I think I love a stranger?

[Pecanpickles]

Okay so not a total stranger.
16 years ago when I was a fresher in university I was in the fencing club, and I took a real shine to this guy. I was very timid and immature and, tbf rather silly. We sent on a few ‘socials’ but I determinedly ignored him (how stupid was I?!) in fact if he thought about me at all, he probably thought I was nuts. I probably WAS a bit nuts.

Anyway. The shit hit the fan in my family in my 2nd year of uni and I took time out of university. I went back eventually and only ever saw lovely fencing guy one more time. I bumped into him in a pub...
and he said hi.
That was it.

For the first couple of years after uni I looked him on facebook occasionally (we weren’t facebook friends, but at the time Facebook was more open) and saw that he had moved to Australia and was engaged to be married. (To a very beautiful woman who looks nothing like me!) After that I put him out of my mind.

Fast forward to today. I was have been reminiscing with an old uni friend and I ended up googling him to see what he is up to. Fully expected him to have kids and be living it ip in Oz. Turns up he’s back in the UK, and his facebook profile and cover pictures are of him, male friends and landscapes. His feature photos are all him and various mates... no obvious sign of wife or family? At risk of sounding like a stalkery nutter, is it unreasonable to think that if he was married he would have at least one picture of her public on his facebook?!!

I’ve spent the evening being proper nosy and he is such an amazing man!! He still looks gorgeous and even better for being older. He is talented, he is kind, I just look at his face and I just... 😍
I really want to know if he is married, and if not I want to meet him again! But he lives literally the other end of England. I can’t possibly message him without seeming super creepy, can I?! Especially as if he remembers me at all, it’s as a (very) random weirdo 18year-old-going-on-12!!

The worst part is I kind of want to go on holiday to where he lives to see if I can bump into him... would that be actual proper stalking?!

Help Mumsnet, is there anything I can do?! It sounds insane but he was my ‘one who got away’ and now I can’t stop feeling that he really might be he one for me! AIBU and utterly ridiculous and sad, or..??

What’s “creepy” about it? These suggestions that the OP is “stalking” him are disgraceful

It’s creepy because the OP didn’t say “I idly found this guy I fancied from afar at uni. Should I friend request him?”

The OP said that she has intermittently tracked via Facebook for years.

She has gone through every single photograph looking for evidence about his life and relationship status.

She’s been through every single Fb post.

She has worked up a whole scenario in her head where she loves him and “he’s the one that got away”.

This scenario includes a holiday to his home town where she stalks him
and “accidentally” bumps into him and he’s thrilled to see her.

^^ That’s why it’s creepy.

Given that she’s “in love” with him
how the hell do you think she is going to react if he foolishly accepts her Fb request?

How is that scenario going to end for the OP?

Not well. There’s no way that scenario ends well.

Reading your OP you come across obsessive. Life isn't a Hollywood romcom. It's highly likely you would come across as weird/stalkery because if he didn't remember you, you would then have to lay bare the limited contact you'd had i.e 'you once said hi to me in a bar!', Its on a par with 'I carried a watermelon', Random!!
You sound very invested in him already and would have to question how you would feel if you don't get the response you intend upon.

Come ooooooon whatcha gonna do?

Maybe when you woke up you realized the infatuation had passed :)

I would say message him. Once and ONCE only. Keep it light hearted, like the poster who said 'you look a lot like the guy from the fencing team'. To be honest, he may not even remember you or he will think you are odd but 'you pays your money and .....'

What is with the warning about 'fencers'? I can't say I have ever met one but I am intrigued.

I'm on the not-creepy side - definitely drop him a message but remember to respect his boundaries and so if it's not accepted, leave him be and try to put this behind you.

God there's some joyless bores on here.

Message him/ friend him/send him a request.

And FWIW if you check his profile you'll definitely pop up in list of people you may know, no matter what Facebooks algorithm says.

Do it!

Request him and see what happens, what's the worst that can happen, you said no one you know knows him anyway, so if he thinks your odd you can just delete him and pretend it never happened

halfwit not a “joyless bore” just someone with a modicum of sense who remembers that there are real
people behind this - MN is not a soap opera for our entertainment.

Trinity the worst that can happen is that he accepts her, she messages him obsessively and he rejects her out of hand and she’s devastated.

She

You're projecting a bit of a built up fantasy onto him, he could be a right git in reality!

I agree with pp who said this gap in knowledge is leading to imagination build up. I think taking action and reaching out is a good idea as long as your prepared for rejection. Ie no contact back rejection.

As for the stalker comments.. If a man was doing this asking us if it was weird I don't think it is.. To a degree!
People pop into our heads for all sorts of strange reasons... Agree that stalking is serious crime.

It's one thing to message him- from the comfort of your sofa (and be prepared to either get a polite reply or a blocking), another to turn up in his home town! What then? You already bumped into each other in the bar and got a 'hi'. This was a non-starter from the very beginning OP, sorry.

You barely know him. Why him out of all the men around you/in your life? This is obsessive.

True story that is only because this is anonymous. Had a similar uni experience except the bloke was assingned to a group of freshers to help them settle in. None of the other freshers turned up so we joined his mates and had a night in the pub. He was 21 and the bees knees. I made googly eyes at him all night and he was polite and remembered to ask me the odd question every now and then. He graduated completely unaware at all the times I had engineered time with him. We had 1 snog once, at new year.
X years later (maybe 4) I was upstairs in a bookshop and saw him brousing downstairs. I watched him for a stalkery amount of time. He bought a book and left.
That night I messaged him all breezy “were you in a book shop today, I thought I recognised someone but it took ages to remember who” totally breezy.
He replied “yes”. End of fucking story. Confirmed fairytales aren’t real. And I will never ever admit I did it in real life.

I've had someone FB message me in a similar way - but he was more open that the reason he was messaging me was that he found me attractive. I'd never noticed him, but he explained where he knew me from.
I found it 10% flattering, 20% odd and 70% mildly creepy.

Same thing happened to me. A guy from my uni course messaged me a few years after we graduated, saying that he’d always thought I was beautiful and was kicking himself for being too shy to talk to me. I was sort of impressed by his courage, and quite flattered, but a little creeped out too!

On the flip side, I pined after a ‘one that got away’ from university for years and years (although in my case it was someone I’d had a brief fling with that hadn’t worked out). I eventually did reconnect with him via Facebook and we met up and, well... it was a total damp squib. I realised that a good 90% of our ill fated star-crossed lovers story had all been in my head, and we were most definitely not meant to be together!

I am guessing that you are single? Here's and new project for you- go out and find a nice real man to fantasise over. It's much more fun! Let us know how you get on.