DEAR HARRIETTE: I have had a crush on this guy for years. We became friends and started seeing each other, but after a while it just felt like he lost interest, and we fell off. We stopped talking and seeing each other. Since then I’ve remained single, and every few months we reconnect and talk for a while, but it's not long before we fall off again.
Sometimes I get so disappointed about nothing changing between us that I block him to keep him off my mind, but I always end up looking him up again just to see that he has left me a message during the time I’ve written him off. I don’t want to stay in this circle of getting my hopes up waiting for his feelings to change. What can I do to fight the urge to look back and stop revisiting something that will never happen? -- Waiting on Nothing
DEAR WAITING ON NOTHING: You need to do a self-evaluation. What do you want, and what do you believe you deserve? Crushing on someone almost always means that it is one-sided. Your obsession, lust and curiosity about this man seem to be clouding your vision of reality.
What can you do? You can speak directly to him, state the obvious -- that you like him -- and ask him if he wants to give it a go. If he waffles or otherwise does not commit (which is likely, based on your history), step away. Stop searching for him. Stop longing for him. Give yourself the mental and emotional space to be available to someone who may truly want to be with you.