One guy whose heart I broke many years ago now… I think about him fairly often because I hope he is okay. (He never got over me and let me know it, for years. The last I heard from him was when he called me a bit after he got married and told me he wished it had worked out with us, which… ow. Ow. I told him he couldn’t say these things now that he was married, let’s not even get into the part where I’m married, and haven’t heard from him since.)
The others I don’t really think about. Every so often I wonder what they’re doing. The two other serious ones I could find out pretty easily by googling them, since they’re both in academia, but I’m too lazy to. Hmm, though, that reminds me of a high school fling I haven’t thought about in years; wonder what he’s doing now?
Yeah, pretty much. I wonder about them but don’t wonder if they think about me very much. I still communicate with my latest ex occasionally. I even went to her father’s funeral. She looked… radiant.
Ow. I know two people who dated for something like six years. Shortly after it ended, she found someone else and got married right away. He was devastated. Then he found someone else and married right away. She was devastated as well. They still sometimes hang out without their spouses.
Before Facebook, I kept not-so-covert tabs on the ones I still care about. I’d ask friends if they’d heard from her, or what she was up to these days. Now they’re all on Facebook and I keep up with them much more overtly.
The one that got away managed to a) go to a clown college and become a semi-professional acrobat, b) go on to get a PhD in nuclear physics, and c) is one of the most personally attractive people I’ve ever known. We broke up in HS because I was an immature douche. I like to think that we would’ve hit it off as adults, but my memory is colored with confirmation bias; and besides, I’m in a happy marriage.
I’d like to tell her how much I admire her. I’d like to tell her I always felt bad about being an unfaithful 16-year-old kid when I should’ve known to treat her and other women more respectfully. I’d like to apologize for being a bad boyfriend, but I don’t think she’d care much at this point and I’d probably come off as a little creepy.
:rolleyes: You were 16! Of COURSE you were an immature douche, it goes with the territory! Unfaithful?? You sound like a 40 year old man who went to high school…forgive yourself, bud, it wouldn’t have worked out at age 16.
I must say, though, I am impressed. That’s quite a CV. Attractive; clown college graduate!; semi-professional acrobat; PHD in nuclear physics - I don’t even know her, and I would like to tell her how much I admire her, LOL!
My word choice wasn’t ideal… in the real world, I gave her mono and then started hooking up with an ex-girlfriend or two while she was home sick. On the bright side, I married one of those ex-girlfriends about 10 years later.
I’d forgive myself, but you have to realize… she originally went to clown college because she was practicing to be a contortionist. Could you forgive yourself?
Got out of a 5 year relationship 3 months ago. Ex called me a couple of weeks back and told me she was getting married…did I want to go to the wedding. Oh…and that she still loves me.
This thread prompted me to look one up. I found her on LinkedIn. She still looks good, twenty years on. Strangely, our career paths seem to have taken a similar direction: though we met at drama school, both she and I ended up in marketing. Weirdly enough she’s only living a few miles from my sister in TN.
Most of them I don’t much care about, but I had one that I was in “love” with, and crazy about. We ended on a very, very bad note. Years went by, and I felt terribly guilty for some of the things I had done. I was very young, and in a bad place, but still.
So I looked him up. He has a very distinctive last name, so I found his blog, and left him a message to the equivalant of “Hi, your kids are cute, write me at this address if you feel like it.”
He did, and I immediately apologized to him. We exchanged a few e-mails, and then he dropped out of my life. Fine.
After two years, he wrote me back again, and then for about two years, we had an on-again, off-again e-mail correspondence.
During this time I began to grow distinctly uncomfortable with it. He was giving off vibes…about coming up to visit me…about him and I getting together…he asked to be let onto my blog, and with misgivings, I allowed it.
Soon enough, I kind of gleaned that he was reading my blog. I don’t just mean the current entries, but years back - I have been on this blog since, oh 2002 or so… He’d leave comments to old entries. It was obvious he was reading every single entry, since forever. I don’t mind that, except from my ex. I am fairly private about some things and my blog still has less than 10 people on it.
Finally one day I purged a bunch of people from my list and kicked him off, too, with a polite apology.
So then, he goes cyber-stalking and finds one of my very very few unlocked presences online. Fine, right? I mean, I left it out there, I had to know. And truth be to told, I didn’t really care that he read it…
EXCEPT, that he e-mailed me and asked me about it! I found that completely skeevy. You admit you were cyber-stalking??? And you want me to discuss my stuff with you?
I dated someone for two years. We remained friends (as in occasional phone calls) for a while after that. A few months later she invited me to her wedding – of a guy she met while we were still together. She was really upset when I told her no. She couldn’t understand it.
OK, the desire to invite your last couple of sex partners to your wedding seems a little messed up to me. I guess, from the other partner’s perspective, if you’re marrying someone you’ve known for 3 months you don’t really know any of these people he or she is inviting so it doesn’t matter much.
All these stories are about old relationships, not flings. I think of a fling as short-term and purely sexual. I have significant exes I’m still friends with, less significant ones who have friended me on Facebook (which i accept because I;m a hugely self-absorbed narcissist), but I don’t imagine there’d be much to chat about with a former fling, except deciding whether or not to do it again. And yes, OP, I do think about some of them every so often, but I’m not curious or morbid enough to try and contact any of them.
