Feelings I had for my classmate were obviously one-sided (pretty sure of it), so I made a reasonable decision to never confess to not make things awkward. In a few years since we graduated I finally moved on, although I never loved anyone this much since.
Yet all this time I had a desire to tell her about them. I would definitely want to know if someone loved me this much ever. Would she? I don’t know. I don’t even know if she is in a relationship right now or not.
I would really want to cite some scientific study that “Over 80% of girls have their self-confidence lifted after being told they were secretly admired (p<0.05)”, but can’t find one.
I know it’s not, but I don’t think I have a way to prove the contrary over text correspondence, so think as you want.
Swordgeek has a point - people will have selfish ideas, for selfish reasons. It’s just not very pleasant to have to admit, and therefore people often won’t do it, even to themselves. This makes ulterior motives a lot easier to spot when they’re not your own, and obviously something is up, here.
So if, deep down inside, you happened to be hoping for some kind of self esteem boost or stroked ego… that doesn’t seem very likely. And even if it was, probably not worth bothering a former acquaintance over.
Whatever you were hoping for, you seem pretty hellbent on it - you don’t need to be honest with strangers on lemmy, but might want to re-check your actual motivation here with yourself, because this is stuff that gets creepy real fast.
You want something like this because it seems to rationalize the thing you wanted to do anyway. It is not your real reason for wanting to do it, but you’d have some kind of excuse for a thing people are lining up to tell you is a Bad Idea.