It’s not the end of the world if you don’t let it go. If you continue to moon over her. Even if you say something. Worst case, she is freaked out by you and changes churches.
What it is the end of is you. Or rather, the years you have spent pining over her. All of those years gone.
My best friend was in a relationship with a married man for ten+ years. At the end of it he bailed and went back to his wife and kids, and she was left alone, in her thirties, bitter and unhappy. All of those years she could have spent finding someone who was right for her, who made her happy, she spent chasing a dream that could never be.
But you’re not dead and neither is she. You could still decide to make your life over. You don’t have to change churches - though it’s not the end of the world either if you do. But you can change yourself. You have to want to, though, and it seems like you like being hopelessly in love with this woman.
This is the healthy way to approach a relationship. You start with two people who kind-of like each other and are curious about each other. You each find out the others bad habits, knock the pedestal-stuff out of the way and you work it out.
You work out that “I can accept that” and “you can accept this” and you spend time with each other over the “you still do that but we can work on that together” stuff. Its one good way for a relationship to start that possibly could work.
Look, its awfully easy for me to jump on a bandwagon here… so instead I just wanted to point out what LibrarySpy said… because that could be a positive example instead of pointing a finger & chiming in with a chorus of "Don’t Do Thats"s and "Shame On You"s.
I was referring mostly to Honey and Grumpybunny who were suggesting he ask her out for a cup of coffee and then maybe see if she would like to see a movie or something. They’re basically encouraging him to pursue an engaged woman. A woman, I might add, he’s had an unhealthy obsession of for 15+ years.
What you’re suggesting, if I’m reading you correctly, is that he makes his romantic feelings know to her. While I don’t agree with this, I don’t have a problem with it either. I’d just rather he cut off all contact with this girl and give up this ridiculous fantasy.
“Regrets for the things we have done can be tempered in time; regrets for things we did not do are inconsolable.” (Sidney J. Harris)
“All’s fair in love and war.” (Dunno who said it)
I’m not sure I totally agree with the latter quote – but I sure don’t totally disagree with it, either – but I absolutely live by the former.
The window may have closed – if it was ever even open in the first place. You might creep her out. You may have to change churches. But so f***ing what. I’m in the camp that says you gotta put your feelings out there and let what may come come. Start it out with an apology if you have to. Explain your reasoning. Be earnest. But don’t spend the rest of your life wondering.
Consider the worst possible result vs. the best possible result. What if you got the best possible result? It’s a no brainer. (Unless the worst possible result is her fiancee shooting your leg off with an M-16.)
What’s the worst that could happen? I’d suggest that telling an engaged woman you’ve been “in love” with her from afar for half her life, i.e. since she was a minor, would give her quite a few things to occupy her thoughts, and not in a pleasant way. It’s not something you’d do to someone you cared about.
Let’s be clear about this: she is not going to leave her fiance for some guy who has silently pined for her since she was a child, nor should she. Life is not a shitty romance novel. The best that could happen is that nothing happens and the OP moves on.
The window never closed because it was never open.
I find the sentiment expressed in that quote awful. It’s something that SOUNDS great on first read, but it’s a really, really selfish attitude. Your actions impact other people.
You talk about worst possible/best possible results, but only look at results affecting him. What about the worst possible result for her?
Since I don’t personally know the OP, any ‘advice’ I give is given from what I’m assuming. I’m assuming you don’t have a room in your home devoted to her covered with telephoto pictures of her. I’m assuming you don’t Facebook stalk her daily. I’m assuming you have mutual friends through church and possibly have interacted in a group.
I am assuming that you may have a certain amount of naivete regarding relationships and that you may have idealized this relationship and the girl herself. I’m also assuming that if she rejects you, you will be crushed and swear off ever having another potential relationship that may lead to romance.
So ask yourself this question. What if you approach her, 'fess up everything and tell her your true feelings and she reciprocates. What if she admits her true love for you? Will you drop everything, court her and marry her, much to the disapproval of many around you (especially in church…I’m a church regular myself and we can be so so so un-Christlike and prejudiced. Or will you slink off and invent excuses for not going further?
She’s engaged----not married…and while there’s a ring on the finger, it’s not a wedding band and now binding vows have been taken. People break off engagements and it wouldn’t be the first time that a person has fallen out of love with someone and in love with someone else and ended up ‘happily after’
A classmate has pined for the OP from afar since they were in grade school. Now she’s ready to say something, but he’s seeing someone who’s not really around much because of her work commitments.
How would the OP want his former classmate to handle this?
Longing is a spectacularly deceptive feeling. It feels like connection, it feels like meaning, and it feels like something extremely real and extremely important.
But it’s not. Longing is the lingering shadow of an instinct, a reflex. We are all built to feel a sense of strong, deep connection with people. Not with every person, but with dim lighting and ample self-disclosure, we are actually capable of feeling it with a great many people. This reflex has developed because it propels us into love. But the feeling of connection alone is not love.
Love is an interaction, it’s an act that by two people that is continually performed and renewed. We tend to think of the various circumstances around love as irrelevant, as if love exists on a plain of its own. But the reality is htat we pass a dozen potential loves on the street every day. In the end, the circumstances are really 90% of what makes love a reality. WIthout circumstances, all there is is potential, and potential is cheap.
Sometimes that initial reflex, that flood of chemicals, gets caught in a loop. It stops being about hte other person, and begins to feed off of itself. It’s a terrifying, exhilarating, and ultimately addicting feeling.
But it’s not a real connection. It’s a phenomenon that lives and is entirely contained by yourself. This is a tough thing to come to terms with, as it can take tremendous energy and eventually becomes a part of a person’s self-identity and way of understanding the world. But eventually, it needs to be let go. I don’t have an easy way to do that, but it’s what has to happen.
The OP is engaged to someone he presumably loves–let’s say it’s actually the dream girl. Then an 82 year old woman (half-plus-seven!) from church comes up to him one day while his sweetie is away tending to Ebola victims in Africa. Turns out the elderly spinster fell in love with him when he used to mow her lawn for pocket money, back when he was in his teens, and she’s been waiting for the age-gap to close ever since.
How would the OP respond? How would any sane person respond?
Rik, your story’s sad. If your unrequited love for this woman prevented you from marrying anyone else all the way up until now, when you’re at age 48 - well then, that’s a massive tragedy.
Let’s give Rik a little credit here. He hasn’t been putting off seeing other people because he’s pining over this girl. He actually doesn’t want/can’t have a real relationship with anyone, for whatever reasons. He has a crush on this girl, but that’s just a symptom of his inability to have a relationship, not a cause. He doesn’t want a relationship with his crush or anyone else. Ending his crush on this girl isn’t going to make him qualified to start a relationship with someone else, and telling her about his crush isn’t going to give him a shot at a relationship with her.
If he knows he’s not able to be in a relationship because of various disqualifying issues in his life, then nursing this crush is just a way of making his enforced lack of intimacy tolerable. If he isn’t planning on getting some therapy or changing himself to where he’s qualified to be in a relationship, then nursing his crush while keeping his mouth shut about it and not being a creep seems pretty harmless.
You’re still young enough to get counseling, and still find someone to share your life with. I’d work toward putting this gal out of your life, or move her to the Friendzone.
Well, no. My actual plan was to bring her the coats and buttons (probably by passing them to her at church), let her do the work at her own leisure and convenience, and then thank her genuinely when she returns them to me a week or two later.
(bolding mine)
Thank you for your understanding.
I didn’t want to come right out and say it, but my “enforced lack of intimacy” has less to do with an inability to have/lack of desire for a real relationship, and more to do with this incurable STD that I have no desire to pass along (HPV is little more than a nuisance to me, but can cause cervical cancer in women.) It’s mainly the span of time I’ve “kept it to myself” that has resulted in me finding myself horribly out of practice when it comes to chatting up women.
Ok, now I’m confused. You don’t see other women because you have HPV (which is really quite common), but you would see this woman from your church?
That doesn’t even make logical sense.
(Obviously, I’m using “see” as a euphemism.)
Also, please talk to a doctor about HPV. You may or may not have the kind that increases the risk of cancer. I don’t know if there is a test for that specifically, but I certainly wouldn’t put my entire sex life on hold because of it.