it (“liking” a video on YouTube causes it to be passed along to all of one’s subscribers). The result was massive exposure and legions of horny guys of all ages being directed to her YouTube channel. Unlike me, a lot of them apparently had no reservations about complimenting/hitting on a 15 year old, and reading their comments made me rage with jealousy. It drove home the point that other men see the same things that I see in her, so she’ll probably always have her choice of men and would probably never choose me even if I had the confidence to approach her. That hurts. It also hurts to know that I would resent the fact that a lot of other people judge her as beautiful, something that is probably a good thing from her perspective and makes her feel good about herself.

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my feelings for this person? I don’t want to completely give her up and never look at her again, but I don’t want this to escalate into a creepy, devastating obsession, either.

Edited October 31, 2012 by icantthinkofaname2

[Hairnet]

Are there not any cool women your age around you? I would try interacting with them instead. You need to stop thinking about this person and try to find a real person with some of those qualities you like.

[KevinD]

There is nothing wrong with enjoying another's person's beauty, their personality, and the spirit of life that they project.

You have an inalienable right to your feelings, and to your entire emotional universe. You must never, ever feel guilty about the fact that you experience something emotionally.

This is triply true when your feelings are essentially positive: You like somebody, you feel drawn to them. Presumably, in your mind, they represent values which relate to important aspects of you. To ignore your reactions (or worse, to curse yourself for having them) would be an act of self-sabotage and self-repudiation.

In the eyes of the law and of society, a relationship with the person you describe would be inappropriate at this point in time. But so long as you aren't taking action on your feelings, you have nothing to be ashamed of.

I don’t think I’m her type or that I’m good enough for her.

You might be correct in assuming that you're not her "type." But why do you say you're not good enough for her?

Do you often feel like you're not "good enough" for women whom you find yourself attracted to?

Edited October 31, 2012 by Kevin Delaney

[bluecherry]

I largely agree with both of the previous posts. There's nothing wrong with the fact that you like her. You just can't do too much about it right now. She's 15, but you aren't that much older than her yourself so it's not abnormal or creepy I'd say. If this were a couple years later nobody would think twice about the age gap. Aside from the legal and moral concerns at the moment, even practically right now it isn't a good idea to do much aside from maybe saying hello anyway though. Right now she's getting flooded with so much junk that you'd only get associated with creeps and insta-ignored if you were to even remotely hit on her, which is probably exactly what is happening to all those people hitting on her right now anyway. So, nothing to envy about those other guys. Give it time, see if you are still interested in her once she's gotten a little older and the flood of people is a thing of the past. Maybe you will be interested still, maybe you won't. Meanwhile, do try to look around for people of potential interest who are currently available to you. I'm not saying you have to cut her out of your life or file it under "never gonna happen", but I think it would make things a lot easier on you if you had other people to pursue and interact with and think about rather than it just being a matter of that one girl or nobody of any romantic interest around. Something to shift some of your attention to, other sources of similar values rather than simple deprivation, you know? A couple years down the road, maybe you'll have lost interest in her, maybe you'll have found somebody else you like more, or maybe if you are still interested in her you can then consider pursuing things with this girl with the age barrier out of the way but without having just spent the last few years alone, waiting. Why you feel you may not be "good enough" is a good question though. I don't know what the answer is right now, but either you are wrong and are good enough or you've got a while on your hands to work on developing yourself. Either way, you aren't doomed to insufficiency.

[JMeganSnow]

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with my feelings for this person? I don’t want to completely give her up and never look at her again, but I don’t want this to escalate into a creepy, devastating obsession, either.

If you're self-conscious enough to be aware that there's such a thing as creepy, devastating obsession, you're probably not in any real danger.

If you want, I can give you an example so you can laugh at me and feel better about yourself--I'm infatuated with a video game character. No, I won't tell you which one. Harrumph. If you want to talk about pointless, go-nowhere infatuations, I got you beat, at least your crush EXISTS.

If anything, this is a good opportunity for you to further identify consciously what you like about this person and thus two further things: a.) what you're looking for in a partner, and b.) what you will need to do in order to attract that sort of partner. There's no harm in talking to her, you can use her reactions to gauge how much work you need to do on yourself in the future. So it's not all doom and gloom.