I had a relationship like the one Fenderguy describes. During college/grad school years we drifted in and out of one another's lives periodically as our paths would cross. Both of us, at various times, pushed existing boyfriends/girlfriends to the side when an opportunity to hook up presented itself. We got along effortlessly and sex was always amazing.
Eventually, though, like in Fenderguy's case, push came to shove. Or it came time to fish or cut bait. Pee or get off the pot. Use whatever metaphor suits you. I walked away. I never did pine for her. I realized that one aspect of the special sauce of our relationship was the "no strings attached" aspect. She was an intense free spirit whose personality was not suited to being tied down to long term commitment. We would never have worked as a committed couple.
So I don't think of her as "one that got away". I did connect with her on social media many years ago, but we communicate only infrequently. She has gone on to a successful career in her dream area -- I did feel happy for her when I learned this, because I view her as a good person -- and she remains single, which does not surprise me. We occasionally exchange polite holiday good wishes, etc.
There was another woman, also from the college/grad school years, who I did try to forge a serious relationship with, and I did pine for her for some time when it didn't work out. In this modern age, peripatetic young people have these sorts of loose ends, I think. Ending a relationship because of a life's change, without closure. Eventually I had to let it go in my heart. I realized it does no good to pine for something intangible like that. If it was meant to work out, it would have worked out. I've not been in contact with her for a very long time. We parted long before the internet existed. I have no idea where she is or what she is doing.
A third anecdote came to me unexpectedly. The woman I sometimes think of as my "first true love". We met about age 12. She summered in my home town, which was somewhat of a summer resort town. Her grandmother lived near my home and our families knew one another. Even at age 12 I was infatuated with her, but way too young and shy to do anything. Our familial entanglements kept us in proximity. For a few summers we were awkward playmates in that phase between childhood and adolescence. About year 3 we became pen pals during the school year. Her letters became flirty, then explicitly sexual.
As an aside, I often think of that process when reading threads about how As develop. Keep in mind that we didn't really know one another very well. It was clear that, during the school year, she was fantasizing about sex, and I was a guy who could occupy her fantasies because I wasn't present IRL. Honestly, she was a million miles out of my league. In her school, she would not have looked my way. But in her fantasy life, via letters, she could create a fantasy version of the man she dreamed of, leading her to tell me all the things she wanted to do with Sir Topham Hat.
But I digress. The next summer, when I saw her, she was no longer a tall gangly girl looking way too skinny. She had developed big, gravity-defying boobs and curvy hips. She had a muscular, fit figure from years of competitive swimming and basketball. We started having sex; she was the initiator. Tall, athletic, curvy, I was the luckiest awkward teenage nerd on the face of planet earth. I was her first. She had an amazing sexual imagination. We tried everything we could think of.
Along came college. She went her way, me mine. We swapped letters for a while. She was giving those college boys hell in terms of making them try to keep up with her voracious sexual appetite. Again, this was aeons before the internet. Eventually, though, the contact stopped. She was involved in her life, me in mine, hundreds of miles apart. I had no idea what happened to her.
About 2 years ago, a mutual friend reached out to me. "Do you remember M?" "You mean MA, the girl I was with in high school?" "Yeah. You heard she died of cancer, didn't you?"
A flurry of Googling yielded the storyline, mostly via obituaries. She ended up getting a music degree, moving to Colorado, working as a church choir director, and then, somewhat later in life, meeting a handsome, hard-working man, getting married, and having four children. Then being diagnosed with some form of aggressive cancer. Several years of heroic chemo/radiation/etc. Gut-wrenching social media photos of her looking like a tortured wraith. Death, leaving behind a widower and kids ranging in age from 7-14. Truly a heartbreaking story. I don't carry a romantic torch for her, but she was somebody I knew, somebody I was close with, and to realize the suffering she went through, it was sobering. I suffered a sort of grief, mainly for her family. They must be heartbroken. I considered reaching out to the widower/husband to offer condolences but thought it might seem weird so I let it go.
[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 9:39 AM, April 25th (Thursday)]
