This leads into a few paragraphs describing how everyone will have crushes from time to time (which is true) and how hard it is to train your mind not to dwell on a crush.  I don’t remember my crushes being all-consuming, but I had a lot of things to keep me busy between school and sports when I was in junior high followed by harder classes and extracurricular activities in high school.  This meant that I didn’t have a lot of extra time to think about my romantic interests outside of when we were interacting.

• I find 13-year-old Sarah’s attraction to a “strong Christian leader” who is 15 or 16 years old absolutely adorable.  That’s such a normal 13-year-old thing to do!  (Well, maybe not the “strong Christian leader” bit, but I’ve had crushes on equally flimsy footing before.)
• I was pretty embarrassed about having crushes – but not because I was too young to get married.  A crush is an intensely personal experience and I was acutely aware that my view of Matt or Jason or Patrick was not shared by the entirety of human kind.  The embarrassment phase passed quickly for me because my parents and friends didn’t tease or bother me about my crushes.
• For me, the issue wasn’t that I didn’t want anyone to know how I felt; it was that I had no idea how to explain how intensely I felt attracted to Scott or David or whoever.  There are just not enough adjectives and adverbs in the English language to describe how floatingly giddy I felt when I was around my newest crush.
• Like Sarah, I completely believed that I could avoid anyone knowing when I had a crush by keeping my cards close to my chest.   Looking back, the only person that tactic fooled was myself – and I’m willing to bet that no one was fooled by Sarah’s tricks either.

“But inwardly I was struggling. Even though I didn’t see him very often, I frequently found myself wondering when I might see him again and questioning if he could be the right one for me. I remember that when I would practice the piano, ride my bike, or have spare time, I would frequently be struggling with these thoughts and asking the Lord to help me not be so distracted.

A few years later I got to know this young man a little bit better and realize he was definitely not the right one for me. I lost interest, but I wondered when my next crush might happen and if I would be able to handle it any better (pg. 93)

• Ironically, 26-year-old Sarah isn’t much better at putting the dots together than she was at 13.
  • The best way to keep a crush going is to never interact with the person you have a crush on at all.  I’ve had a crush on Geordi LaForge for Star Trek: The Next Generation for 20 years or so.  He’s smart, handsome and imaginary so I never have to deal with any of the annoyances of finding out the flaws and irritations that come with real people.
  • Conversely, the fastest way to get rid of a crush is to spend a lot of time with the person you have a crush on.  Everyone has really annoying habits and quirks.  Since a crush is predicated on having the ideal romantic partner, finding out your crush has the table manners of a hyena or sniffles all the time can do a lot to end a crush.
• The last paragraph is inadvertently terrifying.  First, it implies that Sarah kept a candle burning for this guy for three years at least!  Second, she only had a single crush on that one guy in those three years.  I’m chalking that as another unintended example of how lonely her life was as a home schooled teenager with two siblings in Iowa; it sounds like she didn’t meet enough guys to have more than one crush.
• For me, having crushes on real guys disappeared pretty rapidly in my late teens because I had no exposure to Emo Pure doctrines.  I had plenty of male friends.  When I found myself highly attracted to a guy – friend or not – I could get to know him better without obsessing over giving pieces of my heart away.  On top of that, I could date.  That means I didn’t have to keep my expectations low while waiting for my crush to notice me, become marriage-eligible, and get my father’s approval before finding out that my crush bores me to death.

• I don’t think that it is a good idea to chat with your parents about a crush if you feel scared at the prospect of doing so.  That’s a sign something the kid is picking up on something being off in their family dynamic.
• I know lists are supposed to have at least three items, but the prayers of a parent do not become magically more effective when the parent is sure that their kid has a crush on their classmate instead of being mostly sure.
• Talking about your crush may lighten the intensity – but so will doing almost anything!  Crushes are most intense when a person sits around and broods on the subject alone and least intense when the person is doing a captivating activity.
• Crushes do not require a chat about your kid’s future since crushes dissipate once your kid gets to know their crush better.  Plus, that’s bringing an AK-47 to a longbow archery demonstration in terms of overkill.
• When your children are infants, parents can plan just about every aspect of their lives.  By the time your children are teenagers, parents guide and facilitate the teen’s plans for their lives.  If your kids are old enough to be considering marriage, parents need to have stopped planning their offspring’s lives for them – and that includes detailing who the parents thought the kid should marry.  After all, CP/QF is a small, insular community.  Describing the type of person a parent thinks the kid should marry has a huge overlap with saying “I’ve always thought you would marry Billy-Bob’s son Jimbo”.
• Nothing says placing your daughter’s interests first like trying to get to know her romantic interest if an opportunity happens to appear.  Getting to know a person with the undeclared intent of figuring out if they are good marriage material for your child is so creepy – and generally a case of putting the cart before the horse since the other person has not expressed an interest yet!
• Taking your brother’s advice on dating can make sense if your brother has enough life experience.  Sarah Mally was 26 when this book was written and Stephen is about 6 years younger than her.   I might have taken my younger brother’s advice on if he liked my boyfriend when he was 20, but only in terms of “my boyfriend is non-crazy, right?”  Since this book seems to be written for girls in their teens, I would hope that Sarah Mally wasn’t sending her 13 year old brother out to do recon on her crushes when she was 18 because that’s just odd.

This whole book is about ways to avoid interacting with guys, honestly.  There is a palpable sense of relief in each anecdote when Sarah has collected enough negative information from her family to shut down any more contact with a specific guy.   That theme reaches back into the allegory for the last few chapters as well; Sir Eloquence’s main flaw was that he was attracted to the Princess – the rest of the negatives about Sir Eloquence were based on the King’s gut feeling that Sir Eloquence was not telling the truth.  Likewise, Sir Valiant’s only demonstrated virtue is that we are not certain he knows the Princess exists.   That’s one of the largest flaws in raising kids to value Emo-Pure.  When a person has been raised to fear accidentally giving away a chunk of their heart, reaching out to form a bond with a romantic partner can be impossible.

The next chapter is titled “When God Says To Wait” which feels redundant to me; the Princess has spent five chapters waiting around the castle daydreaming already.