"A Crush"

"There’s a reason that an early state of erotic attachment is called in English ‘a crush’: it crushes confidence, stability, intention. Intense attachment induces a nonsovereignty that confuses the habits of the pleasure, pain, and fantasy circuits."

—
Lauren Berlant, “Living with Negativity”
(via coocoolah)
I love the definition of the crush offered in “Techniques Against Optimism”

Ecstatic, embarrassing, anti-outcome forcefulness of the libido. The crush is a vector machine – without foundation or deceleration. A crush emerges as a strategy of self annihilation and as an offer to the other (who cannot be disclosed). The other must, in order for the crush to sustain its own energies, refuse to recognise the crush while at the same time receiving its intensity. Crushes are terroristic (insofar as their networks cruise) and communistic (insofar as their labours are for good of the more-than-one). A crush is a way to shuck the ego, leave it quivering.Technique for unbecoming: get a crush, let it rage.

(via processedlives)