All it needs is two people for the stage to set in.
And the drama begins!
Evolving from Attraction to Butterflies
Attraction, in sometime, can take us to the most magical phase that can happen in a relationship – what’s poetically been described as ‘butterflies giggling in the tummy’. Perhaps, you don’t know the person well yet; where he hails from or what his past was. But it doesn’t deter the anxiety when thoughts about him get past through you. It’s a new experience. You might not be thinking yet about commitment or marriage. But when his picture flashes on your phone’s screen, when there’s that momentary pause after you type that flirty message, when you hear someone call his name, when you picture yourself standing next to him, when you go over your name with his – you just can’t help hiding that little sheepish smile on your face. That’s the magic butterflies does!
It might be that you spent a whole lot of Sunday rehearsing in your mind every word of the 1000s of the words that you would want to speak to him. But when Monday arrives and he’s near you, it feels as if you were never prepared to face him yet. It’s a war between your dignity and stupidity; between what you feel and what you don’t want him to see, yet know. And when you definitely wouldn’t want others to see through this silly, clumsy feeling of your’s, you try to over act or blush all your hormones out on your face. Blame it on Serotonin or blame it on Dopamine, attempting to handle the butterflies in the presence of that one person and in addition, in a group, could be one of the big embarrassing moments of your lifetime.
The thrill of the butterflies is addictive and you wouldn’t mind to give up what in exchange of the thrill. It’s alright to wait. It’s alright to take the long route. It’s alright to be easy on your wallet. It’s alright to ditch that good old friend. It’s alright to ask for an excuse. It’s alright to learn something new. It’s alright to skip a meal. It’s alright to beg, borrow or steal. It’s all alright because butterflies put your fairy tale version on where you are the only prince and she the only princess!
All through the night, you’ve been singing, dancing, laughing and shying away with him in your imagination yet the new day begins and you have to put an act as though you are happy to ignore him. When he’s around, you tend to get careful not to take your eyes in his direction. It is like avoiding a magnetic field lest once your gaze is anywhere close to it, you would be instantly pulled into it which could take a few seconds of fight to drag yourself out of it. And the fear that those few seconds are enough to expose your most vulnerable self is what I would equate to what the butterflies do!
I was seventeen when for the first time I had a crush on a guy. If you have ever stayed in a college hostel, you would know how the girly talks on crushes in a girl’s hostel can shape relationships. On an eventful evening my friends planned a perfect idea of how I am going to create an excuse to begin a casual conversation with him the next day. Aghast to what had been planned, the next day morning he came fast approaching me, blocked my way and asked me a question. Phew! I felt sealed, from head to toe! Whatever reflex my nervous system was supposed to trigger failed badly. The butterflies were let out fluttering without a warning and they wouldn’t let me get connected back to the scene’s coherence. I wanted to scream at my friends for not educating me about trouble shooting. So awkward it felt that I remember it as the most stupid self of me in front of a crush. LoL!
Strangely, after this incident, we had silently held onto this crush thing for all of those three years without attempting again to talk to each other. Haha and Awh! Staying unapproachable from each other is a sure way to keep the butterflies alive. Several years later, we once met accidentally on the road. And it just took a few minutes for us to exchange describing the butterflies we had felt for each other, laughing all our way to a book shop. Apparently, when the butterflies for a particular person dies away, it shall become a matter of good pun 🙂 It was a time in life when he was recovering back from ‘multiple relationship failure’, he said, perhaps, it was God’s way to soothe a dying soul with life’s nice old memories.
If you are going through one of those ‘butterfly’ stages in life, I would say hold on to it and cherish it as long as it can go. Like all good things the buzz of the butterflies shall disappear sooner. Don’t get yourself in a rush to break the ice. You might think jumping onto a relationship is more thrilling but you see, grass is always greener the other side. Sometimes, commitment can wait which sadly one would realize only when the butterflies are undergoing a near-death experience.
Yeah, from butterflies, let’s head on to C for Commitment tomorrow. Until then, keep smiling over the feeling of your first butterflies.
Other posts in the A to Z series:
The Mr. & The Mrs. – The Evolution
A for Attraction – Why we fall in for Who we fall in?
Images Courtesy
Header Image – HD Wallpaper
Quotes – World by Quotes
Girl Sitting Alone – Pixabay