User blog comment:Nausiated/Project 11/61: Just Like Magic/@comment-11836-20150304061415/@comment-61022-20150305161522

That would be X-Men Vol. 1 #3 where the X-Men fought the Blob. Early in the story Xavier tells his students to be careful and Jean assures him not to worry. There is a thought bubble of Xavier stating that he can't help but worry because he is in love with her. Then he dismisses the possibility of being with her because he was crippled at the time.

That potential romantic drama was quickly dropped because Stan Lee must have realized that it was inappropriate for a middle aged man to be in love with a sixteen year old girl. Right after the romantic tension changed to Cyclops. Who believed he had no right to be with someone when he couldn't control his optic blast. That was more appropriate and also had the same dramatic element. I think what Stan was trying to do was have a character who didn't believe they were entitled to love due to a disability and overcome those feelings.

You have to remember that Stan was a clean writer who wanted to have moral drama in his stories. So I suspect that the "overcoming disabilities and finding true love" was his motivation rather than a creepy old man wanting to romance a teenage girl.

Calling it a "crush" is such a juvenile term. If anything you could say Xavier's love for Jean is more maternal in nature (meaning he loves her like a daughter.. which he has stated countless times over the past 50 years of X-Men publications)

Incidentally enough Xaviers thoughts in that story were revealed to Jean many years later during the Onslaught storyline. In X-Men Vol 2 #63 Onslaught shows these thoughts to Jean to try and turn her against Charles and recruit her. Jean naturally rejected Onslaught and stucj by Xavier.

Other than those two specific comics, there has not been any long standing romantic interest in Jean by Xavier. It started off as a poor storytelling decision and was later dug up 30 years later as a dramatic turn in a forgettable summer event.