I shared a flat with him for a year when we were at university, back in the late ‘80s. He was great company and incredibly clever. We could sit for hours at the kitchen table discussing the universe, which he understood in ways I couldn’t even begin to grasp. I loved to listen to him and he never bored me. He fell for me heavily, but I was thoroughly broken after a short but intense relationship that ended badly and I wasn’t ready to settle down.
He asked me out on a beach in Yorkshire on a day out towards the end of the year and I stupidly said no. I was staying with my grandmother at the time. She was a good judge of character and said what a lovely young man he was, but I wasn’t able to see him clearly, nor the stable future he could offer me.
I fell for another abusive man. My new man was jealous of the-one-who-got-away and tried to ban me from seeing him and, like a fool, I allowed him to tear the friendship apart. And then my friend found someone else.
University ended a few years later and I moved around, restlessly. I met the man I would eventually marry, but as that relationship progressed, I began to experience doubts. I also remembered my friend from university and my refusal on the beach that day and I knew now that I regretted it.
I called a mutual friend, who said that he had spoken to him. The mutual friend said that he thought my one-that-got-away was still in the relationship he’d been in for years, but that he’d admitted to the mutual friend that I was always the one and anything else would always be second best.
My mother even told me that if he really felt that way, and I did too, that I should try to contact him. It wasn’t fair on the other young woman, she said.
I got as far as going to the flat where we’d shared for a year as students. He owned it and was still living there, but there were two names on the doorbell. He was still with her and I couldn’t bring myself to intervene.
So I married the one I was with and it was never that happy. We have children, but he wasn’t a good father to them and the marriage ended.
I look my lovely friend up on Facebook now and them. He appears to be happily married to the girlfriend he met after I pushed him away and they have children together. From the photos, I think he’s a good dad and that his wife loves him very much.
But how I wish I could go back to that beach in Yorkshire and change my answer and watch his face light up, instead of causing him pain, as I did. I’d give a lot to have had a lovely stable marriage with a decent man, but I was just too broken to see what was in front of me.