Kids, the other day, I gave a friend of mine a ride from the garage. Do you know how she repaid me? By asking me an incredibly personal question. She asked, “Who do you have a crush on right now?”

I mean, she is one of my best friends in the world, so she really does have every right to ask that kind of question. But what would make her think that I have a crush on anyone at this particular juncture? Because I don’t.

Actually, the conversation began when she asked me if I still had a thing for someone I had a thing for a couple years ago. My answer to that was, emphatically, no. Not for a very long time.

And that led her to, I assume, the assumption that I must be crushing on someone at the moment. The answer to that, too, emphatically, is no.

Because, what’s the point of having a crush? On anyone? At any time?

Let’s look at the history, shall we? I’ll not use names, so as not to implicate anyone in my past in the horrific knowledge that I had a crush on them.

There was the high school crush. But I never acted on that. Because I was terrified to talk to her. In fact, it was mostly just enough for me that she even knew my name and called me by it on the rarest of occasions.

There were a couple of girls in college that I had a thing for. But they both insisted that we should just be friends. Not the last time I’d hear that.

There was this girl after college. We were really good friends. And she kept me on the hook for a really long time. Because I made her feel good about herself. And no matter how many ways I let her know how I really felt about her, she never acknowledged those feelings, much less reciprocated them.

After that, I stopped trying to fall for any women that I was “friends” with. While I was working for the bank, there was the Girl in the White SUV and the Spider-Girl. When I tried to act on the crush on the Girl in the White SUV, she stopped coming to our bank. With Spider-Girl, the timing was off. She said she’d go out with me. And then I moved back to Virginia.

There have been a couple of girls that I’ve had a crush on since being back in Virginia. One moved away. The other gave me that “friends” speech again. Gets easier to deal with every time you hear it, by the way.

That is the highly compressed version of my love life from adolescence on. Or lack thereof. And I can happily say that I am living a crush-free existence these days.

You know why? Because, when has the crush ever led to anything good for me? It leads to sweaty palms and a nervous stomach. Then it leads to rejection or some version of the “let’s be friends” speech that the object of my crush rarely (if ever) means.

Y’all, I know this is an incredibly pessimistic blog post. And it probably sounds a lot like I don’t believe in the existence of true love. Of course I believe in love. It’s out there. I just don’t think having a significant other who loves me in return is something that I’m cut out for.

And that’s okay. I’ve never truly believed in soul mates. But if such things exist, maybe not everyone gets one.

Though, I guess if I ever decide it’s something that I want, it’ll have to be when I decide that I’m willing to pay for a three month subscription to some kind of online dating service. But that kind of thing is nowhere near my radar.