When you have a crush on someone, you think about them 24/7. You'll catch yourself sneaking peeks at them and getting overly-excited whenever they like any of your Instagram photos. But as much as you like them and hope they feel the same way about you too, it can be nerve-racking to think about confessing – what if they reject you? Then again, the only way to go from social media stalker to potential love interest is to just do it – confess and pray for the best. We spoke to our friends on how they’ve confessed to someone they liked, or how they’ve been confessed to. Here’re 8 of the cutest confessions.

1. “He sent my photo back and said, ‘this girl’”

“Back then, we both already knew we liked each other. We were texting regularly and there were many small hints here and there but we just hadn’t confess. When I went to Taiwan for a holiday, I sent him some photos of me as I think he missed me. He replied, "omg I kept staring at the photo and walked into a lamp post". The second time I sent him photos, he said, "wah I keep looking at your photo and I went up to level 4 when I stay at level 3." After that, he tweeted something like ‘miss u’. When I asked him who he misses and who he likes, he sent my photo back and said, “This girl.”” – Jiaqian, 21

2. “Team Captains of the track team’”

“He was the team captain for the boy's track team and I was the team captain for the girl's track team so our peers always joked and tried to ‘stir shit’ about us being together. I liked him since poly year one but he was quite dense and couldn’t tell. We went out on a date once and texted occasionally but it didn’t go further than that. I still had a big crush on him so one night, I told myself that I was going to confess to him no matter. If he said yes, I'll go for ZoukOut to celebrate. And if he rejects me, I'll still go for ZoukOut – to party my woes away. I confessed over the phone and I was nervous AF. He said he appreciated my thoughts and my feelings and that’s it. Then I said, "Great! Thanks for acknowledging, I just wanted to get this off my chest,” then we hung up. Thankfully, he called me back and said that it was so sudden for him but he also likes me. That was 5 years ago. Today, we are married. ” – Vic, 25

3. “He sent me food via ‘homing pigeon’ service”

“We both stay in Yishun. There was once I was feeling a little under the weather and had also casually mentioned that I love ham and cheese sandwiches. He said that he will send a homing pigeon over to my place with ‘the cure’ and we laughed at it as it seemed like a joke. A while later, he told me that the homing pigeon had delivered something to me. I thought he was still joking, until I checked my doorstep and saw the Tupperware of ham and cheese sandwiches and a tube of Redoxen for my sore throat. He cycled to my house just to surprise me with the 'care package'. He didn’t exactly confess per se, but it was kind of a confirmation to me that he likes me.” – Jamie, 26

4. “You are 'my class monitress'”

“We were classmates in Secondary School. Every month, our form teacher would change the class monitor and monitress so more students could experience leading the class. She was my partner-in-crime when we were elected the monitor and monitress for that month. Subconsciously, I started to fall for her when we worked together, but it was only nearing the end of our month when I realise I was going to miss her as more than just friends. We were texting on a friendly basis then, so I texted her that I was going to miss being the class monitor. Then I added that more importantly, that I was so happy she was 'my class monitress'. She said she was very happy that she got to be the monitress with me too, and asked which monitress I thought was the best so far. I said her, and that I wished we could be the moniter and monitress permanently so I could see her and spend more time with her. Good times." - Chong, 28

5. “He baked 'extra' cookies and gave it to me”

“We met through a school camp and have been texting for a while. One day, he told me that he had baked extra cookies and packed some for me. I dropped by an MRT station to pick it up from him on the way home. I thanked him for the free cookies and he patted my head before I walked away – that made me suspect something already. I opened up the package after I left and sure enough, there was a card inside and on it was his confession. I thought it was really sweet, but I only saw him as a friend and nothing more.” – Zhen Ni, 26

6. “He tricked me into giving him my locker combination”

“We were in JC. He asked for my locker combination to borrow a textbook and when I checked my locker afterwards, there was a box of chocolates inside. My first thought was: cool, chocolates. Then I took it and went home, only to realise it was a confession when my friends reminded me that it was Valentine’s Day. I thanked him the next day and gave him a small gift back just to be nice. I made the gift for like 10 people and just decided to make one more for him.” – Sammie, 25

7. “April’s Fool!”

“There was this guy in church who I had a crush on for a long time. I think he liked me too but there was never any proof. We talk once in a while but nothing more. One day, he called me at midnight. When I picked it up, he said, “Esther, I really need to tell you something. I like you.” For a moment, my heart skipped a beat and I was so nervous. Then I heard his friend’s laughter on the line, “April’s Fool!” I texted him later on that day and playfully asked if he was serious and that if he was, I liked him too. The banter went on for a bit before we realised that we liked each other for real.” – Esther, 25

8. “I love you… as a friend”

“We had been best friends for awhile and would even have long conversations on the phone. After a long conversation one night, I texted him, "I love you." Then I added, "as a friend," to save myself from potential embarrassment. I was so nervous the whole night because I didn't know how he would react. In the morning, he replied, “I love you too. You’re like a special friend to me.” That was 8 years ago. We are getting married next year.” – Sally, 25

Tell Them You Like Them!

If you think about it in another way, there’s a 50% chance that they may like you as well. You’ve got nothing to lose anyway because you’re not going to get anywhere if s/he doesn’t know how you feel either. But of course, don’t be a creep. Talk to them and get to know one another a little better before you go on telling them they are The One for you. And if you need some help in meeting or getting to know a potential love interest better, try here! Also read, Then & Now: Photos Of 9 Longtime Singapore Couples That Prove True Love Still Exists.

When I was a child, I believed I was born in Singapore. Like many of you, my earliest memories are of growing up with my Singaporean family, in my Singaporean flat. When I was 11, while struggling with my Chinese homework, my mother screamed, “Why are you so bad in Chinese when you’re from China?!” That was the day I found out. That was the day I learned that I was born in China, and adopted by the family I thought was my own. I am an adoptee, taken from the family that didn’t want me, and raised by a family that treated me like a second-rate child. I am an adoptee. And this is my story.

Unwanted and Discarded

In 1979, China introduced the One-Child Policy, which allowed families to have no more than one child or face the possibility of fines, sterilizations, and abortions. Since the Chinese have a strong tradition of patriarchy, with an emphasis on continuation of the family name, boys were favoured strongly over girls. As a result of this policy, many Chinese girls were killed at birth, or given up for adoptions. Am I thankful to be one of the latter group, and not the former? I suppose so, and my adopted mother certainly made it exceedingly clear that I should be. We often have an assumption that adoption is a last resort, that only couples without the ability to have children of their own end up adopting. That wasn’t the case with me. My parents were perfectly capable of conceiving, and they did just that with my older brother, and later, my younger sister. I was an adoptee growing up with siblings that were not adopted, and it sure as hell felt like it. My mother decided to adopt me from my poor family in rural China, for reasons not completely known to me. It might have had something to do with the abortion she had had shortly prior to my adoption, her conversion to Christianity, a simple act of charity, a combination of all of these, or none of them. Whatever it was, she has had to repeatedly make the point to me, from age 11 to this very day, that I owe her.

Childhood

I was never a bright kid. I struggled with homework and exams. My mother tried to help me with my homework, but always only ended up scolding and beating me. She would hurl insults at me, calling me demeaning names, and when words weren’t enough to express her contempt, she hit me in the head with her bare hands. One time, she grabbed my little head in her hands and smashed it into a wall, and stopped only when my maid came to my rescue. I never fought back, never even spoke a word out of place. How could I? It would have been so disrespectful. A part of me always felt like I must have deserved the abuse. I must have been really stupid and useless, because my siblings received no such treatment. I had no idea if they were really much smarter than me in school, but from how I was treated at home relative to them, they had to be. It wasn’t until I learned of my adoption that everything started to make sense. The bias, the chores that I had to do from young that my siblings never even had to touch, I thought it was all because I did badly at school. I resented myself for being stupid, and fought tooth and nail for my parents’ approval. My mother said I should look at ITE courses because I’d never make it anywhere else, but I ended up getting a spot in a Polytechnic Psychology course, and later, a local university. It felt good to prove her wrong, but even after all that, my mother’s disdain for me never ceased.

Meeting My “Real” Family

When I was 13, I went on a trip to a certain village in rural China to visit my biological family. It was a strange experience, meeting complete strangers who were bound to me by blood, an entire family I had never known. At the same time, though, it was exciting. There was a certain thrill to finally meeting a family whose members actually looked like me. But that’s where our similarities ended. Before my university graduation, I returned to China once again to attend my younger brother’s wedding, and learned more about how vastly different my life could have been. I was frowned upon by the friends and relatives of my biological family, all strangers to me, for being unmarried and child-less at my ripe old age of 22. In the village, marriage was almost never on the basis of love. It was just a way of incurring more wealth, and forging better relationships between families for financial purposes. Others were match-made like my second sister and younger brother to their respective spouses. As for my elder sister, she took a different path - met a city boy, fell in love and then got married after. As of now, my elder sister has a bratty son, while my second sister has two kids with serious attachment issues. As I’m writing this, my younger brother has had two kids, and I wonder how he’s coping. And here I am, still living with a family that looks down on me. It’s like I have two families, but at the same time, none.

And Here We are

Today, I’ve come to realize that I will never match up to my siblings in the eyes of my adopted parents, and that’s alright. My family still treats me like a second-class daughter. My younger sister, as always, has no respect for me whatsoever. My unemployed mother constantly demands money and branded goods from me while asking nothing from my siblings. My parents scold me for staying out with my boyfriend, but make snarky comments towards me when I’m at home. I feel bound to my family through years of conditioning, yet feel none of the warmth and love that people say I’m supposed to. I still long for something I’ll never have, to feel like something I’m not – to be a real daughter. <a href=" Image Credit

“Am I slutty?” This is a question I often ask myself. I even ask it to my friends, “Do you think I’m slutty?” I genuinely want to know. They tell me no, you just have a high sex drive; no, you’re only a slut if you hit double digits; no, you’re single, it’s fine! Some of them genuinely mean what they say, but some of them – I can tell – are just trying to make me feel better. Maybe they think it’s a trick question. While I couldn’t care less what strangers think of me, I do care a great deal what my friends think. Do I see myself as slutty? Well, yeah. What else do you call someone who sleeps with people they’re not in relationships with, makes out with strangers in clubs, and sends nudes to boys just because they asked? I’ve slept with boys I haven’t been attracted to in the slightest. I sleep with them because I want sex, and they were available. So, if a slut is someone who has many casual sexual partners, then I’m guilty as charged.

The Young Slut

There was a time in my life when I was bothered by this label. I was 17 and studying in polytechnic. I was hooking up with different boys from school, sending photos of myself when innocent text conversations turned into something more. I thought I was an awful person. I knew in my mind that I should not be doing this, but I also wondered why? It felt good, not just physically. It felt good to be wanted, to have your body desired. Why shouldn’t I do it? It was my choice after all, wasn’t it? Back then, people would call me a slut behind my back, and it hurt whenever I found out. Gossip like this spreads fast, and the further it spread, the more warped it would become, such that when it came back around, it was a completely different story from what had actually happened. During those day, I would get these looks from schoolmates when we passed in the campus corridors. You just knew they were talking about you, that they knew of you and the things you had done. It’s a confusing environment for a woman who is just finding out who she is and what she believes. Once, the mother of one of the boys I hooked up with caught us in the act and yelled at us. She told me I was a loose woman, and that I had no respect for their family. She might as well have called me the S-word.

Staying True To Me

These days, a few years and many experiences later, the label no longer bothers me. These days, I've learned to embrace who I am, what I want, and what I believe. I've learned to embrace the fact that I am a woman who loves sex in a society where it is indecent for a woman to show any signs of wanting it. I've learned to embrace my belief that long-term relationships and monogamy isn't for me -- at least at this stage of my life. I've learned to embrace all of this in spite of the knowledge that many Singaporeans will not approve.

So What If I Am, So What If I’m Not?

These days, with Tinder, Grindr, and all that becoming a normal part of our dating experiences, and with shifting attitudes towards relationships, sex, and bodies, people are less judgmental about non-committal sex and casual relationships. Still, there remains a group of people who thinks differently -- a majority that will still call the type of woman I am a 'slut', as if they were morally superior to me. They think I will give myself to anyone and for anything. They think I don't value myself enough. Little do they know that I am doing exactly what I want. There was a time when I was ashamed of being a 'slut', but in the last 7 or 8 years, I've learned that it doesn't matter. It does not define me. Maybe I am a slut, and maybe I'm not. The important thing is that it is not all that I am, and that I know who I am outside of these labels.

This Is Me

We all have a choice as to how we live our lives. This is how I’ve chosen for mine. This is my body and I have the right to do whatever I want with it. Maybe monogamy works for some people. But it’s not for me. I don’t think there is a right or wrong when it comes to relationships -- only what is common and what is not. What I do think, however, is that this choice fits me now. Maybe a few years down the road, I will think differently; maybe then, I’ll choose differently. But that is for me to find out later on. Until then, it is no one’s business but mine who I sleep with, how often I do it, and why I do it. And no one is going to make me feel bad about doing what I believe is right for me.

“Hey, I’m home. I’m going to bed once I’ve showered and caught up with my parents. I’ll talk to you later, k? Love you.” I wasn’t at home and I was nowhere close to heading to bed. I was still out and I’d just blatantly lied to my partner. Where was I? I was with someone else, having a few drinks after we'd had the perfect dinner date together. I’ve cheated many times. I think I can safely say I’ve cheated in more than half of my past relationships. It's not something I'm proud of and it’s definitely not something I tell everyone I meet. Everyone’s got a deep, dark secret, and this is mine. I’ve cheated both physically and emotionally. I’ve slept with other people while I was still with my partners. I’ve also somehow managed to develop a relationship with someone else while in a relationship. Each time I cheated, I’d spend hours questioning myself, wondering how I could let myself commit such an act. And still, I let myself cheat again and again.

Motivations of a serial cheater

At some point, it dawned upon me that the main reason I continued to cheat lat with me: I cheated because I was trapped. I was trapped in a string of unhappy relationships in which I could never muster the courage to break up with my partners. Cheating was something I used as a form of respite from something that brought me down day after day. I used cheating as a coping mechanism against my unhappy relationships; I used it to derive some happiness, something my partners no longer offered. The feeling of cheating on your partner is perhaps one of the strangest feelings a person can feel. In that moment, when you’re cheating, you find a way to disregard the relationship you’re currently in. It feels like you’re living a separate life, a life that’s not yours, and you’re this whole other person altogether. As you go about the act of cheating, a part of you feels fear, guilt. You fear getting caught by your partner, or your partner’s friend… You’re out having a meal or having drinks, having a good time, but throughout that time, you’re paranoid, plagued by a fear of being found out. You’ve committed such an unforgiveable act, and you know it. And this feeling of guilt gnaws at you, because you know it would break your partner’s heart if he/she someday found out. But even as you feel and know these things, you still feel a sense of happiness, a thrill, a satisfaction from this other person you’re out with, sleeping with.

The hardest part about cheating

There were a few occasions when I was almost found out, and it is those moments when they start asking questions that are the worst. You panic. You’re overwhelmed by anxiety. You try to recall if you’ve deleted all traces of cheating from your devices—your phone, your Facebook, your emails. And when all that’s been processed, you start to overreact. You start to shout. You get defensive about everything. You try to turn the argument around, and you try to make it seem like your partner was the one who was being insecure. You try to throw him/her off in every way possible and pin the blame on them, on how they don’t trust you wholeheartedly.

To cheat or not to cheat?

Even though I’ve cheated many times, I have never been caught. I’ve always ensured my tracks were covered, and my lies, bulletproof. I pre-empted my partners’ response, how they would react, and I had my answer or reaction prepared. To be honest, it takes a lot of effort to cheat, and to do it “well”. If you weigh the happiness you derive from cheating against the effort it takes to cover your tracks, and all the emotions that come with it—the paranoia, the fear, the anxiety, the guilt—you’ll realize it just isn’t worth it. I’ve had my fair share of cheating, and trust me when I say the benefits never outweigh the costs. I’ve since grown from all that and no longer cheat, but that’s because I no longer allow myself to suffer silently in unhappy relationships. Why be with someone you’re not happy with, only to have the relationship you really want on the side, and in secret?