How to find my teenage love?

[HowIsThisOk]

We were 18. It was dizzying and exciting and glorious. He was quiet and shy and had a floppy fringe. We used to stare at each other across the maths class. We turned to mush around each other. We would talk for hours. All the typical stuff.

Then he disappeared. One day he didnt come to school. He messaged me saying he wasn't good enough for me and he was broken. That was it. I heard he went to an institution to help him with his depression. I saw him in tesco when I was 21 and we spoke and we took each others breath away all over again, in the fruit aisle. I had a boyfriend at the time and was planning a year working abroad. We never met again.

Now I am 32, happily married, 2 kids, successful career. The whole package. I think about him all the time. I have this desperate need to know what happened to him, if he is happy, if he is even alive. I have trolled the Internet dozens of times with his name and nothing has showed up. I have gone through online death notices, social media, even messaging people he was friends with in school asking if they knew him anymore but even they dont check their social media. I have found nothing.

I am like a crazy stalker, but i just need to know if he is ok. How do you find someone? I know I should leave it and forget him but he haunts me.

[AuntieStella]

I think the best thing you can do is work out why you are feeling this totally unreasonable "need"

Yes you are behaving like a crazy stalker, and instead of asking how to stalk even more effectively (ie how to find him) you need to be asking what help you need to cut it out

[HowIsThisOk]

I think it's because he was important to me and I don't know if he is dead or alive. I have this horrible thought that his depression won. Also, it was so sudden. He was there every day, and then he was just gone. No goodbye. No explanation. The first guy I loved just disappeared. It messed with my head for a long time I guess.

Even if I knew if he was just alive or not I would feel more at peace with things.

Also, as an add on, this isn't behind my DHs back or anything. He knows I feel like this, and what happened.

[Limth]

I'm sorry to be blunt, OP, but this is really quite pathetic.

I understand it must've absolutely knocked the wind out of your 18-year old sails. But plenty of people experienced heartache and betrayal and loss at that age which felt life-altering at the time but, in the grand scheme of things, wasn't.

I understand totally why you might be curious to find out what happened to him. But your framing of this as a 'need', your searching all over the internet and messaging people is actually quite disturbing and immature. I also feel its quite a betrayal to your current partner even though you say he's okay with it. What if you did find Mr Floppy Fringe again, and messaged him, and found out he was single, and then he suggested meeting up. Where do you draw the line with what's acceptable given you're already in a relationship?

I actually also don't think Mr Floppy Fringe deserves this much of your headspace. He disappeared, reappeared in a fruit aisle, disappeared again and seems to have never offered any kind of apology of explanation for the heartache he caused you.

You've tried to find him to satisfy a curiosity and you can't find him. Now move on. Concentrate on what you do have in life.

[HowIsThisOk]

..... maybe you are right. Admittedly, I dont even want to make contact with him, but he you are right that he never did explain what happened or apologise. For years it's been a "I wonder is he dead or alive. What he looks like now. I would like to know" but that thought has happened so many times that now I just want to know so it stops being something i think about.... if that makes any sense.

[Limth]

It does make sense, OP, but given how passionately you talk about him and your relationship in the first post I don't actually think it'd play out that way if you did find him.

What I mean is that if you did stumble upon him on FB and you were able to see that, for example, he's alive, he live in Coventry, he's divorced, he has a five year old daughter called Amber and does rock climbing on the weekends, would you be able to leave it there? Would you be able to say to yourself "Ok, I know what I wanted to know, now I'll walk away and stop thinking about him"? I doubt it.

From your opening post, I suspect you'd obsessively think about him for several weeks. I think you would check his FB daily. I think you'd progress to adding him as a friend. Then you'd message him. And, it'd go on from there with potentially disastrous consequences for your current life.

If he's still alive, OP, he clearly doesn't want to be found by you or in touch with you. Don't give him the headspace.

[LimeCheesecake]

So this was 2009 he disappeared? had his family all disappeared too?

OP - why do you want to know? When he was well enough at 21/in 2011 he didn’t look you up. He didn’t get in touch again after your moment in fruit and veg. He was polite and then ignored you. He clearly doesn’t want to have contact, he might have been your one great love, but you weren’t his.

[HappyHamsters]

Leave the guy alone, you have a very unhealthy obsessio7n about him, he hasn't tried to contact you, perhaps you need to talk this through with a professional, your poor dh must have the patience of a Saint.you were both only 18, young and thought you were in love, its really time to get past this.