First of all, I just want to say that I’m really glad you said you wouldn’t mind if I answered this publicly. I actually get asks along these lines quite frequently, but everyone always requests that I answer in private because they’re embarrassed. Listen, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This sort of thing happens a lot more than you might think.
I’m also flattered because you think I have the skills to describe what love feels like. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Writers have been trying to get at it for thousands of years, and yet we have to keep trying because no one has ever quite done the feeling justice. Which is good for me, because if someone could describe love perfectly one time, I think maybe we wouldn’t have the need for writers anymore at all, and then where would I be? :)
I have been in love before, though. So this is what I can tell you about it, and it’s something that you already know: a racing heart and sweaty palms and butterflies can all be symptoms, but when you are in love, you don’t just get these things from looking at pictures of someone you’ve never met and imagining what it would be like to be around them. When you are in love with a person, you already know what it is like to be around them. Because as much as you love the person for who they are by themselves, you love them even more for who they are when they are with you, and how they make you feel about yourself by the way they act toward you. Do you see the difference? Interacting with the person comes first, and the love comes after that, because the love has everything to do with how you relate and react to each other, and not very much to do with your imagination.
When you feel like you’re in love with someone you’ve never actually met or interacted with, then that’s called a crush – or in some cases, an obsession. Obsession has a lot to do with your imagination. That’s when you see how a person reacts to someone else, and you imagine they’re reacting that way to you. You see them say or do things with other people, and you mentally substitute those people with yourself. When you spend a lot of time imagining being with someone (rather than actually being with that person), then you’re basing your entire love of them on something that is completely fabricated. This interaction isn’t real, and so the love that you feel isn’t real either – it has come from something that doesn’t actually exist. It may give you certain feelings, but those feelings are not the same as they would be if you knew the person in real life. They couldn’t be the same. You have no way of knowing that your real interaction would be in any way similar to what you’ve been imagining.
For example: What if you did meet Ed, and in person he was nothing like what you expected? What if he didn’t get your jokes, or you didn’t get his, or you didn’t understand what he was talking about most of the time, or one of you had a tendency to bore the other with long pointless stories, or if he often did an expression or said a phrase that reminded you exactly of a boy you used to know who picked on you in eighth grade? What if he didn’t know that a certain thing would really hurt your feelings and so he did it a lot until you finally explained to him that you didn’t like it, and then he acted like it was silly for that thing to hurt your feelings, and yeah, he stopped doing it, but it made him feel like he couldn’t be himself around you? What if he always left the cabinets standing open, or didn’t cover leftover food when he put it in the refrigerator? What if his friends didn’t like you at all, or if he told them your secrets and they started making jokes? What if you always felt like you had to be cooler than you really are, and you found yourself putting on an act around him all the time because you were afraid he wouldn’t really like you if he ever found out how nerdy your true self is? What if he reminded you of your brother, or your dad, or your dad’s boss?
I’m not saying any of this would necessarily happen with Ed. But every single thing I just listed has happened to me in relationships. And stuff like this may seem small, but it can make things pretty damn complicated. And when you get enough of that sort of thing from someone who seemed pretty great at first, then you start to realize that you’re not really in love with them after all, and the relationship ends up not working out. And the thing is, if you’d never interacted with the person, you wouldn’t have known any of it. They would just go on being perfect in your head, and you would go on thinking you were in love with them when really a relationship with that person might be the worst thing you could ever do to yourself – or to them.
Like I said, I feel like you already know all of this. You know you’re not really in love with this boy you’ve only ever seen on the internet and never even spoken to one time. This is the hardest thing to cope with, knowing that as much as you like him, it is all one sided, and every sweet thing he has ever done has been for someone else, and every nice thing he has said has been directed at someone else, and if he’s ever made you feel special, then it’s because you’re imagining a thing that isn’t real, and he has not had you in mind except in the way that he has millions of people in mind who he feels the exact same way about: his fans. You are just one of them, and there isn’t anything about you that has made you different from all of the rest.
Knowing this doesn’t make the feelings go away. I get that. You can know something to death and still never change the way you feel about it. I was in a violently abusive relationship for over ten years, and I knew after the first few months that I should leave, but knowing wasn’t nearly enough. You have to come to terms with the thing that you know. You have to accept it for what it really is. And once you’ve done that, that’s when you can move on.
I can’t tell you what it will take for you to move on from this. For some people, it’s a mind over matter thing. You get to a point where you realize you have to accept reality and move on, or you’ll be stuck in this toxic situation forever. That’s what happened with me. I got to such a low point that I started contemplating what the rest of my life would be like if I didn’t move on. And I didn’t want that for myself. So just one day, I said, fuck this. And I stopped being a doormat. For some people, it’s not a snap decision. For them, moving on is something that happens gradually over time, and they go through a lot of setbacks and a lot of chocolate before they get to a place that is healthier, both mentally and emotionally. Other people might have something that is somewhere in the middle. It depends on the person.
The point is that you have a choice. You can go on being miserable about this, or you can stop being miserable. But whether it takes a long time or a snap decision, you have to be the one who gets yourself out of your bad place. And it may be that there will never be a time that being a fan of Ed will be a fulfilling experience for you because you can’t stop yourself from wanting more. If that’s the case, then you should leave the fandom. Being a fan is not worth hurting yourself over. We would miss you, and you would miss fannishness, but if that’s what it takes to not be miserable anymore, then just go for it, full stop. Otherwise you’re choosing to be unhappy.
But it may be that you will eventually come to terms with your obsession and be able to move on without actually having to leave. I hope that’s what happens. Just make sure that whatever you choose, you are not basing your decision on reasons that aren’t real things, and are only in your head.
Yow, I just wrote a lot. I hope you know what I go through for you! I’m about to get some hate for posting an answer this long, but I feel like it’s an important problem to address in this fandom, because it happens so often. People keep falling for Ed. I’m going to tell him he should start being mean so it won’t happen anymore. :P
