Day 230: Tenderness

Tenderness by Robert Cormier.  ISBN: 9780385322867.

I talked yesterday about how I identified with Lori.  Today I'll talk about how we differ.  Lori has infatuations, infatuations that only last as long as it takes for her to find the object of her infatuation and kiss him.  Although I certainly had crushes in the past, they didn't tend to end so quickly or dis/appear for as little reason as Lori's.  In fact, I never really understood girls who were boy crazy, it seemed strange to me to like one guy one week and another the next week.

Most of my crushes actually tended to be on my friends.  They were the people I spent the most time with, the people I knew the best, and they usually had at least some interest in my well being.  I have obviously been attracted to people I don't know before -- that's one of the ways we get to know people, through the initial attraction and desire to learn more about them.  This has worked with both men and women, although sometimes for different reasons.  But to me a crush was never something that came and went with the breeze, that was an infatuation.  And I never really experienced infatuations.

I also didn't let my crushes get in the way of pursuing other relationships.  Most of the friends I had crushes on showed no interest in pursuing more than a friendship with me.  While it was sometimes difficult to deal with, I never let it affect my life negatively or prevent me from being physical with someone else. I don't know if this is normal or not, I might have turned out differently if I had more female friends.  I might have been more prone to the constant switching of affections if I had to be concerned with who my best friend liked/was dating, but since I didn't have to worry about that.  I was at least free to like who I wanted, even if I had to experience the crushing pain of watching them go out with someone else, but at least I knew my relationship would last longer and I didn't have to worry about losing friends because we happened to like the same people.

Thank god I'm an adult now and my hormones have calmed down to the point where I don't get crushes anymore.  Seriously, you could not pay me to be 14-20 again, youth is way overrated.

I more or less agree with this review from Goodreads.  More book bloggers need to read and review this one, I was disappointed with the lack of reviews!