Coaches Don't Play

I've had this thought stuck in my head for weeks now, so let me just get it out before it rots.

And before anyone says "you're seventeen, what do you even know about love" — yeah, I know how old I am. I'm not talking about marriage or soulmates or any of that. I'm not even talking about some old-timey version of romance where people wrote letters and waited months for a reply. I'm talking about the small stuff. The stomach-flip-for-no-reason stuff. The kind of thing that keeps you up at night and waiting in the day. Phone buzzes, and for half a second, before you even check, you're hoping it's them.

That's what I mean by romance. And I think we've genuinely lost the plot on it. Because this is basically what "talking to someone" looks like now:

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You're cute."

"Wanna date?"

Like my god, what happened to everything in between? Where did actually knowing a person go? We've decided that someone saying yes is proof enough that something real is happening, and I don't get how that logic works. If a person I don't like that way asked me out tomorrow, I'm not suddenly going to feel differently just because they asked. I'd say thank you, I'm flattered, but no. That's a completely normal reaction. So why do we treat "they agreed to date" like it's the whole relationship, instead of the start of one?

I want to know what makes someone laugh before I know what they look like in a couple's photo. What they order at a café without thinking. What they wanted to be when they were a kid. Their worst subject. The stories they only tell people they actually trust. That's the part that's supposed to be fun — we've just skipped straight past it to get to the label.

Which brings me to situationships, which I genuinely think is one of the dumbest concepts human beings have ever agreed to participate in. Try explaining it to someone older than thirty:

"So are you two dating?"

"No."

"Friends, then?"

"Also no."

"...What are you?"

"We talk every day. We get jealous. We act like a couple. We just never say it out loud, so technically neither of us owes the other anything, even though we both expect everything."

I mean. Come on.

And then there's the version of this that's even more unhinged — where two people haven't even spoken, but you've made eye contact a few times and they replied to one of your stories with a laughing emoji, and somehow you've already learned their entire Spotify Wrapped, found out where they went on vacation three years ago, and nearly had a heart attack after accidentally liking a photo of theirs from 2022. They don't know your last name. I am guilty as charged. I will find out what their Pinterest is, what they listen to, just to create weird delusions in my head. It's not even funny because then you romanticise it so much that you actually just like the Idea of them and not the person. 

Your friends know more about your crush than your crush knows about you. That's the actual tragedy of it. Also, I have the worst friends in such cases. Anytime whoever I like passes us by, they will poke my ribs and giggle like idiots. Like okay go, go uske muh pe bol de ek kaam kar. The other day we were at a cafe, and I picked up a book from a table where later a group of guys were sitting. Out of all of them, there was one guy, decently good-looking, well dressed, with a sweet smile, and when I told them this, these idiots began giggling as if I was gonna ask him to marry me. Later, one of these girls told me tu book rakh ke aa wapas wahan. I said okay. The second I started walking back, she started giggling, and I am pretty sure that dude saw it. 

And a one-sided crush is its own kind of exhausting, because nothing happens. Nothing at all. You don't talk unless you initiate conversations, you don't confess because of the what ifs, you just quietly exist in the same world as them while your brain treats every phone buzz like an event. Half the time it's just your best friend sending you a meme captioned "send to the ugliest person you know" — which, fair, I am that friend too — but you still check. Every time. Just in case. At times when you do get a reply, everything around is just blurry, and your heart drops, mine does. 

There's also something deeply stupid about how a crush comes with a built-in soundtrack. You talk to someone twice, and suddenly every song on your regular playlist sounds like it was written about the two of you. One "see you tomorrow" and you're staring out a car window pretending you're in a music video. It's embarrassing to admit, but it's also kind of the best part of being this age. Like Ambika, why are you relating to Bringing on a heartbreak so much? You haven't even had one.

Then comes the overthinking, which honestly deserves its own separate blog. Why did they reply in two minutes yesterday and forty today? Why did they use one exclamation mark instead of the usual two? Why a heart reaction instead of the laughing one? You start analysing punctuation like it's a property document.

Speaking of texting — can someone explain the whole leaving-people-on-delivered thing? Because I've watched people post stories, upload a whole photo dump, comment on five other posts, and still somehow not reply to a message from hours ago. And we've decided that's not rude; it's just "playing it cool." I don't buy it. If I have my phone in my hand and you text me, I'm going to answer, because that's what a conversation is. Somewhere along the way we all agreed that caring is embarrassing and not caring is attractive, and I still don't understand who came up with that rule or why we all just accepted it.

It's not even a one-sided thing either — everyone's doing it. Guys are scared of looking too interested, girls are scared of looking too interested, so nobody says anything, nobody flirts first, and everyone just stares at each other's Instagram stories hoping the other person will magically get the hint.

Because here's what I actually want, and it's not complicated. I don't want a big gesture. No guitar outside my window, no proposal in the middle of a hallway, please, actually, don't. I just want someone to talk to me like a person. Tell me about your day. Argue with me about pineapple on pizza. Tell me why you hate a subject I love. Ask me why I know every word to a song from before either of us was born. Be my friend before you try to be anything else.

That's the part that feels missing lately — nobody wants to be friends first anymore. Nobody wants to stay up talking about nothing until it's suddenly 1 a.m. Everyone wants to skip to the relationship without doing any of the work that makes a relationship worth having.

And honestly, dates themselves aren't even the romantic part. You go to a café, you eat, you walk around, maybe someone hopes for a kiss at the end. That's fine, but that's not what gets me. The part I actually love is everything before it: wondering if they'll text first, smiling at your phone for no reason, inventing an excuse to talk to them, "accidentally" walking past their classroom. Your friends turning into detectives on your behalf. "Did you see how he looked at you?" "No." "I did." All of it means nothing on its own, and then one day it somehow means everything.

More often than not, it is just fuelled delusions. I've realised when you're bored out of your brain, any person you slightly vibe with who's not a friend, but an acquaintance, but you don't fully know them, but you do, you start having this crush. When it actually comes to doing something about it, you can't because deep inside you know you dont want a relationship that way.  It is mindless. It is fun, but then it gets too much. SO KEEP YOURSELVES BUSY. Amidst that, if you have someone, then maybe it's actually real.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Maybe I just expect too much out of people my own age. But I don't think wanting a real conversation instead of a one-word text is asking for too much. I don't think wanting someone to actually show they're interested, instead of performing indifference, is old news either. Love — or even just a stupid little crush — shouldn't feel like something you're constantly stressed about. It should feel like something quiet that sneaks up on you and turns an ordinary week into a story you laugh about later.

Romance isn't dead. Maybe we're just impatient. We want the relationship before we've earned the friendship, the label before the laughter, the ending before we've even spoken two flirty words. And maybe that's exactly why everyone our age feels so tired of the whole thing; we keep skipping to the romanticised parts that were never actually the point.

I am crushless right now. Navratri is coming; maybe I'll find an eyecandy then. hehehe. 

buh bye

As Ever,

Ambika