Scarleteen

So, I read something (probably false) about how if you have a crush on someone for more than four months you're in love. Does that sound right to anyone, or just clickbait? Because I've had a crush on a girl for more than four months and I'm not in love with her

I think you definitely can be in love with someone after four months but I don't think there's a definitive amount of time before you love someone. Everyone's different and we all love differently. There has been a study done that if you look someone in the eye for so many minutes (I forget the exact number) that the chemicals in your brain react the same way as if you were looking at someone you're in love with.

Hi Catherwren,

I agree with BookBelle, while it's totally possible to have a crush morph into a deeper emotion after four months, having it sustained for that length of time doesn't automatically mean love.

It can also help to think of love as being a more varied emotion than we give it credit for. Romantic love is strong, but we can also feel love for our family and friends that's just as intense. Love is about your specific feelings about someone, not about the length of time you've been interested in them.

It's all going to depend on how someone defines their own feelings.
Personally, I would say that you can't love a person without actually interacting with them on a fairly close level, but you can definitely have a crush on someone without that interaction. So if I had a crush on someone I couldn't interact with closely, or chose not to (like the seniors in high school I had big crushes on when I was a freshman, or my homeroom teacher when I was in seventh grade), I would not call it love no matter how long it went on.

I know a few folks have weighed in here already, but I think anything that sets an absolute timeframe on when love happens, or really gives any universal judgment about how x or y means you're in love with someone, is information you can take with a huge grain of salt. You're the best expert of your own feelings, too; if you say you aren't in love with someone it would be pretty silly for anyone else to tell you otherwise!