I had a tremendous mutual chemistry with someone when I was 22. I never felt that way before or since except for brief flickers - not even again with the same person, when given the chance. It happened when it happened, and could not be put back once the chance had been passed by. I chased that feeling, wanting to have it with someone and wanting it to be mutual. It was so powerful that I could tell he was near based on "a feeling", we finished each other's sentences. It was like something out of a movie.
We never even slept together.
It was an intense immediate mutual chemistry with someone I worked with. Our dating relationship consisted of one date, then two days later him telling me we couldn't get together for various reasons, but the flirtation still going strong and us still being obviously in lust, then an awkward couple of months working together at the same place with the lust being the pink elephant in the room. We couldn't even be friends because the lust made it too awkward. There would be times we talked, then fell silent, and then long moments of eye-staring then he'd march outside, stomp back and forth and mutter to himself... I saw it happen.
Owing (in all likelihood) to our ages and situation - the thing was terribly mismanaged by both of us. He was in an on/off relationship with someone that had been "off" when we started dating briefly but had gone "on" again.
I never called it love. I still don't. i've loved people before, and after, and deeply. Lust can break your heart too. I never felt anything that powerful before.
I had not known a soul in my new town when we met, and I was a romance junkie, and I almost ruined my life over it. I let my job go to hell and ran up a huge phone bill calling phone psychics every night desparate to hear that this person and I were destined to be together. I acted like a fool around him. When he did later come around a few years later, and start trying to get to know me (after confessing to another party - my stepdad - that he had
always liked me), we never picked up and formed a friendship nor was he ever able to really ask me on a date. He always made up some other reason to call. Yet when I told him I had "found someone" (my ex husband), he stopped contacting. I didn't even really ever get interested in him again. Doesn't mean I don't feel permanently changed and scarred by what happened.
I don't want to be with him now. I want my 22 year old self to have been with him, if that makes sense. I've been a lot of things since we knew each other. He's pretty much stayed the same. I know from a few small indicators - he commented that he thought I was a little too "into" the interests I have, he ran with a "wolf pack" of male buddies - that we wouldn't have been a good couple, and that our life would've revolved around following him and his friends around while
he pursued
his intense interests. I've been in relationships like that and it's just not fun. I'm a person who's passionate about what I'm passionate about and I demand to be
met.
Yet I still smart over what happened with him.
I dated a number of people since him. Even got married. Actually the memory of him is instrumental in me eventually coming out as a lesbian (I know you can't really "turn someone gay" but I may have been bi before)... since him, I am not even really attracted to men anymore. I stopped meeting anyone I liked. And while I did start dating women and am attracted to them, even while I'm in love with my partner I still have the memory of what happened that day. I feel like some part of my soul changed forever.
I don't want him. The thing is, every so often, that wound reopens. I start reliving everything that happened. I go through it all over again in my head. Why do I do this to myself?
Why do I hurt so much, for so long, over something that wasn't even ever really a relationship? Sometimes I hate that it happened at all, and feel like it ruined a part of me... I am not the same since it happened. I wish I had never known him. That kind of thing wasn't meant to happen.
Because I have the memory of that
feeling. I've been through short relationships hoping for that feeling. It will never come again. I know that that feeling is not love. I wish I could accept that it's in the past, it happened. I'm in a long term relationship now with someone I love. I even hate him for doing this to me.
At this point, I need peace.
I want to get over the feeling because at 34, I'm ruined on being able to enjoy perfectly good relationships because of what happened one day between two people who worked together. i'm in a perfectly good relationship, although we have some issues, we're used to each other and the ardor has cooled somewhat. Much of her issue with me is that I hold part of myself back. I certainly don't talk about
this issue. But I live in denial *most of the time* that the thing is still a problem.
It also ruined my faith in love. Before him, I really had a romantic worldview and threw myself headlong into anything I got into... since, I've struggled with commitment issues.
Yet I write about happily ever after endings.
Help.
The whole thing almost makes me want to believe crap like <a href="http://www.alienlovebite.com/">Alien Love Bite</a>
