To want to kick myself for being an idiot!!?!

[Whaaawhydididothat]

Firstly, I’d be interested if anyone knows if it’s possible to delete a message on LinkedIn??!!

ex and I broke up about 10 years ago not in bad terms, we were young and careers took us to opposite sides of the world. Have moderately missed him/regretted it ever since.

Im sure he’s single. I am too now. He’s doing v v well for himself and I sent him a LinkedIn message yesterday saying that I’d stumbled across his page, was impressed by his work and wished him well with it. Didn’t ask any questions. No response. OMFG!!! How do I remove this message?! Is that even possible? It’s one of the ones that says “message pending” or something like that, ‘in Mail’. HELP!

Oh come on! It’s awkward - no contact for 10 years. He knows I’m thinking about him now!

BTW wtf stands for what the fuck not why the fuck. Seen this a few times on here now!

Based on mumsnet, sometimes it can be a large amount of time has passed, but then if the feelings are still their, or the thoughts are their then it's always a possibility that more could happen.

I hardly ever log in to my linkedin account these days - I loath the site - like ebay - it is a mess and looks like it was built in the 90's - eugh - horrible site design. It's only useful if you are looking for a new job - it's over run with US users - the groups are full of pointless posts - the functionality all round is awful. So... I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't log in that often TBH. I wouldn't fret over what you wrote. Wait - you could get a nice surprise when he replies but... get on with your own life - you think too much.

Lol @Whaaawhydididothat I think you might be a teensy bit neurotic.

And?

It's nice to be thought of. You were nice, he may or may not be nice. Be all Zen and go with the flow.

OP, a lot of people on LinkedIn are very active and tend to send networky messages to everyone they are connected to just in case it produces some useful opportunity. He is probably assuming you are one of those people. There is an ex of mine on LI and I think he messaged me with a "work anniversary congrats" type message once. I didn't really think about it at all at the time, just "oh, that's nice. I guess he is more organized about networking on LinkedIn than I am"

He may have turned his email notifications off (I have these switched off because I hate all the spam emails in my inbox). Linked In isn’t like other social media either - he may not go on it often so may not have read the message yet. I only go on mine every 2-3 weeks and often have messages that have been there for weeks because I don’t have notifications set up and don’t really use the app.

One of the joys of being in your fifties is that you very rarely get that burning embarrassment any more. I can look at this dispassionately and see that it's really not a big deal. For one, I don't get notifications because they're a pain, so I have had messages in my linked in box for years. So he probably hasn't seen your message. Even if he has, he's not going to think you're a bunny boiler because your message is very neutral. If he doesn't reply there may be hundreds of reasons why that don't remotely reflect badly on you.

For example, he doesn't like revisiting past relationships. He's recently met someone. He's very busy at work and doesn't think it's a good idea to have any entanglements atm. You can write numerous other ones of your own.

Give yourself some slack and tell it as a funny story to your friends, to get some of the heat out of it.

I really don't see what you have to lose here.
The message was friendly and reasonable. If he doesn't reply, you've not seen him in a decade so it's hardly like you have to sit opposite him in an office every day.
You are cringing because sending it meant more to you but he won't know that. And at least this way you know. There's no 'what ifs'.

Of course you sometimes think of him. He’s part of your past!
You are definitely massively overthinking it.