6 Women Explain How They Confessed Their Crushes

For the most part, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is an absolute delight. However, there’s one part that’s more like a horror movie than a rom-com: the part when Lara Jean Covey’s little sister Kitty actually sends the letters Lara Jean has written to her crushes. They were supposed to be secret! Cue Psycho stabbing sound effects. It’s simply excruciating.

But, spoiler: Everything works out (more than) alright in the end. It made us think that maybe confessing one’s love isn’t such a bad thing after all. We asked five brave souls to tell us their crush-confession stories, spanning from the traumatizing to the Lara Jean-esque.

When he gets back to you…11 years later

I wrote my crush a letter in the third grade and sent it asking if he wanted to be my boyfriend before he moved away to Germany. Then during my sophomore year of college (11 years later) he sent me a letter VIA SNAIL MAIL to my DORM with the original letter enclosed and a note that said, “I just moved back, let’s do it.” I think he’d DMed my BFF, who was also in our third-grade class and who I’m still BFFs with today. It ended up not going well, but wow—it’s still the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me . —Holly, 23

AIM for my love 😉

When I was 13, I met my now fiancé at a wedding. He had shaggy hair, which I guess was all the rage in 2007, when I was a nice little scene-wannabe child. But also I found out he had just been broken up with, so he was sad at a wedding and very quiet and that was sort of endearing. My cousin asked if I liked someone later that night and went through everyone I met that day listing them off. When she got to my fiancé, I just turned red and she was like, “Wow.” I said “What? I think he’s nice.” And the next day at the reception she was like “Hey, Nishat thinks you’re nice.”

13-year-old me was very shook. But we talked (on AIM!!!!!!! RIP) for that entire summer. Once the wedding was over we connected over AIM and literally would sometimes stay up until 5 A.M. talking to each other. I thought he was so cool because he was 16 (and I was 13 at the time) and he was applying to jobs (at grocery stores, LOL).

We come from very, very different worlds. I lived in Europe at the time (I was just in the US for the summer visiting family). So we maintained a long-distance relationship for the entirety of my high school years—to the point where many of our friends questioned whether we were in a real relationship. Like, no, we aren’t being catfished! We met in real life first!

We both saved up money so he could fly to Europe to visit me and my family. And then he came to prom with me! It was wild! —Nishat, 24

And now we’re married!

I met him kind of randomly—when I was 16 at a dinner party my parents were invited to, and we were at the kids’ table. I just had an immediate crush on him. He had the cutest smile and dimples, and I was quite surprised at how easy he was to talk to.

During my freshman year orientation, I sent him a photo of my new student ID, and he complimented it. I meant to text my sister, “Wow, he called me pretty in my student ID photo!”…except I sent that to him. Anyway, we got married in July. —Aamina, 23

Quit playing soccer with my heart

When I was in third grade, I wrote a note to my crush and drew a soccer ball on it. He was new to the school and played soccer—so I thought I was being cute! I wish I could remember what it said, but it was traumatizing, to be honest.

I put it in my desk, but we had open, hollow desks, so anyone could see inside them. A girl who was new at my school and just moved there from Argentina saw me writing the note. She took it from my desk and gave it to my crush, and he read it to everyone on the playground after recess and continued to read it in the stairwell when we were all walking back to class. His stepmom gave me his school picture though, at one point, because she knew I had a crush on him. —Alexis, 25

The Zefron-esque college paper editor

Back in college, I was on the paper. The news editor there had this great like, Zefron-like dark brown hair and the most piercing blue eyes. He was articulate and so passionate in the line-up meetings for the paper. I think we talked at the holiday party. He was single, but I never had the guts then to say I liked him. What was the point? I was going to Paris and I didn’t want to get attached to anyone.

Fast forward to February 2016. I went on a date and ended up getting hit by a bicyclist and breaking my arm; the guy ghosted me. So I was sitting in my apartment, very single, at rock bottom, and it was coming up on Valentine’s Day. And I thought—if someone had a crush on me back in college, I’d want to know. I would love it if I got a random message from someone saying they liked me way back when! He lives in DC, I’m in New York. So I thought, What the hell, I’m never going to see this guy.

So I sent him a Facebook message that said: I know it’s random, but I feel that when you think someone’s remarkable, they ought to know. I never told you in college, but I had the biggest crush on you. I was always wowed by your passion.

I felt embarrassed as soon as I sent the message, but in some ways it was liberating. I didn’t care if he replied—at least he knew. He replied a day later, writing, “Well, that is one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me—thanks so much! Congrats on all your success. If you are ever in DC, lets grab a coffee, and I’ll do the same if in NYC.”

Of course we haven’t seen each other and we haven’t talked since. But that was the best thing he could’ve said. He made me glad I found the courage to say it, even if it didn’t really make a big impact on my present. —Alyssa, 27

Open season on crush confessions!

I watched To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before last week and I could not stop thinking about how much of a Lara Jean I am, taking my crushes to the grave and being too afraid to admit to boys that I liked them, ever, for a litany of compounded reasons I won’t go into, but mostly because the two times I did ended JUST so badly.

The first time, I was young, maybe 13 or so. I told a boy named Tyler that I liked him. His reaction? To laugh in my face and then take that shit on the road—through the locker bay and down the hall. Needless to say, I didn’t feel all that comfortable admitting to boys that I liked them after that.

Until a few years ago, when there was a guy who was a friend. There was a lot of flirtation—he even invited me over to his place. After carving pumpkins and watching movies, we started to make out and things progressed accordingly. Before we got too physically invested, though, I stopped what we were doing and told him that I liked him and I wanted to take things slower for that reason. He proceeded to try and have sex with me four times that night and subsequent morning (I’d had a shitty sexual experience a month or two before—which I told him—and explained that that was why I didn’t want to just immediately jump into having sex with him), before sending me a Facebook message at 3 A.M. the next day explaining that he was a monster, and then never spoke to me again. That hurt my feelings quite a lot and made me step away from really attempting to date and be honest with guys about how I felt.

I’ve always been afraid that men would be embarrassed or made uncomfortable by the fact that I liked them, for an unending list of reasons. This, at 32, is embarrassingly shameful.

So I decided to do a weird experiment: Admit to the boys of my past that I used to like them—if they want to know. I’ve had two guys from high school reach out and ask, and neither of them was someone I had a crush on, so that aspect has been sorta funny. One of them said, “I’m not certain you knew me well enough to have a crush on me in high school or not. Feels conceited to consider it possible, while asking is an open invitation to embarrassment. My vanity and ego are struggling over here…” which I thought was pretty frank. —Alicia, 32