Crush by Ada Calhoun Summary, Characters and Themes

Crush by Ada Calhoun is a deeply personal and insightful memoir that explores the intoxicating, complicated nature of adult crushes. 

It delves into the thrill of desire, the power of emotional connection, and the ways in which yearning can simultaneously energize and unsettle us. Blending candid storytelling with thoughtful reflections on love, marriage, and fidelity, Calhoun takes readers on a journey through her own emotional landscape—navigating the tensions between societal expectations and personal longings. The book offers an honest, nuanced look at how crushes can awaken identity and reshape relationships, all while confronting the messy realities of commitment and self-discovery.

Summary

Crush begins with Ada Calhoun reflecting on her lifelong fascination with crushes and desire, particularly as a woman navigating marriage and motherhood. She examines how the feeling of longing—often dismissed as frivolous or adolescent—has been a persistent, energizing force in her life, shaping her understanding of identity and love.

This initial introspection sets the stage for a candid exploration of what it means to crave someone beyond the bounds of traditional monogamy.

Ada’s story gains momentum when she embarks on a research trip to London, a place that rekindles her sense of freedom and flirtation. There, she shares a fleeting, unexpected kiss with an old friend named Ryan, which stirs up feelings she hadn’t anticipated.

Instead of hiding or feeling guilt, Ada chooses transparency, telling her husband Paul about the kiss. To her surprise, Paul reacts with support and even encourages her to explore her desires, hinting at a new dynamic in their marriage that involves openness and emotional honesty.

As Ada navigates this new territory, she becomes deeply emotionally entangled with David, a thoughtful and principled friend from college. Their connection begins through emails and intellectual exchanges, blossoming into a profound emotional intimacy that blurs the lines between friendship and romance.

The bond between Ada and David is rich with shared ideas, books, and spiritual resonance, providing Ada with a sense of being understood on a level she hadn’t experienced before.

Meanwhile, Paul remains a steady and supportive presence, open to the evolving shape of their relationship. He proposes exploring polyamory, encouraging Ada to pursue her feelings without shame.

This introduces complex questions about love, fidelity, and societal expectations. Ada wrestles with the challenge of balancing her family life, career as a writer, and burgeoning emotional attachment to David, feeling both the exhilaration and the strain of juggling these different worlds.

Throughout these chapters, Ada reflects deeply on the constraints women often face regarding desire—how society tends to confine female passion into small spaces, whether like a thimble or a vase, limiting emotional expression.

She feels increasingly trapped by traditional roles, yearning for freedom while recognizing the comfort and responsibility of her family life. Her attempts to rationalize her feelings, even humorously organizing them like a corporate slideshow, reveal her struggle to impose order on the emotional chaos she experiences.

The narrative explores moments of profound intimacy and longing, including late-night conversations with David that become emotional lifelines. Ada’s internal world is filled with contradictions: the joy of feeling desired and alive, the guilt of betraying unspoken marital norms, and the hope for a more expansive understanding of love.

As the story progresses, Ada travels to California to gain distance and clarity. The trip offers temporary relief but also highlights how deeply her connection with David has altered her perceptions of loyalty and love.

Their relationship reaches moments of vulnerability and crisis, with David pulling back under the weight of their emotional entanglement. Ada is left to confront the pain of separation and to reflect on how she had conflated emotional intimacy with safety.

This period of heartbreak leads Ada into introspection and healing. She turns to philosophy, poetry, and physical exercise, such as running, as metaphors and tools for processing her feelings.

She examines how language and storytelling both mask and reveal deeper emotional needs. The narrative follows her path back to family life, where she reclaims comfort and begins to rebuild boundaries between fantasy and reality.

Symbolism runs throughout the latter chapters—castles represent protection and isolation, rivers signify cleansing and transformation—illustrating Ada’s emotional journey toward acceptance and renewal.

Despite the pain and complexity, she finds moments of grace and resilience, discovering a renewed sense of self beyond traditional narratives of winning or losing in love.

Crush ultimately offers a raw and layered exploration of desire’s power to disrupt, heal, and redefine us. It challenges conventional ideas about marriage and fidelity, inviting readers to rethink the nature of emotional connection in all its messy, beautiful complexity.

Characters

Ada Calhoun

Ada Calhoun, the protagonist and narrator, is portrayed as a deeply introspective and emotionally complex woman navigating the turbulent landscape of desire, marriage, and self-discovery. From the outset, her character is shaped by a lifelong fascination with crushes—not just romantic or physical longing but the emotional intensity of yearning itself.

This craving fuels much of her personal growth and artistic identity. Ada’s internal conflict revolves around balancing societal expectations of womanhood and motherhood with her own desires for emotional and intellectual intimacy outside her marriage.

Throughout the narrative, Ada is shown as candid about her vulnerabilities, yet also fiercely independent in her exploration of love, autonomy, and fidelity. Her emotional affair with David catalyzes a profound reckoning with her own needs, fears, and limits, revealing her as a woman both craving freedom and wrestling with the consequences of seeking it.

By the end, Ada’s journey reflects a nuanced transformation from craving to acceptance, where she embraces complexity rather than clarity, embodying resilience and emotional renewal.

Paul

Paul, Ada’s husband, is a vital yet quietly complex figure in the narrative. Unlike a traditional or jealous spouse, Paul exhibits an unusual blend of support and openness when confronted with Ada’s desires outside their marriage.

His encouragement, especially early on, suggests a willingness to explore unconventional relationship dynamics, such as polyamory, which highlights his progressive and emotionally mature character. However, despite his support, Paul experiences his own insecurities and tensions—particularly related to career and emotional validation—as seen in his reactions to Ada’s success and deepening connection with David.

Paul’s presence in the story grounds Ada’s explorations with a sense of real-world consequences and challenges. He reflects the fragile balance between acceptance and personal discomfort within evolving modern relationships.

His character embodies both the difficulties and possibilities of maintaining intimacy and trust amid nontraditional love arrangements.

David

David emerges as the intellectual and emotional counterpart to Ada, representing an idealized form of connection that transcends physicality and conventional romance. Their relationship is deeply cerebral and almost spiritual, based on shared ideas, literary references, and emotional intimacy.

David’s character embodies the allure and danger of emotional affairs—he is simultaneously a source of profound understanding and a catalyst for Ada’s inner turmoil. His eventual withdrawal highlights the moral complexities and emotional fragility inherent in their connection, underscoring themes of guilt, boundaries, and the limits of non-physical love.

David’s presence in the narrative challenges Ada’s previous conceptions of love and loyalty, pushing her into new emotional territories. Through him, Ada confronts the paradox of craving someone intensely without crossing the threshold of physical infidelity, illuminating the nuanced spectrum of desire.

Supporting Characters and Symbolic Figures

Though less detailed in the summaries, other figures and symbols play important roles in shaping Ada’s journey. Friends and family provide external perspectives and support, while literary and historical references (like Heloise and Abelard) enrich the thematic texture around love and longing.

Symbolic motifs such as the castle, river, and the “Lynd Wurm” mythic creature serve as metaphors for protection, transformation, and internal struggle, reflecting the emotional stages Ada moves through. These elements collectively frame Ada’s personal story within broader cultural and psychological narratives, giving depth to her quest for self-understanding.

Themes

Desire as Both Sustenance and Source of Existential Disquiet

In Crush, desire is not merely a fleeting emotion or superficial attraction but a complex force that simultaneously nourishes and unsettles the self. Ada Calhoun’s exploration reveals how longing itself—independent of fulfillment—can energize identity and creativity.

Yet this same desire acts as a disruptive undercurrent, provoking tension between societal norms, personal morality, and emotional integrity. The book portrays desire as a dynamic paradox: it fuels vitality and self-discovery while also inciting doubt, guilt, and emotional chaos.

The nuanced portrayal challenges conventional ideas that fulfillment of desire is the ultimate goal, suggesting instead that craving may hold intrinsic value as a state of restless becoming.

Emotional Polyamory and the Negotiation of Marital Boundaries in Contemporary Relationships

A major theme in Crush is the tension between traditional monogamous expectations and evolving frameworks of intimacy, particularly through the lens of polyamory and consensual non-monogamy. Calhoun’s narrative highlights the emotional complexity and precarious negotiation that accompanies attempts to expand marital boundaries.

Rather than presenting polyamory as simply liberating or destructive, the book dwells on the delicate balancing act between freedom and responsibility, love and jealousy, honesty and ambiguity. This theme probes how contemporary relationships grapple with cultural legacies and personal desires.

It uncovers how redefining marital commitment demands profound emotional labor and ongoing renegotiation of trust and identity.

The Role of Intellectual and Spiritual Intimacy as an Alternative Dimension of Romantic Connection

Calhoun’s deepening relationship with David reveals a rarely explored facet of love: the fusion of intellectual and spiritual intimacy as a profound mode of connection that transcends physicality. Their bond, built on shared ideas, emotional vulnerability, and a sense of soulmate-like understanding, foregrounds how love can manifest as a sacred, almost religious experience.

This theme interrogates conventional romantic scripts focused on physical consummation, emphasizing instead how emotional and intellectual communion can both fulfill and torment. The spiritual undertones, including metaphors of sacred waiting and devotional longing, enrich the emotional texture.

They suggest that love can be a quest for transcendence rather than mere possession.

Gendered Constraints and Cultural Scripts Imposed on Female Desire and Emotional Expression

Throughout Crush, Calhoun critiques the restrictive social frameworks that circumscribe how women are permitted to experience and articulate desire. The metaphor of women’s emotional lives as either a “thimble or a vase” captures the limited spaces society grants for female longing and self-expression.

The book uncovers the ways these constraints perpetuate shame, silence, and self-censorship, even in ostensibly progressive contexts. Ada’s journey is as much about reclaiming autonomy over her desires as it is about resisting the culturally ingrained binaries of purity versus promiscuity or emotional excess versus containment.

This theme implicates broader societal structures and invites reflection on how deeply gender norms shape emotional life.

Dialectics of Emotional Imprisonment and the Quest for Autonomy Within Domestic and Internal Spaces

A recurring motif in Crush is the experience of feeling trapped—whether in the physical confines of domestic life or the invisible prisons of emotional expectation and self-imposed limits. Calhoun uses imagery of cages, locked rooms, and prison visits to underscore the paradox that love and family can simultaneously offer sanctuary and suffocation.

The book intricately portrays the internal battles between the desire for stability and the craving for freedom, revealing how emotional autonomy requires navigating these conflicting pulls. This theme explores the layered nature of captivity, showing that emotional imprisonment is not always external but can arise from internalized norms, fears, and unresolved longings.

The Transformative Power of Narrative, Language, and Myth in Making Sense of Ineffable Emotional Experiences

Ada Calhoun’s reflections on poetry, storytelling, and myth illuminate how language shapes and sometimes fails to contain the raw intensity of human emotion. In Crush, narrative becomes a vital tool for grappling with the “ineffable” aspects of heartbreak and longing—the feelings that resist straightforward articulation.

The invocation of mythological creatures, metaphors of castles and rivers, and philosophical musings all serve to create symbolic frameworks that offer meaning and catharsis. This theme underscores the creative act of naming and shaping one’s emotional reality.

It suggests that storytelling is not just a passive reflection but an active process of emotional healing and identity formation.

Journey from Emotional Disintegration to Eucatastrophic Renewal as a Model for Modern Romantic Resilience

The concluding arc of Crush embodies a profound thematic meditation on crisis and redemption. Calhoun’s experience reflects a modern understanding of emotional suffering as both destructive and generative—a process culminating in what she terms “eucatastrophe,” or a sudden joyous turn.

Unlike conventional romantic narratives promising neat resolutions, Crush offers a nuanced vision of resilience that acknowledges ambiguity, loss, and the necessity of surrender. This renewal is not about returning to the status quo but about emerging with a transformed self, imbued with deeper insight and creative potential.

This theme speaks to the contemporary emotional landscape, where healing is less about overcoming and more about integrating contradictions and embracing ongoing growth.