Not with the love of your life

[ToFarAwayTimes]

Lots of people find happiness with their spouse or partner and consider that person the love of their life.
Others are in between relationships, waiting, hoping, looking forward to meeting someone new.

I'm curious how many FSUers didn't marry their one true love. Maybe they married someone else. Maybe they are alone.

I've been in love with the same woman for almost 20 years. She's the only one for me, the one I fell in love with the first night I met her, and told myself:
"Don't ever let this girl out of your life."

She wasn't my first love, or even my second. We were next-door neighbors. She was in love with me too, her roommate even told me once. But we never dated, we were just friends.
Two years passed by in our lives. Platonic dates. Love never acted upon. The night she wanted me to kiss her and I wouldn't because she was staying in a weird long distance relationship with someone else. One day, she disappeared and blocked me out of her life without any fight or explanation.
Just completely gone, incommunicado. We have never seen or spoken to each other again.

That was over 17 years ago. Does life move on?

I've dated two women since then, one didn't last long, the other relationship was three years. I'm almost 40 now and obviously going to wind up alone in life, despite my efforts to meet someone else. In all those years I've never stopped thinking about her, looking her up sometimes,
but the last couple years have been the worst.
Everything was repressed deep down, like a defensive mechanism, then it all came out.

What I realized was I don't have any desire to meet anyone else. We were from the same hometown and met far away in another state, when we moved in together as next-door neighbors on the same day.
We were both studying to be scientists.
Our birthdays were the same forward and backward, 3-29 and 9-23.

Whenever the thought occurs to me to forget about her, I can never stop thinking about our birthdays and how we met each other,
like we were destined to be together in life.

Am I supposed to fix something between us? Is there something unfinished? Something that was unsaid?


Every woman I've dated or loved since then has been some variation of her, even my life's work has some connection to her identity,
not an obsession because it was an episode of psychological repression, all these years those feelings trying to bubble back up to the surface
and manifest themselves in other ways.

It would be easier to destroy myself and my own identity.

In the Mood for Love - Final Sequence

The end of the Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love, influenced by Roman Holiday.

www.youtube.com

I've never had a dream about her until tonight. I woke up in the middle of the night, having dreamed that I was at that temple,
Angkor Wat,
but she wasn't there. Nobody was there. It was like a sarcophagus, the lid was being closed on me, alone, for all eternity.

You might think I should contact her, or not contact her, maybe one day, and I've been thinking a lot about that too lately.
But of course she did move on with her life. She married another man.
She's been with him almost her entire adult life, an identity formed together with someone else
in a way that mine was formed without someone else,
and they have three kids, with number four on the way.

Maybe one day I will march into her life and make up for my mistake many years ago, and court her relentlessly,
until she succumbs to my seduction.
And tell her that I want to marry her and have kids with her one day before it's too late.
Maybe one day she will say yes, or one day she will say no,
or maybe one day I will never , because it would be damnable to do that to her kids.

Well anyway I'm curious how many of you are happy with your spouse or partner. How many of you long for someone from your past?

 

[hanca]

I am really trying to understand your story, but it gets confusing at one place. You really wanted her/were love with her, she was in love with you and yet you never communicated enough together that you would get properly together? To me it seems that she wanted more, but somehow she was waiting for you to make it happen and you didn’t make your move. The situation (hoping for maybes in the future...) was clearly too painful for her so at one stage she decided that she is not a masochist, she doesn’t enjoy being in pain so she removed herself from the situation. If I were you, I would be asking myself why you didn’t progress the relationship, what was stopping you. And why (if both of you loved the other one so much) neither of you couldn’t just start the discussion about your relationship, what each of you expect from the relationship (where would you like to go with the relationship long term) and to make steps towards starting the relationship. All you did was some platonic dates - if I were her and the object of my love was willing to offer me only platonic dates, I would get to the conclusion that for some reason the other person is not interested. (Maybe he/she doesn’t fancy me, or maybe his/her romantic feelings are already given to someone else, or maybe the person is just not looking for a long term romantic relationship.) So that’s probably what she thought and she got fed up with waiting.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

I am really trying to understand your story, but it gets confusing at one place. You really wanted her/were love with her, she was in love with you and yet you never communicated enough together that you would get properly together? To me it seems that she wanted more, but somehow she was waiting for you to make it happen and you didn’t make your move.

When we met we were dating other people. So we started as friends first but I was in love with her from the first night we met.
Eventually, I broke up with my girlfriend and told her. I asked her about her and her boyfriend. There was a long awkward pause. You're absolutely right, I think, that she was waiting for me to declare my love and make my move, but the way I saw it -- and you can laugh at me or take pity on me if you want -- but I wanted her to be my equal partner in life. I didn't want to be Mr. Steal Yo Girl. Just didn't want to start out like that, her cheating on her boyfriend with me, so I kinda insinuated that I was meeting her halfway in the middle and if she jumped, I was there to catch her. But she just kept waiting for more.

After that there were miscommunications, a little bit of jealousy, other girls while she stayed in that long-distance relationship ... guys can be pretty dense (right?), and we were young after all. But I just wanted her to be in my life forever, and on the night she wanted me to kiss her, I hesitated, and asked her if she was going to break up with her long-distance boyfriend, but she said no.

So I assumed we were just friends. What else was I to think after that? But then she 86'd me out of her life completely, so I was blindsided, like there was more to it than that. I know there are other people out there who settled for someone else who wasn't the one they loved the most in life, and I know there are people who met someone else after a great love and they are completely happy, and there are others who are left alone. The most common advice would be to let the past stay in the past, move on with your life, find someone else, like she did, but I tried that my whole life without any success. When you meet that one person, the prettiest gal in the world from your hometown, who went to the high school next to yours, two years apart, and you move in together as next-door neighbors on the same day in another state, far far away, and you are both studying to be scientists, and your birthdays are the same, forward and backward, 3-29 and 9-23, and you never stop thinking about her all these years, looking her up sometimes, waking up from a romantic fugue, realizing that everything in your life, even your work somehow wound up having some connection to her, what do you do after that? What do you do when she's been with another man for 15 years and they are about to have four children together? All little ones, babies born in the last few years?

Well I can think to march into her life one day soon and relentlessly court her until she leaves with me, and break up her family like that, asking her to have kids with me before it's too late; or I can do the right thing, leave her alone, perhaps hating me her entire life, perhaps having forgotten about me long ago, never really knowing how I felt about her, but then I'm alone, miserable, broken, feeling the intimations of eternal suffering and pain.

 

[hanca]

I don’t believe that there is only one person who would be ‘the right love’, or ‘the only one for me’. I believe that there are people who are not compatible to me at all from numerous reasons, people who are somewhat compatible if we both try really hard (though I don’t think relationship should be such a hard work) and then there are a number of people who are compatible and with whom I could be in a happy, functional relationship. Even within this group there may be people with whom the relationship may be easier than with others from this group, but I don’t think there is the ideal one off partner which I needed to find otherwise I would never be happy in a relationship.

If I look at your situation, I think you should accept the situation- she moved on, is currently married and I don’t think it would be very caring towards her to decide to break her family for your own gain. Is that what you do to someone you love? If you love her, shouldn’t you respect her life choices? She has chosen. I understand you don’t like this choice, but that’s life. Maybe it is time to accept you made a mistake, maybe you should have made different decisions in the past, and at least it was an opportunity to learn something for the future. One thing to consider, as you said, this woman has moved on. She has been developing and therefore she is not exactly the same person as she was years ago when you knew her. Various life events would have shaped her into the person she is now. But you don’t really know the person she is now; you have had no contact with her. You don’t know her current opinions, what does she worries about, what makes her happy... You are in love with a person she was before, but she won’t ever be the same person again. You are in love with a fantasy, but it is not real.

It seems to me that at this moment you are internally so ‘obsessed’ with this woman, that you are not giving any other relationship a fair chance. That’s why your other two relationships didn’t last that long. It seems to me that you have built this woman up in your memory as ‘the ideal partner’ and no one you will meet can ever measure to her. But she was not perfect; she was a human being like we all are, with many good character traits and also some flaws. It would probably help to make an effort to see what person she was more objectively. I know- it is easier said than done. You should also accept that this woman is gone and that there is no point torturing yourself of what could have been. When you manage to do that, you will be ready for a new relationship.

When you have dealt with past and you are ready for a new relationship, never compare the new relationship with this imagination of what could have been. The imagination would always win, because it is an imagination, a fantasy. In your fantasies, you can make people behave any way you want to, so that’s why they are ‘the ideal’ person for you, because their opinions are actually your opinions.

 

[Japanfan]

Lots of people find happiness with their spouse or partner and consider that person the love of their life.
Others are in between relationships, waiting, hoping, looking forward to meeting someone new.

I'm curious how many FSUers didn't marry their one true love. Maybe they married someone else. Maybe they are alone.

I've been in love with the same woman for almost 20 years. She's the only one for me, the one I fell in love with the first night I met her, and told myself:
"Don't ever let this girl out of your life."

She wasn't my first love, or even my second. We were next-door neighbors. She was in love with me too, her roommate even told me once. But we never dated, we were just friends.
Two years passed by in our lives. Platonic dates. Love never acted upon. The night she wanted me to kiss her and I wouldn't because she was staying in a weird long distance relationship with someone else. One day, she disappeared and blocked me out of her life without any fight or explanation.
Just completely gone, incommunicado. We have never seen or spoken to each other again.

That was over 17 years ago. Does life move on?

I've dated two women since then, one didn't last long, the other relationship was three years. I'm almost 40 now and obviously going to wind up alone in life, despite my efforts to meet someone else. In all those years I've never stopped thinking about her, looking her up sometimes,
but the last couple years have been the worst.
Everything was repressed deep down, like a defensive mechanism, then it all came out.

What I realized was I don't have any desire to meet anyone else. We were from the same hometown and met far away in another state, when we moved in together as next-door neighbors on the same day.
We were both studying to be scientists.
Our birthdays were the same forward and backward, 3-29 and 9-23.

Whenever the thought occurs to me to forget about her, I can never stop thinking about our birthdays and how we met each other,
like we were destined to be together in life.

Every woman I've dated or loved since then has been some variation of her, even my life's work has some connection to her identity,
not an obsession because it was an episode of psychological repression, all these years those feelings trying to bubble back up to the surface
and manifest themselves in other ways.

In the Mood for Love - Final Sequence

The end of the Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love, influenced by Roman Holiday.

www.youtube.com

Maybe one day I will march into her life and make up for my mistake many years ago, and court her relentlessly,
until she succumbs to my seduction.
And tell her that I want to marry her and have kids with her one day before it's too late.
Maybe one day she will say yes, or one day she will say no,
or maybe one day I will never , because it would be damnable to do that to her kids.

Wouldn't hurt to just contact her, would it? Might it possibly get you some closure?

Well anyway I'm curious how many of you are happy with your spouse or partner. How many of you long for someone from your past?

 

[Japanfan]

Lots of people find happiness with their spouse or partner and consider that person the love of their life.
Others are in between relationships, waiting, hoping, looking forward to meeting someone new.

I'm curious how many FSUers didn't marry their one true love. Maybe they married someone else. Maybe they are alone.

That was over 17 years ago. Does life move on?

Well anyway I'm curious how many of you are happy with your spouse or partner. How many of you long for someone from your past?

First off, life does move on, at least most of the time, if people are willing to let it do so.

And, one has to define what is meant by 'the love of your life'. My first husband was Greek and I met him in the middle of a mountaintop on a Greek Island, at sunset. A whirlwind romantic relationship ensued. I went back to Canada at the end of my trip and then decided to cancel my plans for university that year. I saved money and went back to Greece, lived there with him for a year, and then we came to Canada and got married. I knew the marriage was doomed, but living in Greece and dealing with his family (who hated me) was unpleasant. I married him because I was not yet ready to say goodbye. We four years of a very intense and often difficult marriage (we argued a lot). We were entirely incompatible - he wanted me to be a housewife, I wanted an education and career. The break-up, when it came, was brutal.

Several years later I had a two year relationship with a Canadian Frenchman. If you define 'love of your life' as the one for whom you would do anything and give up anything, then he was the love of my life. I was utterly charmed and smitten with him. He would never fully commit to me and ultimately became abusive in a certain way. The relationship had to end.

When Mr. Japanfan and I met, I was 33 and he 27. We liked each other right away and were intellectually compatible and comfortable with each other, but no sparks flew. It was just easy to be together. We joke now that we both never ever wanted to go on a date again and married within a year after today. Going on 30 years of marriage from now.

I do not long for either of the two exes mentioned above.

I would say that my primary connection with the Greek was emotion, the connection with the Frenchman was primarily sexual, and my primary connection with Mr. Japanfan intellectual.

So which of those relationships qualify as 'true love'? I would say Mr. Japanfan, as we have had true and enduring companionship. And still very much enjoy each other's company, after all these years.

But others may have different understands of 'true love', e.g. the person whom one loved most passionately or romantically. And in some cases, it could be a person one pines for, for one's entire life.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

Thanks for sharing your story, Japanfan. It takes courage to put your past out there like that, and I'm glad you are happy with your marriage these many long years. The woman in my story is half-Japanese, fwiw. Apparently her mom is a big Hanyu fan. Yuzuru has all the classy ladies swooning after him.

 

[meggonzo]

It seems you have a fantasized version of this woman and what a relationship with her could have been like, when the reality is probably different. People change a lot from their early 20s to 40, so she could be a totally different person from what you remember. I would suggest finding a good therapist to help you work through your feelings and why your other relationships failed.

 

[Brenda_Bottems]

I'm curious how many FSUers didn't marry their one true love. Maybe they married someone else. Maybe they are alone.

I had many suitors as a buxom 18 year old. I thought each of them were my "one true love" until the next came along.

That was over 17 years ago. Does life move on?

You are forty years old,my dear. The time to move on has long passed. This floozy is not worth the drama,no matter how much you have radically idealized her the past two decades. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and put yourself out there (providing you don't live in a lockdown state,god willing).

Maybe one day I will march into her life and make up for my mistake many years ago, and court her relentlessly,
until she succumbs to my seduction.

This is a rather titillating passage and now I find myself rather unexpectedly flushed. May I suggest channeling your malaise into authoring Harlequin Romance novels?

-BB

 

[MacMadame]

Maybe one day I will march into her life and make up for my mistake many years ago, and court her relentlessly,
until she succumbs to my seduction.

Ewww.

 

[genevieve]

Am I supposed to fix something between us? Is there something unfinished? Something that was unsaid?

No.

 

[Brenda_Bottems]

Ewww.

Whilst I understand his statement can be seen as problematic,there is part of me that finds this chivalrous. Perhaps I am just an old-fashioned,hopeless romantic.

-BB

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

Wouldn't hurt to just contact her, would it? Might it possibly get you some closure?

I will contact her one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, but not yet. Combined with one's own natural abilities, nothing else compared to true love can motivate a man to accomplish even greater things in life.

 

[hanca]

Whilst I understand his statement can be seen as problematic,there is part of me that finds this chivalrous. Perhaps I am just an old-fashioned,hopeless romantic.

-BB

Problematic, but chivalrous? That bit seems to me coming pretty close to stalking! If someone indicated to me that they don’t want to see me again, the last thing I would think of doing is coming to him/her, “and court her relentlessly until she succumbs to my seduction”. No means no.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

May I suggest channeling your malaise into authoring Harlequin Romance novels?

-BB

You may have something there, BB. Half the forum seems to be reading this thread after all.

 

[Habs]

Maybe one day I will march into her life and make up for my mistake many years ago, and court her relentlessly,
until she succumbs to my seduction.

OMG, no. Absolutely not.

 

[Judy]

I will contact her one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, but not yet. Combined with one's own natural abilities, nothing else compared to true love can motivate a man to accomplish even greater things in life.

I would suggest that if it’s something you need to do to get past this and have closurre one way or the other then do it sooner then later.

40 is certainly not old but you are letting this hold you back too.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

Problematic, but chivalrous?

I used to think like this too, but based on an admittedly small sample size of the only two important experiences of my life, I would argue that there are many women out there who say one thing and want another (that doesn't mean a man has any right to cross certain boundaries, approach with extreme caution). In the one case in my early 20s, she remained in a long-distance relationship with a guy she rarely saw for two years because she was waiting for me to declare my love and tell her to be with me. Her roommate even told me she was in love with me. Instead of doing that alpha Mr. Steal Yo Girl thing, when she wanted me to kiss her that night, I tried to be the nice guy and do the right thing, and asked her about him first and whether she would break up with him. She said the opposite of what she wanted, she said no. That was a guy she dumped for her husband or whoever her next boyfriend was that came along and stole her away. If I had just kissed her and told her without saying anything, I think it's very likely we would have been together all of these past nearly 20 years.

Similarly it took a generation, through my 20s and 30s, until I was in a serious relationship and almost got married once in my life. We were together 3-4 years, and the reason the relationship didn't work was because my business was struggling at the time. I didn't want to buy a house together, get married, have kids and a family, with such a shaky financial position. All of the underlying frustration and resentment with our situation boiled over one night when during a routine argument, she snapped and broke up with me. A few weeks later, she wanted to get back together. Since I realized nothing had changed and I didn't want to hold her back, I pushed her away.

Later that year I had made a small fortune (hard work pays off) and the situation had completely changed. But she was already dating someone else those many months later. When I asked her if she was happy, she said yes. What she really meant was "yes, but ..." because she was extremely hurt when I told her we could no longer talk on the phone or text, and she could contact me via email in the future if she wanted. She did, several times for about a year, and from her facebook page with her new boyfriend, I could see that she had bought him the exact same coat as me and had taken the exact same Christmas picture as her and I had taken the year before.

So yet again that was another situation where if I had been more aggressive and simply taken what I wanted, things would have turned out differently for me. I would have followed all of your kind advice and just made a nice quiet life with someone in the middle of nowhere. But some women are indecisive like that.

Now after those 3-4 hard years together, we were unable to share the good times when the season finally arrived. She married her new boyfriend last year, on the exact same day as the love of my life married her husband all those years ago.

I will not make the same mistake again.

 

[quartz]

Seventeen years ago she blocked you, disappeared, and has not attempted to communicate since.
Buddy, that’s a NO. Full stop.
How is this even a discussion?

 

[skategal]

Why would you want to be with someone who wouldn’t break up a long distance relationship to be with you and then blocked you?

I think you may have placed her on a pedestal that she doesn’t deserve to be on.

 

[genevieve]

I used to think like this too, but based on an admittedly small sample size of the only two important experiences of my life, I would argue that there are many women out there who say one thing and want another ...

OK, now I'm convinced you're just a troll. This is just too spot on Nice Guy.

 

[hanca]

I used to think like this too, but based on an admittedly small sample size of the only two important experiences of my life, I would argue that there are many women out there who say one thing and want another

Isn’t that exactly what many rapists say when they are at court? “Well, she did say no, but I knew she meant yes”.

Instead of doing that alpha Mr. Steal Yo Girl thing, when she wanted me to kiss her that night, I tried to be the nice guy and do the right thing, and asked her about him first and whether she would break up with him. She said the opposite of what she wanted, she said no. That was a guy she dumped for her husband or whoever her next boyfriend was that came along and stole her away. If I had just kissed her and told her without saying anything, I think it's very likely we would have been together all of these past nearly 20 years.

Your view of women needs some major overhaul. It seems to me that you see them as objects that are just ripe for stealing. And the object of your love seems to be such a sweetheart. So if you go and steal her from her husband, how will you ensure that in a year or two another guy won’t go and decide to steal her from you? She seems to be very prone to be ‘stolen’.

So yet again that was another situation where if I had been more aggressive and simply taken what I wanted, things would have turned out differently for me. I would have followed all of your kind advice and just made a nice quiet life with someone in the middle of nowhere. But some women are indecisive like that.

Is your perception of love equal to being aggressive and taking what you want? I don’t think it works like that in life. There need to be two for love, and both needs to be equally willing to commit to the relationship, otherwise it won’t work. Japanfan in one of the posts above shared what happened when she was strongly in love with a guy, as much that she would do anything for him, and yet he wouldn’t commit and even became abusive. It doesn’t work that you pick a girl/woman, shover her with love and she will feel the same - she may, but not always.

It may be a good idea if you speak to some therapist. They would be more qualified to help than a group of people on a skating forum.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

Isn’t that exactly what many rapists say when they are at court? “Well, she did say no, but I knew she meant yes”.

Respectfully, this is out of bounds. I qualified my statement specifically stating there are some boundaries that men cannot cross, which you left off your quote of my text.

I also listed two examples of women saying one thing and wanting another. It does happen sometimes, men too, people do not always say what they want.

Japanfan in one of the posts above shared what happened when she was strongly in love with a guy, as much that she would do anything for him, and yet he wouldn’t commit and even became abusive. It doesn’t work that you pick a girl/woman, shover her with love and she will feel the same - she may, but not always.

I agree, which is why I'm not ready to contact her right now. If I do it will be when I'm ready and from a point of overwhelming strategic advantage.

 

[Habs]

Respectfully, this is out of bounds. I qualified my statement specifically stating there are some boundaries that men cannot cross, which you left off your quote of my text.

I also listed two examples of women saying one thing and wanting another. It does happen sometimes, men too, people do not always say what they want.

Those weren't examples. Those are things you interpreted.

 

[hanca]

Respectfully, this is out of bounds. I qualified my statement specifically stating there are some boundaries that men cannot cross, which you left off your quote of my text.

I also listed two examples of women saying one thing and wanting another.

I never accused you of wanting to rape someone. But believing that women say one thing and mean something else shows quite disrespect for the women. You don’t really know what was the thinking when the woman in question said that she won’t split with the guy - you are assuming that she said one thing and wanted another thing, but it may be that she actually wanted something completely else, e.g. having you both. And with the other woman, you also don’t really know she wanted you when she said she was happy. It could also be that she wasn’t quite happy, but that didn’t mean she wanted you. It is your interpretation what you think (or you hope) she wanted.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

I never accused you

Fair enough

 

[Brenda_Bottems]

I used to think like this too, but based on an admittedly small sample size of the only two important experiences of my life, I would argue that there are many women out there who say one thing and want another (that doesn't mean a man has any right to cross certain boundaries, approach with extreme caution).

It may not be "politically correct" to say this out loud,but I know MANY women,particularly of my generation, who do exactly this: say one thing but want something entirely different. At the end of the day they just want to be rescued. Unfortunately,in my experience most of these women are not particularly successful at life.

While I indeed find ToFarAwayTimes rather pitiful,some of the nagging hyper-feminist replies here are excessive.

-BB

 

[VGThuy]

What makes you think she didn't mean to 86 you out of her life 17 years ago when she did? What makes you think she did that but actually meant or wanted something different? That's a long time to play hard-to-get.

 

[meggonzo]

I tried to be the nice guy and do the right thing, and asked her about him first and whether she would break up with him. She said the opposite of what she wanted, she said no. That was a guy she dumped for her husband or whoever her next boyfriend was that came along and stole her away. If I had just kissed her and told her without saying anything, I think it's very likely we would have been together all of these past nearly 20 years.

No matter how you or her roommate thought she felt, she told you NO so she most likely did not want a relationship with you. She did break up with the boyfriend for someone else. It's not likely that you would have been together.

 

[ToFarAwayTimes]

What makes you think she didn't mean to 86 you out of her life 17 years ago when she did? What makes you think she did that but actually meant or wanted something different? That's a long time to play hard-to-get.

She did mean to block me completely out of her life, but as hanca said:

To me it seems that she wanted more, but somehow she was waiting for you to make it happen and you didn’t make your move. The situation (hoping for maybes in the future...) was clearly too painful for her so at one stage she decided that she is not a masochist, she doesn’t enjoy being in pain so she removed herself from the situation.

Young adults aren't always the best with communication. She must have thought I wasn't interested. Or I did something to upset her that I can't possibly imagine what it was. We were best friends for two years, then she blocked me without any fight or reason or argument and never spoke to me again.

What else could it be except she was in love with me and didn't know how deeply I was in love with her?