Ryan 
Have a question for Ryan? Write into Dear Ryan using the Contact Us form on our website or through his email: ryanm21@illinois.edu
Dear Ryan,
Have you ever been in love?
I don’t think I have. And I am certainly not claiming that I am now. But recently, I met a beautiful girl, heard her laugh, and despite myself, a bashful grin stayed with me the entire walk home.
She has a boyfriend. They’ve been dating for a WHILE. He seems fine, good even. I wish I could say that I’d be saving her from a horrible man, but that is not the case. I just wish it were me. I know I am being selfish and really need to let it go.
Despite that knowledge, I don’t think I have ever wanted anything more.
Sincerely,
Hopeless
TO MY HOPELESS FRIEND IN HIS TIME OF NEED:
You’ve entrusted me with an incredibly abstract question that no one will be able to answer in such a way that you’ll feel resolved and at peace. Next time, I hope you hit me with a more actionable query, such as “Where can my eldest son find his misplaced blowgun?”, or “How can I more effectively irrigate my farm without carrying jugs of water all the way from the river?”. I could give you more examples, but you get the point. These questions that I’ve given you will actually be essential to your survival and also won’t make you wallow in self-pity. When the bombs fall and the uber-elite Palantir-Epstein-Reptile class either blast off into space or seal themselves in their underground bunkers, us common folk will regress to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and maybe then and only then you’ll realize the absolute buffoonery of your question. The CR’s publishing schedule is known to be unpredictable at best, and I only get to answer like one question every month.
Nevertheless, Dear Ryan is a column that I’m proud to say can always be used as a last resort for the disenfranchised and the hopeless, us common folk who will not be able to relocate up into space or down into bunkers. And as useless as the following advice might be, no one can say I didn’t try. When the Great Scorer tallies my credits and debits, he will say, “This common folkman, I can’t say he didn’t try and help his hopeless friend”. With this admittedly excessively long disclaimer out of the way, I’ll give you my thoughts on Cupid’s Arrows, although I feel you’ll still be left with feelings of self-loathing, yearning and jealousy no matter what I say.
First of all, it’s important to clarify that the young, fleeting thing that you describe is NOT Real Love. At least not in the way Real Love is depicted in Shakespeare’s plays or in Shrek (2001) or in Eddie Murphy’s Norbit (2007). These sorts of picturesque romances simply don’t unfold in reality the way they do in fiction. Even as a relatively well-adjusted-psychologically-stable eligible bachelor (similar to yourself, I imagine), I find myself falling in love on a weekly basis, almost every weekend. Sometimes every couple days. I end up talking to someone, briefly imagining a future where we get married and raise kids and grow old together, and then forget about them, usually within a ~48 hour timespan. Oftentimes it’s a stranger on the quad. Other times it’s a slow burn, such as when the lady in question is a mysterious and attractive girl with cool hair who sits near you in class. But they too eventually go the way of the other muses: the inciting event occurs, the pedestal is raised to gigantic heights, and it eventually must crumble, finally to be replaced by someone new.
None of these passing fantasies have any real substance, but I don’t have free will in creating them. I don’t claim to be an evolutionary biologist, but even I’m aware that on some subconscious level this dynamic is the result of our shared ancestry with primates. We seek out romance and romantic relationships not because we’re lonely or to fill a void or to lead a holistic life, but because it is in our programming to do so. I’m currently enrolled in Computer Science 105 this semester, which makes me an extremely credible source of information on code and all things code-related. And as complex as the human code might be, no one is immune from the demons of bad-decision causing hormones, the kind that led you to ask this question in the first place.
I’ll save you from all the “fish-in-the-sea” cliches and get straight to the point: think about her laugh with a bashful grin on your face for as long as you want, but eventually it will fade from your memory, as will her face and her voice and all the rest of her mannerisms. Eventually you’ll even stop looking at the Instagram. You say that you’ve never wanted anything more, but I encourage you to wait a week and see if you still feel the same.
Which isn’t to say this is a bad thing. At some point, you’re likely bound to encounter the fabled “The One” and you’ll probably get married at some point and mortgage a house and have kids and blah blah blah. I think the main takeaway here is that you shouldn’t allow yourself to hyperfixate on your most recent beloved, but rather accept your situation and enjoy life as it’s happening to you. Unless your obsession is something cool like playing electric guitar or solving a Rubik’s Cube really fast, it’s not worth the time and stress that it already has and will continue to cause you. Take pleasure in the things that bring you joy, and the rest will inevitably fall into place.
I leave you with two relevant excerpts I’m fond of from Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise:
"May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."
"We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function."
Best of luck, Old Sport,
– Ryan W. M.
A Tale From Abroad