Not really. There is one man, though. When I was in my late twenties I met an Indian man whom I became friends with. He was Punjabi (same as me) and smart, funny, modern, liberal. He didn’t live with his mother, or expect me to live with his mother. He never wanted children. He loved Indian culture but was American through and through.
Just like me.
I have often wondered. If I had married him, my parents would have been happy and he could have come to my home, spoken to my parents and my family in their language, we would have had the wedding I always wanted, we’d have been encouraged to visit with my family in India often. Basically I would have been welcomed back into the fold, instead of always being a hanger-on.
I really liked him. Too much. I ended up having to end the friendship because both of us felt a great deal of mutual attraction and both of us were in relationships, and neither of us were willing to end our current ones.
Now I love my SO dearly and it’s been a great life with him so far. But sometimes you can look back and actually see the crossroads, and the place you took the fork.
Not at all. In fact, I only worry that one or more of them will track me down. I have no desire to speak to any of them, and I can only hope they’ve forgotten my name. Oh, I had terrible judgement as a young woman.
No, there were none that got away. All my previous relationships ended for very good reasons… and I have a way of hanging on until I’m so mad, there’s no going back.
Mostly I worry about them shooting up my house, to tell the truth.
Not me. I ended up marrying young (20) and we’re happier than ever together 12 years later. None of the guys I dated before meant all that much to me. I do occasionally meet some random man, and there is a shock of instant chemistry, and it’s interesting. I deliberately avoid developing friendships with those guys, too dangerous.
Thanks, everyone, for your concern. I’m still a little stunned. Now I’m trying to decide whether to call his wife this weekend (I only met her at the wedding) or just send a card and maybe include a copy of a few pictures I have of him from college, or just include my phone number and an offer of the pictures. And debating calling the ex to let him know…he still considers him his best friend, even after they fell out. I’ve only spoken to my ex twice in the last five years.
Oh yes … but fear on his part, crappy timing and poor communication did that relationship in.
I don’t know if we would have been happy together - he was a bit of a head case and his only marriage ended up failing long ago, which I think point to ‘no’ - but there were a lot of very attractive qualities as well.
In order to feel like one ‘got away’, you have to want to keep them for a long time. I generally don’t. I’m not the marrying kind – never wanted to be. I’ve intentionally released several who were wonderful people, and would make a wonderful partner for someone else, who did want a forever-and-ever one-and-only kind of thing.
I do keep friends for a very long time, though. One of my best friends from high school and I had a terrible, acrimonious split while we were in college. I regretted that very deeply, to the point where I would have dreams where we were speaking again, and woke up crying when the image dissolved. We patched it up a number of years later, though, so no more of that.
Well, I used to be terribly insecure about my looks. I was madly into this one guy, but, being terrified of rejection, my “seduction method” was ignoring him or insulting him, getting wildly drunk, staring at the floor etc. Stuff like that. I’m quite sure he liked me, but I made myself totally inapproachable. If this had happened to me now, I would have seduced him, I think.
But even though he’s a fantastic person, it would never have worked between us in the longer term. So in a way I inadvertently saved myself from what I thought I desperately wanted.
I’m sorry to hear that, Kittenblue.