I sympathize with you. I also had someone in my life that I had such strong, long lasting feelings for, but it never worked out or turned into anything, despite us sort of keeping in touch. I'm now very happy with my significant other, a totally different type of person from that "crush". I've put a lot of thoughts into these crushes and the nature of these very strong feelings for people who you only see from time to time yet can't forget.

1) If you have too much of a crush on someone, it's hard to behave authentically with them. Their opinion matters too much and you're too afraid of making a mistake. IMO this dooms any possible relationship. It's better finding someone you can be yourself around. With my significant other, there was no crush at the beginning at all--we were just casual friends and gradually got closer by naturally reciprocating invitations to things in a very low pressure way. IMO that's why we're able to be so close now and know each other so well.

2) Holding onto those crush feelings can prevent you from meeting the person who is actually perfect for you. That's something I started reminding myself of, years ago, when I finally just wanted to get over it. That there might actually be someone out there who was actually perfect for me, and my stubbornly holding onto my feelings for this old crush was preventing me from getting there.

3) Take the fact that you have such feelings simply as a sign that you can still love/be excited about a person. That is, not a sign that that's the only person you'll ever love, just that you're still capable of it.


I hope some of this is helpful to you... I've been there. I'm happy to say that after harboring these crazy strong feelings for my crush for so many years, I'm finally over it. I'm not even sure I would take a call from him if he were to resurface. I'm just so over it.