Did you ever have someone special in your life that, for whatever reason, it didn’t happen then and you wonder what might have been?
Kept in contact?
Know anything about them second or third hand?
Have no idea if they are alive or dead?
Would like to see them or contact them?
Would rather just have good memories and leave it at that?
Yep. I was desperately in love with two girls at uni (not at the same time). One was wild haired, tall, statuesque, artistic and beautiful. The other was sexy, funny, cerebral. Both were smart as anything, but in different ways. The artistic one went on to become an artist and moved away. The other one became a doctor and moved too. They never knew each other; moved in different circles. Both had the same name coincidentally.
I ran into the artist at a gallery opening a couple of years ago. She was still utterly striking. Dazzling eyes and smile. She’d had a couple of kids and a divorce. We had lunch and got on famously. Turns out that she had spent a few years living in a small country town - and that the doctor had lived there as well, and the doctor had done the kids/divorce thing too. They had both figured out they knew me.
So I had lunch with both of them, and also caught up with them both at one’s 50th birthday party. God it was nice. So many memories revived, and I managed through seeing them to see my youthful self again through their eyes.
But I’m married now, and happily. It was nice to see them, and I’m sure we’ll keep in touch, but the divine fire of love that I once felt for them is in the past. But the memory of it is very sweet. And the women they are now are people it will be fun to get to know all over again.
Can’t say she was a “lost love,” really, but through the magic of Google I recently pieced together that the girl I took to junior prom is now doing a nickel in the federal pen.
That must have been some prom!
I resisted friending on FB a guy I’d had a crush on for a long time. Finally thought “I’m an adult, right? Right?” and went ahead and friended him. Felt the crush evaporate like mist in sunshine as I looked over his profile. I apparently hadn’t gotten to know him all that well before my hormones went “Oooh!” and he does not appear to be someone I could love. Just as well, since I’m blissfully married, but it was still kinda disappointing in a weird way. If this is what men mean when they talk about thinking with their little head, then I can see how it can lead you the wrong direction. 
I think about one guy – not a lot, maybe once every few years – we really clicked but he absolutely did not know how to kiss (open mouth sloppy) and at 17, I didn’t have the nerve to coach him. Kissing is important – maybe too important – and while I didn’t “dump” him, I stopped responding to his phone calls.
Wherever he is, I hope he’s happy and doing well.
Yep, but thankfully some prayers went unanswered over the years.
Yup, the most intense sexual experience of my life. A girl I worked with and we got on incredibly well at work. It was one night only. She wanted to pursue things further, but I didn’t due to my insecurities (she was gorgeous; I wasn’t). I got into a relationship soon afterwards. Then it screwed up and I tried to track her down, to no avail. I walked past her in the street a few years later; I had put on a lot of weight and felt even worse about myself. She looked great. We caught each other’s eyes but she just walked on, and that was that.
Another girl I was in love with at uni, we recently connected on Facebook last month. She hasn’t changed really. But despite her astonishingly cool job, and that she still looks great, I’m not interested (hypothetically interested, I mean, as I’m in a relationship). Maybe because she hasn’t changed.
In another window on my computer screen I’m playing Scrabble via facebook with “the one who got away,” who is one the top four females in my life, the other three being my wife, my daughter and my mother.
Friend and I were a very non-romantic couple for about ten years. Best friends and I adored her. Her marriage really hit me hard and we were not in touch for the next ten years. I was married about a year after friend got married.
Our first contact in years came when she was required to interview me for a newspaper article. We were in touch sporadically after that until she finally invited me to join facebook to play Scrabble. We’ve been in almost constant touch since then.
She and my wife were high school classmates and her three kids are roughly the age of my daughter, so we’ve been doing some social things from time to time–my family joining hers for dinner, me taking her kids and my daughter to the zoo or the beach, she and my wife taking all the kids to a movie, etc.
We’re both happily married and neither of us is interested in cheating on our spouses. It’s a very nice friendship.
Fell in love three times over the decades before I met my wife. But that was 22 years ago, and I really don’t have much in the way of thoughts or feelings about women who used to be in my life before then. It’s like it happened in another century or something.
I sometimes wonder about my first love. I fell for this guy really hard at band camp… it was short, but intense for a 8th grader. We kept in touch for a while, but lost touch eventually. I wonder where he is now…
There are 2 in particular
Kept in contact? No–that was their request and I’m honoring it
Know anything about them second or third hand? Whatever google tells me
Have no idea if they are alive or dead? Both alive
Would like to see them or contact them? I’d like to say Yes, but it would just be hard and something they wouldn’t want themselves
Would rather just have good memories and leave it at that? Don’t know about “Rather”, but am Resigned to that reality
I sometimes idly wonder about one or another of my old girlfriends. Never enough to actually contact any of them, though. It’s seldom, but once in a great while I hear about an ex through a mutual acquaintance. The ones I’ve heard about seem to be doing well for themselves, which is nice.
You know how people say, “I don’t know how I would have ended up if not for [insert person, event, etc.]”?
I’m living that life. It’s not cool.
Heh, only one?
Actually, I pretend I’m smart enough to know I’da gotten sick of 'em, & they of me, at some point, no matter how much I may look back & idealize them now. Kinda like that Paul Simon line from “Kodachrome” ("…If you took all the all the girls I knew when I was single" etc.).
The great thing nowadays w/ Facebook & Google & all is you can torture yourself by looking them up & wonder what mighta been. Maybe even initiate contact & find out how wonderfully they’re doing. DOH! :smack:
She was actually someone I knew from a very early age - She was in my first grade class, though I knew Her before that. I always had a little-kid-type crush on Her.
Our parents ran in the same social circles: Her parents were good friends of good friends of my parents, but the four of them never hung out just together. When I was eight we moved 300 miles away, so I only saw Her sporadically over the years after that.
When I was 19 I started making plans to move back to LA (had nothing to do with Her) and get a place with the son of those good friends of my parents. Right after I turned 20 my family was there for his mom’s 40th birthday party, and She was there too; we hadn’t seen each other for a few years. The attraction between us was immediate and obvious. I visited LA several times over the next seven months, and finally made the move down there, but it only lasted a month. So any kind of real relationship never got off the ground; we hung out a few times, but it never went beyond that. After my brief stint in LA, we lost touch.
That was all in 1991-1992. About seven years ago, I found Her sister on Classmates.com one night, and I’d had enough to drink that I worked up the courage to write and ask about Her. Happily married with her first kid on the way. sigh
About a year ago, after I joined Facebook, I found Her. Still happily married, with three kids. Good for Her. I didn’t contact Her, I haven’t even looked Her up again since. I’ll take the good memories and leave it at that.
I’ve always thought it’s so weird that we call this person “the one who got away,” as if you left her cage open one day and she escaped.
I ran into an ex-gf at a big mall. She had come into the city for Christmas shopping. She’s gain a bunch of weight. My hair wasn’t quite as lush as she probably remembered.
The old spark was still there. We shared a soda at the food court and talked for a few minutes. We’re both married and that was it. No contact info shared. There’s some things best left undisturbed. Even when we fought, we were damn good in the bed. I don’t need that sort of temptation.
Yes, and it’s particularly on my mind at the moment - he was my first love, and as I’m back in my home town this week for work it’s like one big ol’ trip down memory lane.
We went out for a year when I was 18, and broke up shortly after I left for uni. I treated the poor bloke horribly, and the last time I saw him he was walking up my street, backwards so he could keep watching me, both us crying, after I’d told him it was over. I remember wanting to run after him and tell him I’d made a huge mistake. I still loved him, but having just started an exciting new life I didn’t think I had room in it for him.
That was years ago, and I’m happily married now, but while I was walking back after work tonight, I couldn’t help looking out for the 6’4 blue-eyed boy I knew then.
Occasionally. AFAIK, both that I think about are married, and so I will not contact them.