I spent my whole college career, and then most of the rest of my twenties, loving guys who were either constitutionally incapable of loving me back or wise enough to keep their distance. It was a dumb, exquisitely painful, self-destructive pattern that I seemed to enjoy. If it never led to any romantic or sexual satisfaction for me, if I lived my life in a perpetual state of frustration and heartache, at least it was predictable. I was a lot of fun to be around in the ’90s.

Here are a few of the songs that got me through it.

“Weak”—SWV

This one gets the early crush period down kind of perfectly; it’s a physical trauma, an affliction, and one you don’t want to shake off. You see a confident yet bookish senior pull out his word processor from across the library, you watch as he furrows his brow and taps away, and this song cues up in your soul. It’s glorious. It makes you want to sing, even if you are in a quiet area. You can imagine yourself joining in this one, a capella, with Coko and the gals. You in a mock turtleneck and Cross Colours pants, them in doorknocker earrings and flannels casually tied about the waist, on a stoop in a rapidly gentrifying urban area. Afterwards you’ll go for fudge!

“Where Does My Heart Beat Now”—Céline Dion

A hot bowl of cheese meant to be sung with a tear-choked voice and a freshly shattered heart. This one is so potent, so dramatic, they couldn’t even find a good enough American singer to get it across. So they went up to Canada, taught Céline the lyrics phonetically, styled her like Elayne Boosler, and we were off to the races. For extra comfort, watch the video on YouTube and count all the times where she gesticulates on the wrong words.

“I’d Die Without You”—PM Dawn

PM Dawn gets lumped in with Digable Planets and Arrested Development and all those other early-’90s groups that pushed hip-hop into a gentler direction and then immediately fizzled out, but we forget that they wrote some fairly epic pop songs, and did it in caftans. Like all of their songs, this one is awash in hippie nonsense, but once you get to the chorus, you can sing along, and snap, and smoke, and cry. And repeat.

“Star Me Kitten”—R.E.M.

You will inevitably become confused and frustrated by the fact that your boy does not, maybe even cannot, love you back, and you will turn again to music. Yes, of course there is “Everybody Hurts,” but anybody can be heartbroken to that one. You’re special. Skip a few ahead on Automatic for the People until you get to this one, which is every bit as hangdog sad but, with its climactic “fuck me kitten,” gives us a rare peek at Michael Stipe’s horny side. At the height of my addiction to this song, I used to think about Todd, a viciously sexy and not particularly nice hockey player I hung out with for a while. I think he went on to be in the Army Special Forces. Todd was committed to hotness. (Incidentally, according to whatever magazines I was reading, Michael Stipe was hanging out with Stephen Dorff a lot in the mid-’90s, so he knows about intense crushes on sexy idiots.)

“Larry”—Buffalo Tom

That whole Buffalo Tom Let Me Come Over album, really. I don’t know about you, but when I hear “Larry,” I am running toward whomever I have a crush on, and he is running toward me, in the pouring rain, and then we are kissing. It is possible that I am living inside a WB young-adult show, even now.

“Desperately Wanting”—Better Than Ezra

Sometimes you don’t have to know all the words for a song to be your go-to heartbreak anthem. Sometimes it just has to have a title like “Desperately Wanting,” and a part in the chorus after a bunch of words you haven’t bothered to learn where the lead singer sings the words “desperately wanting,” and you can shout it along with him—because you, too, are desperately wanting. He understands. You are on the same page, you and whatever the guy’s name is from Better Than Ezra.

“The Freshmen”—The Verve Pipe

Oh, who even knows what this one is about. It’s just kind of moody and plodding and “we were merely freshmen” is a great excuse for unwise romantic fixations, even when you’re twenty-eight. Plus, for a moment, the goddamn thing was inescapable; it seems wasteful not to use it as the soundtrack to a self-destructive crush.

Literally Anything by Toad the Wet Sprocket

Were these guys ever happy? I picture them all in windbreakers, on a late autumn afternoon, just having finished crying. Every song is about one single person bravely dealing with some agonizing thing, or standing stalwart in the face of a chill wind, or putting on a smile while inside he’s aching, just aching, and when you’re young and you love torturing yourself, it is exactly what you need to hear.

“Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”—Pearl Jam

A potent reminder that, no matter how intense the one-way fixation is, how hot and focused the love beams you’re shooting out of your eyes are, or how perfect everything would be if he could just feel a tiny bit of the same about you as you do about him, hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away. It’ll all pass in a few weeks and you’ll be on to the next one. You and SWV will be back harmonizing over Fruitopias before you know it.