By Chen Ying (25A01C), Ng Dawin (25A01D), and Peh Zhi Ning (25A01B)
I remember when a classmate asked our Civics tutor to wingman him.
“Cher, there’s this girl in your other class [Insert fake name], can you let her use her phone during the practice paper next week? I want to explain Copa America to her live.” Our teacher just stared at him for a long, long time as my classmate melted into his chair.
Finally, he asked, “How long have you known her?”
“She was in my ori group.”
“Hhmph, we’ll see how long your feelings last.”
“Sir, you don’t understand—I’ve never gotten these feelings with anyone before. There’s something… different about her. Like, she responds to my texts within 10 minutes! Surely she has to be into me or something, right?”
A few weeks later he was back to normal, no longer harping about his crush. Our teacher picked up on it immediately.
“So what happened to you and [Insert fake name] ah?”
“Oh,” he says. “I realised I didn’t want her after all. Her personality not good.” He shrugs, biting on a pocky stick, “At least I got her to watch football, right?”
In the mood for love
If you asked an adult about teenage relationships, chances are you would be met with some degree of cynicism. To many adults, there isn’t much depth to our youthful hand-holding. And it’s not hard to see why.
For one, our teenage brains aren’t fully developed. Even though you and I are experiencing a period of unprecedented neurological growth, our prefrontal cortex—the region associated with self regulation and decision making—only completes development in our mid 20s.
Thus, we teens tend to take more risks (We’ve all skipped class before), have a decreased ability to plan for the future (Have you started revising for promos? Yeah, me neither), and most importantly, suck at regulating emotions.
What this means is that when we are faced with intense or foreign feelings for the first time, it’s easy for us to feel completely overwhelmed and poorly assess the situation we are facing.
Take my classmate for example. He had only known his Ori crush for barely two months before he fell head over heels for her. It wasn’t even for some deep, resounding reason like watching her stand up for him against some recalcitrant senior like in the Kdramas. Quoting him directly, “I saw her playing badminton one day and I suddenly felt like I wanted to be her eternal receiver.” Don’t laugh. Infatuation is always funny, until it happens to you.
Let’s face it. We all lack life experience. We’ve been alive for less than two decades (with almost a fifth of it spent in diapers), only ever having been through schooling with little idea of what it’s like in the adult world. If you’re telling me that you’re ready to dedicate your life to a girl you met less than 6 months ago in Orientation, don’t you think that you’re jumping the gun? Shouldn’t you be worrying about passing your A levels instead of whether you’re going to die alone?
These are just some reasons adults might cite to tell you why love in JC isn’t serious. We’re young, we’re immature, we’re too caught up by our emotions and our unstable teenage state of being only serves to amplify these traits, which definitely aren’t conducive for holding a healthy relationship. Feelings of love held up by passion alone can’t last, which is the case with infatuation.
True Love or Infatuation?
In its purest form, infatuation can be described as an intense but short-lived admiration for someone, such as the feelings my classmate had for his orientation mate.
Typically, infatuation happens with those you don’t know very well, such as new classmates. Because you haven’t interacted with them on a personal level, your perception of (and subsequently longing for) the person will be based on their public persona. And no, I’m not saying those feelings of attraction aren’t real—it’s just that the term ‘love’ might be an overstatement of what we truly feel.
Perhaps, when you have a crush on someone, you don’t even truly love that person. But rather, what you feel is a dam breaking—a dam of rushing water mixed from 4 (or even more!) years in a single-sex school, hormones, and teenage impulsiveness breaking—all culminating in a flood of pure, blatant infatuation.
And infatuation becomes a madness in the head.
The image your crush presents to you is one thing, but your mind will find ways to enhance your impressions of them. When we are attracted to someone, we tend to fixate on their positive qualities and ignore shortcomings, viewing them as paragons of perfection. This is why infatuation is often associated with a loss of logic. If you’re smitten enough, even a 6 with glaring red flags can become a 10 with a quirky personality.
For all my fellow romantics, think with your brain, not your [REDACTED]. As George Bernard Shaw once said, “Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else”. Much too commonly with crushes, what we truly love is the idealised version of this person, not who they really are. Everyone is human, and everyone has flaws—but not your fantasies. While you may believe your crush to be an Übermensch-esque figure, have you gotten to know him/her for the individual who they are, rather than the angel residing in your head? Are you even thinking straight?
So… what is love?
If infatuation is so all-consuming, it begs the question of how one can possibly differentiate between infatuation and love.
We live in an era that seems to have an inherently contradictory attitude on love. Our generation is scared of commitment, and a simple scroll on social media will show you the rampant use of all sorts of terms, from “situationship” to “no labels”, to strange rules like the “three month rule”. At some point, it seems like we are simply inventing terms to avoid facing the commitment that a relationship demands.
At the same time, we as a society idealise the concept of love through various means of pop culture, such as songs, books and movies. Numerous popular singers such as Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter, primarily write about love, whether it is about falling in love, unrequited love or heartbreak. Thus, it is little wonder that we all have such a warped perception of love.
Ultimately, as corny as it sounds, to be loved is to be known. While infatuation stems from a place of admiration and delusion, love comes from a place of acceptance. It’s when someone knows all your favourite things and can tell your mood from just a glance, simply because of how well they understand you. It’s when you feel safe to just be yourself without pretending , because being loved is being accepted for who you are, imperfections and all.
To someone who has never fallen in love before, this might just seem like a bunch of big words and meaningless preaching. But love itself is a feeling that goes beyond words—it is a uniquely human experience that is best understood firsthand. Isn’t it funny that the words “I love you”, which only takes a mere few seconds to say, takes us so long to truly comprehend?
You put the U in Unproductive!
Since you’ve gone, I’ve been lost without a trace
The Police, Every Breath You Take
I dream at night, I can only see your face
I look around, but it’s you I can’t replace
I feel so cold, and I long for your embrace
I keep crying, baby, baby please
As baseless as your passions are, this wave has the potential to wash you far, far, away from the shores of academia and social life. While your feelings may not truly be that of ‘love’, they still hold great importance to us, and should your feelings be unreciprocated, you will most definitely be in a pickle. Personally, I cannot count the number of times a friend has come crying to me about their crush/boyfriend/situationship/friend-who-keeps-giving-me-hints-but-might-not-actually-like-me/et cetera.
After all, we are human, sculpted from flesh and blood, and our feelings are often the main director of our decisions. It is only natural that you might not have the will to watch your lectures, or prepare for tutorials, after whatever new conundrum you’ve found yourself in with your (insert title). Analysing romantic (not Romantics) poetry exacerbates your heartbreak, and watching Chemistry lectures only remind you of your Oxygen-Neon.
Now, this is where love gets…unproductive. In the end, we are still students, and the ultimate goal is not, in fact, the Registry of Marriages, but the GCE A-Levels. I think we can agree that crying over your lecture notes might not be the most efficient way to annotate them (rather, they might blur the ink). And it’s not just limited to an inability to stop thinking about the other person. Whether it’s breakups, rejections, or plain toxic relationships, they all have the ability to break your Locked-In streak.
Taking the L in Learning, not loss
Yet is this to say we must avoid our feelings in JC like the plague? No, for that’ll be fighting against our human desire to love and want to be loved.
And we can’t fight nature. We can’t fight change. We can’t fight our feelings for someone else if they arise. But what you can do is understand it. If you fall for someone else, understand the difference between love and infatuation. These are two completely different things.
Talk to your friends, family and other trusted personnel. Get an outsider’s view of your feelings in order to make sense of them. You can even try to get to know your crush as an individual. There’s a high chance your feelings of love might just be infatuation.
This is when you need to snap out of your delusions. How you do it varies from person to person. Some people might completely avoid their crush. Others might seek to interact more with their crush to better understand them. And don’t forget, the gym is always here for you!
But, if you’re convinced these feelings you hold are love, then dream, chase and love all you can, albeit in a respectful way.
We only live once, and you’ll never be studying for your A-Levels while in love again. Teenagehood is the time of your lives to try. If your crush reciprocates, good for you—but if he/she doesn’t, don’t hold any hard feelings.
Living is a learning experience, and loving is no different. Although heartbreak is painful, through this pain you’ll rise like a phoenix from the ashes, gaining invaluable experience and self awareness. You’ll figure out what you want from a partner, what you need in a romantic relationship, and if nothing else, you’ll leave with memories.
“Tis’ better to have loved and lost than to never love at all.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson