Excuse me, I did not ‘leave the cage open.’
I just didn’t know a lock could be picked with a lightbulb. I won’t make that mistake again.
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Thanks a lot, Mythbusters!
I’ve found several exes on Facebook (and am friends with a couple of them). One long-term ex is just googleable enough that I know she’s alive and well and possibly living in the same city as me. There’s only one formerly important person I haven’t been able to find, and that’s surely because I can’t read Japanese.
Did he have a flute?
Once again the Family Circus has already covered this
I found THE one recently on Facebook.
This was a man I was on and off with in my late teens and early twenties and he had a way of popping back into my life just when I’d managed to get over him. And I never got any resolution to the relationship, we were both young and moved around a lot. I think the last time I saw him was almost 30 years ago when he was passing through the town I was living in – he showed up at my place of work out of the blue and we made plans for later then he called and left a message cancelling and I never saw him again.
So I would still after all these years have dreams about him sometimes. I never made any effort to find out where he was though.
Then I saw his name on a college friend’s Facebook page and I friended him. I haven’t had any FB communication with him besides a basic friend request , although it was a strange couple of days…I found myself getting annoyed with my best friend of 30 years ago because she was making all sorts of simpering flirty comments to him on FB…also a couple of his friends from back then friended me at the same time then started sending me long chatty messages although I didn’t know them that well and didn’t think they much liked me.
Any way I soon realized there wasn’t much there anymore, I haven’t made any comments on his FB page mostly because I have absolutely no interest in anything he posts, he still seems stuck in the whole beer, darts and bar band thing he was into in college. He looks OK I guess but what I missing is something that isn’t there anymore…I lost him in time not geography.
I guess maybe I’d like to rip 30 years off him and jump him but there’s nothing for us in the now.
BTW, I keep hearing the OP read in the voice of Robert Stack.
A guy I knew 25 years ago, in the “best sex ever” category. I’ve Googled him and looked on Facebook – no sign of him anywhere. Unfortunately, I’m not in much contact with many people from that period, and none of them knew him.
I sometimes think about my ex, in a sort of “wonder what could have happened” kind of way. It’s funny because at the time I was madly in love with him and thought that he was THE ONE. And now, if a magic fairy offered me a chance to go back and have a life with him, I wouldn’t do it. I’m happier with my current boyfriend than I ever was with my ex. But sometimes I still wonder what kind of life we would have had together, had things worked out differently. The more time I have to think about it, the more I realize that it probably would have ended in tears anyway.
I don’t think about it a lot. All the times I’ve left him, it’s because we couldn’t ever work. And every time he’s left me, it’s been (in retrospect) a freaking godsend.
Still lookin’…
This is a weird one for me. Most of the women from my past are trainwrecks.
There is one, a good friend, who I have deep deep feelings for. But she is recently getting divorced, and is now dating one of my best friends. I was bitter, briefly, especially as my marriage was also collapsing right about the same time… but they are amazing together. I have no ill will, and I look forward to spending time with them both in the future.
There is an ex I sometimes wonder about… the passionate 9th grade relationship shaped me in many ways. Sadly, she’s batshit crazy, or at least was then, and given who she is, I’m sure that hasn’t changed much. She’s not on facebook, and google pulls up on mention from an art show almost 10 years ago. She’s probably better off without me, me being a codependant disaster myself, but I KNOW I’m better without her.
As far as I know, I was only “the one who got away” to one ex, and she’s a FB friend who I have to back away from now and again as she’s begun throwing herself at me… ugh.
Often, I wonder about them.
Sometimes, though, it wasn’t so much “the one that got away” as “the one I didn’t think I had a chance with” or even “the one I didn’t know I had a chance with”. :eek:
I’ve related the stories before here on the boards:
The Hungarian woman I was so interested in, but then I discovered she already had someone, and I never knew they broke up a little later, and we never seemed to be in the same place at the same time, so I figured it was not to be… and I never learned that she had been interested in me until seven years later! (arrgghh)
The woman I got along very well with, but never quite had the courage to ask out when we were in university.
A lot of times I couldn’t tell whether someone was interested in me, or was just waiting for a chance to make polite a break for the exits, so it was always safer to say nothing, hang back, wait for the inevitable “mention of the boyfriend”, and try to figure out what was going on socially. This caution was a wise move, because I had, for example, no idea that two of my best friends were going out with each other for months.
Yeah, socially, I’m blind and crippled.
I was in love with this guy practically since kindergarten. I thought we had something in high school but he took off with someone a year younger, married her, had two kids, then after 20 years she wanted a divorce. I think he’s with someone else now but sometimes I still wish it was me.
I am currently dating my “one that got away” from 16 years ago. Almost the first time in that many years that he and I have been single at the same time, and the only time in those 16 years that we have been… right for each other, for lack of any better way to put it. Any time over the last several years, had we tried our relationship again, we’d have failed for one reason or another, but now… I think our timing is just perfect.
I never made any real effort to find my one who got away. I liked her better in that role, I think. Though I’ve often selfishly wondered if she ever thought of me that way.
I recently got back the one who… I dunno… not “got away,” not exactly… I’m amazingly lucky to have another shot at loving her.
Yes. 
A few times. One was a close friend in high school, we dated once or twice, it didn’t work. Later she came out of the closet. We’re still in touch today, she’s my oldest friend.
Another in college, I was gonegonegone over this girl. She had a boyfriend. I will admit that I tried to break them up, and I was a real dick about it at times. We kissed once, and I still remember that kiss after a decade of being married to another woman, and happily married at that.
In both cases I realize we wouldn’t have worked together, but that might just be sour grapes.
Kinda curious about what he looks like now and what happened to him, if he got married, etc., but not enough to do anything about it. I know he moved away and then moved back, but if he’s still around here I wouldn’t know. I would never contact him; if he contacted me, I would make sure my husband knew about it. I do hope he’s happy and well, and that’s enough.
I recently thought about my first love, the one I lost my virginity to. She was a sweet gal and we spent several months screwing each others brains out. Then I went off to college and her family moved to another city and we fell out of touch with one another.
I’ve often wondered what has happened with her over the years. I hope she has had a happy life, but I’ll never know.
This thread sure makes me wonder what life was like before facebook!
My story is a little off the beaten path, but I think it still fits in with the spirit of the OP. I met this one guy online a year ago. We kept in touch throughout the year, but I flitted steadily from boyfriend to boyfriend, and in the few weeks where I was single he had, in turn, a work emergency and a family emergency. We just met each other for the first time last week. He has confessed that I’m the only girl he’s ever met who was exactly what he wanted in a girl, and that he could see himself marrying me. There were some crazy sparks in person, but alas, I’m taken. But I wonder …
Kept in contact? Yes. We’d sometimes go a few months without talking, but then we’d get to thinking about each other, and one of us would re-initiate conversation.
Know anything about them second or third hand? No.
Have no idea if they are alive or dead? Definitely alive.
Would like to see them or contact them? Yes, but I tell my boyfriend every time and haven’t so much as hugged this guy – I’ve told him we need to be appropriate, and he complies.
**Would rather just have good memories and leave it at that? ** No, I’d love to pursue things with him, particularly since he’s single and unmistakably interested. But I’ve already got a good man by my side.