Definition of a Crush

A romantic attachment to someone with whom you are 

NOT
 
romantically involved.

That's all.

I know married people (who are actually with their spouse) who have crushes on other people. In some very successful marriages it's openly known, too.


Such a feeling for someone is not: 

A disloyalty to anyone else, because (all honest feelings for another person are based solely on that person, and the worthwhile traits they possess, and) feelings are NOT actions. It is also possible to have feelings for more than one person. We've covered this.


A sign that anything romantic WILL happen between you and your Crush.



A crush is just simple feeling for someone. Could it develop into something else? Yes,

IF
 
the attraction is mutual, 

AND
   
both of you are in an emotional space to let something happen. 

It's also best if neither of you are involved with, or even hung up on someone (but I was born in a state where shooting someone for adultery is an offense that regularly gets acquitted by a jury).
 
 Do I sound defensive? I feel a little bit so. I'm still trying to sort out my own head/heart, and I write about the fact that I love my Wife (capital W), yet talk about Crush in the same paragraph. There are people who don't believe that both feelings can exist at the same time.
 
I wonder if these people feel guilty for even looking at someone else. 


I love my Wife. Simple, serious reality: I would kill or die to keep her safe, cut off limbs from my body, beliefs from my head, or years from my life to make it work with her. 
             
No sacrifice I can make will make it work with her right now. Not under my control.

I've had crushes before, even while with her, and nothing happened. 

Her decision not to be with me only changes things a little.




(Although I do still feel like a kitten in a mouse cage when downtown.)