Dear Sallie: Fallen For My Tutor

All your life’s questions answered by Sallie, The Saint’s delightfully mysterious Agony Aunt. Submit your questions anonymously to Sallie on our Instagram or our website!

Dear Sallie,

Have you ever fallen for someone you can’t have? I thought my tutor was kind of cute ONCE… and now I can’t stop dreaming about him! What should I do?

Sincerely,

Hopeless Romantic Fresher

Dear Hopeless Romantic Fresher,

Oh, please… who hasn’t had the hot teacher fantasy? Naughty pupils everywhere fall into this particular trap day after day when their musings get out of hand. Perhaps you even have some interesting ideas about the multiple purposes of rulers out of academic contexts.

I get it. I truly do. Good-looking tutors are somewhat of a rarity at this university, and I say this with all the love in the world. I have nothing against academics at all — who doesn’t love a good Hugh Grant scholarly look? Tweed can definitely be sexy. However, these aforementioned sexy academics, in my experience, tend to be a good deal older than the average student (especially the average fresher). I believe it’s very likely that you, the young hopeless romantic that you are, have fallen into the age-old trap of being attracted to someone who’s vaguely young, good-looking, and in a position of power. We’ve all been there!

But as fun as these premonitions are, it can be dangerous to give them too much weight. For one, the power dynamic can be creepy and dangerous — not to mention, sometimes quite literally illegal. You don’t want to be the absurdly infatuated student à la My Teacher, My Obsession, or Alicia Silverstone in The Crush. Jobs can be lost, university places can be revoked, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m sure you already know the risks, and dare I say, it’s probably part of the allure. So I won’t bore you with the ways in which a student-teacher relationship can go wrong, because the point is that this is something that can never happen. As such, there is unfortunately nothing for you to do in this scenario….

Falling for someone who you cannot have is always terrible — I won’t sugarcoat it. Your subconscious’s constant barrage of romantic dreams probably isn’t helping either. What I would recommend for you is a treatment course that begins with acceptance and resignation. Give yourself enough space to go through all five stages of grief over your impossible crush: mourn its loss, then move right on. No stalking them over social media, and definitely not in person either!

Next on the list: exposure therapy. Maybe go on a voracious (but safe!) pulling spree at the Union. Or you could get on a dating app and swipe right on every single person you’re even remotely attracted to. Charm your way into as many coffee dates as you can until your romantic yearnings are sufficiently quenched or you fall for someone new. Pursuing a realistic romance is an excellent way to stop yourself from dwelling on the impossible up in fantasyland. Who knows? Maybe one of those Tinder dates will have a thing for school uniforms and dark academia too. Stranger things have certainly happened!

Try and stick to casting your peers as the stars of your romantic fantasies instead; you’re much more likely to find your happy ending that way. When you eventually find just the right person (read: not your tutor!), you could always invest in a sexy school uniform to wear in the bedroom when the time is right…

Ally my love,

Sallie