Several years ago, when I started this blog I wrote about Fantasy Fallback Crushes. (https://blatherbabe.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/the-deep-lush-soul-of-an-irishman/) A fantasy fallback crush is a person you fantasize about when you’re going through a break-up, or a dry period, or maybe you’re just bored and need someone handsome to think about. The fantasy part is paramount, especially in the case of a break-up: you don’t want someone too available.You want someone to remind you that you can feel those feelings again, that tingle, that swoon that tells you you’re still alive…but, if you’ve recently had your heart broken, you don’t want that person to be too accessible, because the fantasy is healing, but turning that fantasy into reality may just be too real for your shattered little heart.
I have a fantasy fallback crush. Well, actually I have two. The first one I ran into last September while I was still with the man who just broke my heart. This crush threw me for a loop: Why did I have a crush? I was in a committed relationship. This was so unlike me, I’m loyal as a dog, and never get crushes when I’m with someone…
After much pondering I came to the conclusion that this man was put in my life at that particular moment to show me what I was missing in my then current relationship: deep-seated happiness, no matter what situational sadness is there. Silliness, play, acceptance. A bunch of things I wasn’t getting in the relationship I was in. Now, that particular FFC may have only been put in my path for this reason, only time will tell on that, but, I have to say that the fantasy of him helped a lot starting six or seven weeks ago when the unhappy man I was with dumped me for a newer model…
Still, though, I started to think that perhaps I was putting too much emphasis in my lonely mind and munched up heart on this particular crush on this particular man. Perhaps it was time to open myself up to another fantasy fallback crush. Now, because of the dog-like loyalty I mentioned above, even having a second crush was a foreign concept to me, but I resolved to being open to it anyway…
Have any of you out there in blogland ever had a Fantasy Fallback Crush? Did it help you? What are some other things that helped you find joy and healing when your heart is crushed? Are there any that might help me, or others on the journey from hurt to healing?
So, here I am on a rainy Friday afternoon writing my first blog post in almost a year. The breakup was bad, so bad I couldn’t even write about it, not even in a journal…but here I am several weeks in and feeling better, stronger, more like the person I am instead of the mess I’d become. (situational sadness, ya know) Oh, and yeah, I do have a second FFC, a man who is, at the moment as brokenhearted as me, but who I’m secretly crushing on as we commiserate about our lost loves. Probably won’t come to anything but a deepened friendship, and that is fine, in the long run, because it’s fun and healing to feel those feelings again, as well as to have someone to talk to who really knows where I’m coming from. And vice-versa. I had a long talk with him last night and I’m certain we both felt the better for it.
Then, this morning, the first crush called…
Oh I DO Blather on, don't I?!? 
I have FFCs but I’m not usually the one with the crush. It’s more like, there are guys who have a crush on me, and I’m not really interested, but when my ego is getting a battering, the thought of them helps ‘I COULD go and flirt with so and so..’. These days, despite what my boyfriend thinks, I’m as loyal as a dog too, so I wouldn’t do it.
Yeah, I’m with you on that one…my community, the Renaissance Faire community (do you have anything like it in Oz, I wonder?) is big on flirting for the sake of flirting, but I’ve always found that to be highly disrespectful. Disrespectful of both the person you’re actually with, and disrespectful of the person you’re flirting with. To me, it’s a form of cheating, albeit it in a minor form. (and sometimes it ends up as a prelude to cheating).
Here I am online..visiting your blog before heading off into the wilderness again. You know, we do have Renaissance Faire type things but I’ve never had much to do with them, only for lack of time etc. However I saw a Real Life Druidess walking through a small town near my rural fastness recently – I was gobsmacked. Long white robe, bare feet, loose hair, and a wizardressy staff!!!
In my last neighborhood there was “Sleeping Bag Jesus”, a crazy homeless guy. That’s the closest I ever got to an actual Druidess. 😜