The one that got away

I'm sure this will have been asked before. But has anyone ever "never" gotten over a certain person. Someone that never seems to leave that place in your heart, no matter what relationship / marriage you're in, for some reason that person still crops up every now and then. And if you ever saw them again you feel like you could drop to your knees in a second. And no matter what you always regret losing them. For whatever reasons. Just curious

For me personally there is "the one" but time passes and I think I have imagined him being larger than life and more kind and giving than he was in real life.. the "idea" of him is a good daydream for me.

I may remember mine to be more amazing than she was, but she was a really nice person and always tried to be liberal minded. But people change over time. I do still dream of her though. It still hurts from time to time

I've thought of her every single second of every single day for the past 17 years since I last saw her. To this day she is still the most important person in my life. I miss her every day.

Why does it have to be that way? Why do our minds torture us? I am terrible for not taking my medication and when I forget it hits me more which just makes me feel like those little pills are only masking my true emotions and then I start to question them. I don't want to forget her. But then I don't want to hurt so much anymore either.

Yes, there was one great love, but moping over what might have been is a deeply unproductive activity. After a very painful period during which I came to realise I loved very much more than she loved me I made the decision to cut her completely out of my life - she was a very difficult person.

I have a weakness for difficult women, (but very carefully did not marry one). The gorgeous creature in question would probably have disappointed me even more had we continued (and vice versa I expect.

I had a chance at the man I still wonder about, my "what might have been". I had a connection with him that was very spiritual, insightful.. both deeply cerebral and full of heart, and having met in college was a connection well beyond our years.

He was having a genuine moment of weakness about a person he was dating at the time, and I can't quite explain my knowledge of how this was but he truly turned towards me in that moment, and not in a trivial way. It was primal; one of a dozen or so true moments of clarity for me, when I knew instinctually I was at a grand crossroads that would define my life. It wasn't even my moral compass that kicked in, when instead of honoring my own desire I instead encouraged him to have faith in her; it was my true love for him, in not wanting him to lose what I sensed could be the best thing that ever happened for him.

And now a couple of decades or so later they are a long-married, devoted old couple. They're still freaking adorable together.

I have to believe that my response was just as it should have been, and that my helping him to support his commitment even in the face of what for me represented my deepest personal desire, is a testament to my true love for humanity, as was manifested so spiritually for me through his presence.

My own life has not been without its blessings. My late husband, whom I met many years later, was a truly genuine and kind-hearted soul, whom I deeply loved and was wholly lucky to have ever had in my life. I don't regret; but I do wonder, can't help but wonder, what alternate reality was located down the way from that old crossroads. I suppose some things are meant to remain a mystery.

Wow. That's intense. All that time. I just don't understand why it lasts for all those years. And if anyone ever went back and followed that "one," did it ever work out for them? Was the one truly the one? Or just our own fantasies of what it could be like?

oh yeah there is the one...