Do you believe in "right person wrong time" ?

[AWiseWomanOnceSaidFuckThisShit]

Settle an argument for me. I say unless one or both are married/taken, or perhaps one is an alien and his or her digestive system is incompatible with the earth's atmosphere... there IS surely no wrong time if two people are right together.

Thoughts?!

They might live far apart and not want a long-distance relationship.

They might be wanting to focus on different things (want to have children soon, want to spend time on their career, not want to settle down etc, needing time to get over a significant event).

I think there is.

The hard part is getting on with your life

Yes I do think there's something behind 'right person wrong time'.

I met someone in my late 20's. We both fell hard for each other, had a great loving, fun relationship but his work took him away regularly and we couldn't make it work. I wanted him home more often, but he didn't want to sacrifice his career. We broke up and were both gutted about it.

We both ended up marrying the next partners we had.... I've heard that's quite a common thing. Apparently it's about the shift in the mind from 'casual dating' to 'serious relationship that involves sacrifices'.

I do think that if we lived and worked near each other we'd still be together.

I think Covid has been the 'wrong time' for a lot of relationships that would have otherwise progressed normally and happily without all this strain.

There's no wrong time for the right person.
If your not wanting the same things at the same time within some reason (not rushing) then they are wrong, you should have at least the same life goals or at least easily compromise on suitable timescales, stages of commitment, both should be looking forward to planning a future with the right person.

I think that when you meet someone you really click with you work harder to overcome obstacles. If you're not both prepared to do that then you probably won't last the distance.

Absolutely! Two people can get on really well and one might be ready to start a family and the other not, or one could be further on in their career and more financially secure and looking to buy property .. there are LOTS of reasons that a relationship wouldn't work, but if you met in 5/10 years you would be perfect - though in all probability one or both of you will be married by then anyway.

Right person wrong time has happened to me. I have no regrets as he was a wonderful man but I was unable to invest in the relationship in the way he deserved. If he had come along now, it would have been perfect. Neither of us were married by the way.

Oh goodness this post really made me reflect on my past. I married late ( ish) but had a lot of boyfriends.. I was permanently in a state of love/ heartbreak. Happily married now purely because i decided it was time to stop the nonsense. I occasionally think that a good few of those past loves would have made very good life partners, and we are still pals. I simply wasnt ready to be a grown up at the time of those passions, or when i was, they weren't. It truly is timing. My husband and I love each other very much and are very happy, but I dont think we were meant to be- purely the Universe making for a happy collision at the right point. Both parties need to have their " lights on" .

Yes, I'm I. That situation and it's hard. I just have to carry on with life and wish him the best. The older you get, the more complicated life gets and it becomes difficult to just go for it, no matter how strongly you feel. It's shit though

Very definitely think there's a wrong time. You can be at very different stages of your life where you want different things or have different responsibilities that don't make it appropriate to make the sacrifices you might otherwise.

For instance - If one of you just isn't ready to settle down and the other is. If you have kids already and they need more of your attention or just aren't ready themselves for you to have a non-casual relationship with someone. Or if you're just starting an intense phase of your career and aren't at a stage yet where they know you're worth that sacrifice. If one of you has just suffered trauma that makes it difficult to trust someone else. Etc.

You change a lot through your life, there's no reason to think that what works at one point would work at all points unless you had both been deliberately nudging your lives to try and keep in synch (which is what people in good long term relationships often do).

I just watched The Crown and Prince Charles would probably say that Camilla was the right person, wrong time. Wrong time in the sense that the establishment didn't think Camilla was worthy, or Camilla herself wasn't keen.

I met someone awesome in my early 20s. He got scared. It ended. We are in touch again and I realise he is just like DH who I met six years later but it was the right time for both of us.

Definitely.

I had a very intense but relatively short relationship in my mid 20s. We were great together and often discussed marriage / kids very early on. Huge physical attraction; similar background / interests/ values, laughed all the time. Unfortunately I was going through a terrible phase with my mental health that year and ended up having a big decline a couple of months after we met. He was keen to settle down and I just wasn’t in a position to do it. We ended up splitting and I was devastated. Took me a good couple of years to get over it. I still think about him sometimes 10+ years on, even though I’m now happily married with kids!

I’m sure if we’d met 5 years later we would have stayed together. Although saying that, given my MH problems were too much for him perhaps that was an indicator he wasn’t right after all - but to be fair it was far too intense for the early days of a relationship and I think in his shoes I would have walked away too.

I think the idea that there is only one right person is quite frankly ridiculous. If that were the case then a vanishingly small number of people would ever find their one right person.

I think there are lots of people who could potentially be right, but their potential for rightness is situational. If you meet someone and they’re married and not willing to leave their marriage then they aren’t the right person, even though under different circumstances they might be. Conversely there could be someone who would be a good fit who you’ve never considered because you yourself are happily in a relationship, but under different circumstances you and this other person might be great together.

It’s not a case of right person wrong time, it’s a case of wrong person at the time, even though they might subsequently become the right person if the situation changes.

I bet there are literally thousands of people thinking they met the right person at the wrong time who’ve never got the chance to find out. In reality that right person could be an absolute nightmare. Also I bet there are people who get together with that person they met 10 years ago who they thought was the right person at the wrong time back then, but they turn out to be completely the wrong person after all.

Right person wrong time is dependent on harboring a fantasy that never gets shattered or the few couples who get together later when the time is right. It’s romantic nonsense with a smattering of confirmation bias.

For clarity, I wanted kids, he didn't .

I left. I had a DD. I've Never regretted my decision but I'm glad he told me what he wanted in life.

Or or would have been too late for me to have DD.

We follow each other on social media. Never speak.

I actually think there is. I was engaged to someone in my teens/early twenties but we were separated by distance for years and it broke us. We were too young to handle that kind of separation for so long. I know if we had not been in a LDR we would’ve worked out.

Yes. Situations impact on what can really happen all the time and set boundaries whether we like it or not.

I definitely believe it.

There's more than one right person for each person and I think that sometimes you meet one of these people who'd be perfect for you but there will be reasons that you can't be together. Eg partner/spouse, job, where you live

No I don’t think there’s such a thing as right person wrong time. The right person is so incredibly rare that you can’t afford to let it pass you by. It’s not like you can just meet another right person later on when it’s more convenient. There IS however such as thing as being too lazy to make the effort for anything which isn’t easy.

Absolutely, particularly where kids are involved. If you define the right person as someone whose interests, beliefs and personality totally matches your own. Who you can feel joy with and want the same kind of future.

But throw one having young kids and the other having none, for example and it’s actually right person, wrong lifetime.

I think we all change through our lives, so the “right” person can be different at different times.
DP and I are in our 50s, and we met a few years ago. We get on really well, we clicked immediately, it’s a great relationship. We both have kids, but he had his 10 years before me. So when I was partying and living a carefree 20-something life, he was pushing a buggy and singing nursery rhymes. If we’d met then, I’d have thought he was dull and sensible, and he’d have thought I was a juvenile party girl. We’d have had nothing in common.
So maybe that would have been a case of right person wrong time. Except at that time he wouldn’t have been the right person!

I think the mistake is to assume that there is only one right person. People couple up seriously when they are ready to and then the next right person to come along is the one they’ll couple up with. When they’re busy with other stuff, several right people will just pass them by.