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Original poster

Your ''one that got away''

120 replies

LolaPickle · 01/10/2018 23:24

Does anyone else have a ''one that got away'' - in terms of EX's?

One that pops in to your mind from time to time, but you don't keep in contact with?

OP posts:
lasttimeround · 02/10/2018 09:02

I learned a lot of life lessons due to my OTGA. Made me a better person in lots of ways. Understanding my faults and limitations. Not cos he told me but in retrospect once i started to see why we werent together. Probably the making of me. Not really cos of him especially but because a really hard break up forced me to rebuild myself. It was awful but i woulcnt change who i became due to it.

makingmammaries · 02/10/2018 09:10

Yes. Last year by chance I was travelling to his city (far end of Europe) and tried to look him up, only to find that he had died suddenly in 2016. I was more gutted than I could ever have imagined.

babswindsor · 02/10/2018 09:11

I really loved him when I was a teenager and we lived together for a year. He was really good looking and funny and sexy. We split up and it was really messy and unpleasant. I looked him up on fb a year or so ago and he is now very fat, very ugly and (Funny i didn't notice at the time) semi-literate.

Asuna · 02/10/2018 09:12

I used to think I had one of these. A guy I only went on two dates with, but he made an effort to keep in contact and we’d text and talk on the phone all the time for a few months, and I let it fizzle. I regretted that and felt like he should have been a serious relationship. I tried to find him a few years later on social media, and explain why I hadn’t made more effort (I had did have other stuff on my mind at the time we met, but I regretted not putting our potential dating first) but I had no luck. Didn’t help that I couldn’t remember his surname!

The connection I had with this guy was nothing like my husband though, and the idea that anyone could be a “one that got away” went out of the window when I met my husband. The other guy was really nice and I knew I didn’t give it time to blossom into something, which is why I considered him a missed opportunitely. I knew right away that my husband was worth continuing to talk to, date, and commit to something term with.

ChocolateOrIDie · 02/10/2018 09:15

Very very toxic relationship, so alike that when we got on we were inseparable, but the fall out if there was an argument… toxic is the only way to describe what we had. We are better off apart but whenever we cross paths (see eachother out in public) theres definitely that magnetic pull to want to go and ‘catch up’ but we both know it would never be a good idea. Sad, but, we’re both happier with our current partners as we actually have stable relationships now.

peachgreen · 02/10/2018 09:19

I'm married to mine now. Smile Circumstances meant that we couldn't be together when we first met despite an obvious (but unacted on) attraction. We both spent a year sorting our lives out so we could be together (without actually having any contact at all, just secretly hoping the other person was doing the same). He got back in touch and we moved in together 3 weeks later. Now blissfully happily married with a gorgeous baby.

PurpleMac · 02/10/2018 09:46

Kind of. He's my best friend, we've both had feelings over the years but the timing has never been right because of the distance (he lives about 4 hours away). It nearly happened, but then he met someone who he fell head over heels with. Shortly after, I met my now DH. Now we are both married with kids and very happy, and the four of us are best friends (my husband loves him, and I'm crazy about his wife, she's one of my favourite people). It's worked out for the best but I do sometimes wonder what if...wouldn't change it for the world though.

puffyisgood · 02/10/2018 09:55

@sofato5miles - good story.

whiteonesugar · 02/10/2018 10:02

I always wonder about mine. I was 18, he was 19. He was my first love, I fell hook line and sinker. After a few months he dumped me out of the blue and i later discovered he had a long term girlfriend who then found out about me and made my life a misery even though i didn't know about her. I ended up going to the police about her.

Throughout all of it he still got in contact with me and i hung on to the notion that we would be together eventually. She broke up with him and i thought that meant he would be with me but it never happened.

We lost touch until about a year later when I saw him out and all the feelings were still there.

I haven't seen him now for around 14/15 years and I always wonder what he's doing and sometimes look for him on social media. I often wonder what would happen if i saw him, if I would feel anything. I'm happily married now and I assume he probably is too. I think the reason I wonder about it is because there was no closure and we really did get on amazingly well. Sigh.

motherlondon · 02/10/2018 10:22

Yep, for 30 years I've loved him. We were never in tight place right time for relationship but have an amazing connection and nearly a telepathy.
I'm divorced now, he is married and although we talk, once a year or so, I never take him up on his offer to spend a day doing the sport/activity we both love, as I couldn't handle it.
I've never felt adored or loved in a relationship and often wish that we had have got together properly.

loopylass13 · 02/10/2018 10:23

He got away after I foolishly dumpt him - I was young and didn't realise what I wanted, or how lucky I got finding him in the first place. I miss him dearly x

QueenofmyPrinces · 02/10/2018 10:31

I had a “one that got away” who at the time I was so in love with. After breaking up I would spend so much time thinking about him. It went on for years and even whilst having other boyfriends, I was always thinking about my Ex and how we were meant to be and all the ‘what ifs’. We stayed in touch after we broke up for many, many years and in some ways I never got over him. That happened 15 years ago and even now people will class him as my “one that got away” because our relationship seemed just so perfect. Everyone, including me, thought we’d end up together and nobody even considered that it wouldn’t happen.

However, it turned out he’d cheated on a girlfriend when he met me and that he cheated on me too. He’s married now and frequently goes to strip bars behind her back and has private dances etc - he’s probably cheated on his wife too actually.

He may have been the one that got away but now I’m glad he got away.

I have a wonderful husband and rather than focus on the one that got away I count my blessings at the one I found.

fantasmasgoria1 · 02/10/2018 10:53

I don’t have a one that got away. They one I want I have!

MrsMWA · 02/10/2018 11:00

It’s been 22 years, still love him and always will. Haven’t seen him for over 5 years and am mature enough now to stay away. I know he is a shit. He has never got married or settled down. Would be easier if he had done. He has my heart though and he knows it.

Belletower · 02/10/2018 11:04

Hamsterwheelz I could have written your post, down to the Bipolar diagnosis and everything between!

He was my first proper love. I was absolutely blown away by him and my obsession with him ruled my life for a good three years after we broke up. I even moved back to the city I left when we broke up thinking that we would romantically bump into each other and reconcile and live happily ever after.

That poor, poor man. I am so much better now than I was, although I do think that if I had been diagnosed and stable when I met him we would have at least lasted longer than we did.

sofato5miles · 02/10/2018 11:12

@puffy Not really. I moved to Melbourne and went off the rails and was deeply, deeply unhappy for about three years until I met DH. Doing the right thing was traumatic for me. However, it has made me a much better, sympathetic person.

Thank God it was all prior to social media and his name is ultra common so there would be no point even trying to stalk. Blush

Belletower · 02/10/2018 11:16

Oh ShatnersWig Sad Flowers

How is life now?

Reaa · 02/10/2018 11:27

Not so much OTGA but one I still feel strongly about, he was my first true love but I treated him so badly. Looking back, he had a drug problem, lack of work problem and as far as I can tell, he's not changed FB stalked him in the 20 years I have not seen him for.

The other sort of OTGA, was a best friend throughout childhood and teen years, we never quite got together but had a few stolen kisses, I had my first kiss with him, I do wonder what would of happened if I had just be brave enough to give a relationship a chance. He's now married with children living in a different country to me and we have had no contact for years.

pumpastrotter · 02/10/2018 11:31

Kind of. The nicest boyfriend I ever had in my late teens - I broke up with him because things had gotten stale and too pally after a few years. He and his family were absolutely lovely and really helped me through a particular shitty time which I unwittingly took for granted in hindsight (still wish I had the balls to take his mom some flowers). He doesn't really update SM now but his last photo a couple of years ago was good as ever - on the other hand, he's almost 30 and still wasting himself in a part time shelf stacking job, playing games 10+ hours of the day and living in his parent's box room.

Reaa · 02/10/2018 11:31

Shatners Flowers

Bluebell9 · 02/10/2018 11:32

I still think of mine fondly but I'm very happy with DP and wouldn't change him.

My OTGA was in the military, we were FWB for a year or so and kept in touch all the time he was away on tour. We both wanted something more serious but I knew I didn't want a DP/DH who was away so much. He said he would leave but I knew he loved his job and wouldn't let him leave for me. It was tough as he had such a great connection. He texts me around Christmas (we met at Christmas time) most years but knows I'm happy with my DP.

venusandmars · 02/10/2018 11:33

Timing was never quite right for us. He was free, I was just coming out of a long relationship; I was free, he was in a new relationship; we were both free together but I was about to move several thousand miles away (it was a glorious brief time before I left).
Both back in UK, back in contact, he died in a car crash before we had a chance to meet up. A lorry crossed the central reservation on a motorway. Tragic Sad

MrsFarm · 02/10/2018 11:35

I am happily married but years ago i had a few "moments" with a guy - he had a girlfriend so we never did anything. I would have liked to see if something would have worked out with us but I guess I never let him know that. He married her. I was told recently of a conversation with someone in my family years ago that he said he would dump his girlfriend if he thought it was genuinely interested. I see him around and I still think that there is a little twinkle in his eye when we chat. I think we both wonder "what if"

ShatnersWig · 02/10/2018 11:39

Half a lifetime ago, now, as I'm 44. I didn't date again for three years. Have had two long-term relationships since (one of three years, one of ten) and it's not impacted them or how I felt about those partners. Although have to be honest and say it was ten years before I didn't cry on the anniversary of the crash or on her birthday. I won't drive down that same road myself and if someone else is driving that route I find myself tensing up and not feeling great. Don't really think about her very often except in the few days leading up to those dates and doing a bit of "what if?"

hungryhippo90 · 02/10/2018 11:41

I met mine when I was 18, he was 32. The first person who ever came into my life and showed me any sort of kindness.

I fell head over heels in love with him. He wanted to get married, he wanted to give me the world. I pushed him away because I didn’t feel worthy of someone like him. I moved over him for months and he begged me back. I fell pregnant and miscarried, he pushed me away so I stayed well away. We ended up back together, pregnant again. It was then that he told me he had a child on the way with someone else. I was so gutted.
I couldn’t get past it. So I pushed him away, fully expecting that given time, we would figure it out. Because there’s no way we weren’t meant to be, he would lay in bed and tell me that we were like bees and honey, he would never be without me.

Sad to say, I haven’t seen him in 9 years. We spoke every day for about 5 of those.

We’ve barely spoken since I told him I’d got married. He was really hurt by it. I told him I needed to cease contact for my marriage to work, he said that he thought it would be him I married, and he was the most hurt he’s ever been, but he understands that if he hadn’t of let me get away then I would have been his and I’ve not heard from him since.

I know that he would have never been the husband that I have. But I really, really loved him.