Lost Love the One Who Got Away

I have someone that if only I had made different choices, we just might still be together. I believe many people do.

They may have been your high school sweetheart, college love, or someone more recent. Whoever they were, somewhere in the back of your mind you sometimes wonder, what if?

Throughout the many version of you, the spouse, parent, professional, artist, writer. That person remains hidden in the recesses of your mind, an unanswered call. An unopened invitation. Until one day you look at it, and say it loud, I wonder, what if?

The boy next door

He actually lived two houses down from mine. We dated briefly when we were teenagers. We’d go out driving in his car, a big deal at the time, talking, laughing doing what teenagers do. I was so inexperienced, everything with him was my first. The first time I held hands, kissed, made out, although we never went as far as we could have.

I remember he was romantic, and he made me so nervous. If I could go back I’d tell myself to embrace that, don’t run away from it.

Sadly, I did run away. I was on such a self-destructive path back then I ended up backing out of what was fast becoming a relationship. He said he wanted me to communicate more, I thought he was demanding.

Instead, I chose someone else. I made the unfortunate life choice of partnering with someone who would later become abusive. It took me five years to get out of that.

I didn’t think much about the boy next door by the time that relationship ended. I was quickly in another relationship, afraid to examine my life or my destructive choices in men. My next relationship was a happier one for a time it resulted in marriage and a child. Things derailed when we both became unfaithful in different ways. Him in multiple ways. Our marriage lasted eight years and ended badly with him ducking out with my best friend.

A journey of healing discoveries

I wish I had made better choices. Counseling earlier would have helped enormously. As I not so masterfully strung together one unhealthy relationship after another, I finally decided not to date for a time.

Over the years I went to counseling, embarked on the spiritual path, and read many self-help books. I learned how to love myself and no longer make poor choices.

I broke my pattern of attracting men who needed something from me, to make them feel complete. I broke my habit of thinking being in a relationship made me validated as a human being. Most of all, I spent time learning who I am and developing where I want to go next.

I don’t feel that people are inherently bad, rather they make bad choices. In the same light, I feel relationships are not simply unhealthy and that’s the end of the story. That black and white thinking gets us nowhere.

Relationships offer a myriad of emotions, experiences, lessons, purposes. We must take care not to label one as bad and another as good. They are all valuable, they are all wisdom-filled. If we have the eyes to see them in that light. To step out of victim mentality, to own our part of things, to admit we made choices that were not conducive to our healthiest version of ourselves.

And to admit that we were wrong.

Lessons in love

The notion an ex is in the past for a reason is a good one, and often true. However, there can be something more to that nagging feeling about someone from your past. Especially if you never really got to explore what might have been. A full-blown relationship turned ex is one thing, but someone you never really got out of the gates with, that’s a different thing.

For the most part, I try not to focus on regret, we can’t get the past back, only learn from it.

My one regret is not having reconnected with the boy next door. We both moved out of our childhood homes, and city. Naturally, he went on and married and has children. So I cannot contact him now. Had I earlier, or perhaps stuck with him when we were younger, who knows what might have been?

I believe, that if we are meant to know the answer to that question, if there truly is unfinished business, then the two people will come back around again and meet up. If not in this lifetime, then in the next. That the reason there are still thoughts about them after all this time is because there is something, however dormant, that could rise to the surface again.

A connection realized once more. An old flame rekindled.

I don’t pretend that it will happen with the one who got away, but I do like to daydream about it from time to time.

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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

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