Thanks for replying, Perna. I do talk to him - we used to be good friends when we were younger and usually we're still friendly towards each other - but I've never been out with him. The only times I see him outside school are at rehearsals for our violin teacher's string group, but he doesn't always talk to me then because he has other friends there.

So, talking to him isn't a problem, but having a relationship with him probably would be. For one thing, I'm scared to ask, in case he says no and it makes things very awkward between us. If that happened, I wouldn't be able to avoid him because he's in three of the same string groups as me - two at school - and I'd hate to give those up, especially as I run one of them myself! And, if he did say yes then I'd have to deal with people at school making a huge fuss about it - they did last time I tried dating at school - and again, if/when we split up it'd be very awkward as well.

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But if he's a "fantasy" like my college boyfriend I describe above, what does it hurt to have a crush on him (other than maybe taking your eyes off other possibilities)?

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> That's a good point. But it does hurt - it hurts seeing them together, it hurts knowing I missed my chance, it hurts knowing that I never would have had the courage to ask him out anyway so why was I wasting my time on him. I'm probably over-reacting, though - I'll just have to get used to it. This sort of thing is probably going to happen more than once!