Do you believe in loving one person, forever?

[Flightattendant]

I hope this doesn't sound too stupid, but I'm really interested to know whether this has any substance or is just a big old myth.

Basically I've only really, really been in love properly once.

He wasn't a particularly perfect person and had various problems, still does as far as I know...we are not in touch.

He was my first sexual partner, and when he left, I grieved as though someone had died, it was so so bad.

I invested a lot in him because I believed we'd always be together.

I've not really ever got over him...I've fancied a few blokes since then and I've been out with a couple, even had another child (not planned exactly) but I feel differently about this man than to anyone else I have ever met, or been with.

It's as though I cannot ever stop loving him, faults and everything all taken into consideration, and he was pretty cruel to me. But I don't think I will ever stop feeling that deepest of connections with him.

It's a shame as he has moved on, well I think so, but I suspect he just couldn't deal with my demands (not to drink around ds, etc) as he is very screwed up really, though you might not guess it from the outside.

But despite telling myself over and over that I am OVER him and can find someone else, nobody ever seems to match up. I don't know why.

I'm probably deluded but feel rather stuck.

Btw - not after advice, really, so much as validation - ie other people's experience of this and how, if ever, they got over it...or if they didn't.

has anyone actually been through this only to go on and be reunited with the person...it's as though I cannot let go. It's been 5 years since he went, and nearly 10 years since we met.

It might sound weird but I believe in choosing to love someone forever, I don't believe that loving a person is something out of our control. I couldn't love someone who didn't love me back.

If you had found a decent partner and happily settled down , you wouldn't give this other man a second thought, as it is, you haven't and naturally are wondering "what if".

If you were meant to be together then you would be, and you would be happy, but you're obviously not.

Thankyou,

yes I thought I believed in the choice thing too. It was when I saw him the other day and he was staring at me...it struck me because it was the first time he has actually smiled, and looked as though he misses me, since we separated.

It was as though he was validating what we had before...I've been convinced he never really loved me, before, and that he was just using me, and therefore I should stop loving him. But when he smiled like that it was like suddenly it had been real after all and I didn't just imagine it.

Part of me is convinced now that he really did love me, and still does, but was just afraid. I know it doesn't make anything alright, and doesn't make me happy, but i suppose I cling to it as he meant such a lot to me and I couldn't stand it when he just vanished.

Pathetic really, but I've always just been unable to shift what I feel about him. I've told people I am over it and tried to be over it, till I am blue in the face, but he's still there.

I sometimes wonder if I will just stay in love and pining over him till I die. I hadn't been thinking about him till the other day, it's too painful.

I understand totally your OP, Flight, in fact was having this conversation over on FB yesterday with a group of friends.

I love dp deeply and would never consider leaving him, or wanting anyone else. Ever.

But there is a Significant Other way back in my past. Someone I do still love. As much as I did 24 years ago. And if I think about it too much it hurts physically.

I think the only way to deal with it is to see love as something organic and changing. I don't love dp in the same way I loved him 10 yrs ago, I'm different, he's different, so stands to reason the love is too.

Your story is similar to mine in that there is kind of unfinished business playing on your mind.

My unfinished business is in a different country, and not the kind of person to be stalk-able via Facebook etc (and yes, I've tried, though I wouldn't get in touch) I haven't seen him since 1987 and yet if I saw him tomorrow my life with dp would be thrown into turmoil that it would not recover from.

Which is why I must never go back.

So, what I meant to say, is yes, I do believe that you keep loving someone, but that you love other people too. Differently.

I do think emotional experiences like that leave a mark, you aren't exactly the same person afterwards. I'm sure the love you felt for him was real and serious.

But love shows in what people do, not what they say, and certainly not in a smile, which costs nothing.

This reminds me of a relationship I had many years ago. I was capable of reading infinite things into a brief email for years afterwards. But the fact was, he wasn't with me, and he had been unfaithful to me because he was fed up with our relationship. That was the reality. It didn't make him a bad or good person, but what he did was a far better guide to what he felt than any words or facial expressions.

Bucharest, that sounds unutterably painful.

I know even were I to be with someone else (which is damned unlikely, I have to say) and this man came out of the past and knocked on my door, I could never turn him away.

I can't imagine anyone else ever being that important, iyswim? I am so glad you have a dp you love though. It gives me a little bit of hope!

The pain is just mad isn't it, when you remember..

No, not really.

There are so many forms of love, even when it's relating to your other half.

I still have some residual feelings for an ex-boyfriend, a man I though was perfect for me. But he wasn't. He dumped me. I was devastated and for several years couldn't stop comparing him to every man I went out with.

Then I met DH. In many ways he was quite similar to the ex, but with a much steadier temperament. Some might say he's geeky/boring/ whatever. Not me. He is the calm to my storm, to use a well-worn cliche. Life may have been more 'exciting' with the ex but ultimately that's not what I need.

I love DH differently to how I loved the ex, but far more. He will never let me down. And if I ever have a moment when I think 'what if', I only have to think of one or two differences between the two to remember how much better DH is.

I do agree with Malificence too. I do think you can choose to love.

Or not love, for that matter.

Wow..you have it bad..(or good depending on how you look at it)

Why don't you just tell him you still really love him..

Choosy you are probably right. In fact even when I was with him he was still with someone else, too...I must be crazy to think he loved me, but then I think he is the kind of person who will never be with someone he really loves.

It's perverse and very strange but he denies himself people he loves, denies himself seeing his own children, because it's too painful for him somehow...he is an emotional screwup, for sure. So it is hard to know he is probably not with you because he loves you...iyswim.

It's highly abusive, I realise

Crikey I'm a slow typist!

x-posts there.

Oh, me too. (if he came knocking)

I think looking back, the pain of the relationship itself was very raw, things he was going through at the time made it impossible for it ever to be a normal, run of the mill thing. It was all high drama constantly.

I wrote half of a novel on it once, and then tore it up. (pre-memory stick days) Sometimes wished I hadn't.

I do remember him very very fondly now. He was a really nice bloke, we were just out of time. I suppose a positive is also that I have known what that all-encompassing love thing really is, and sometimes (maybe a bit smugly and egotistically) I look at other people who purport to be in love and I think you haven't got a sodding clue.

Ay ay.

(spent all yesterday afternoon YouTubing music from back then and googleearthing streets we had walked together)

Madwoman.

He might not even remember my name.....

DP - no, I can't do that - he knows. He's just playing stupid mind games, he can't seem to help it. He was basically shafted by his own parents when he was a boy, and it made him very masochistic,

I think he leaves people because they love him and he loves them. It freaks him out.

Shodan, you lucky thing Oh for an easier version of ex!

Bucharest I think thatw as a bad thing to emntion. I am off to google earth for the rest of the week day

I even followed bloody streets from where he used to work to where I lived with my little arrows!

Flight;

Appreciate they may be reasons why it's impossible for you to get back with him, but if someone had so much power over me I'd have to do something, I couldn't just "drift"..

Knowing me I would do all I could to get back with him, despite being a masochist, because if I loved him as much as you do, I'd rather be with him than without him.

And yes, I do believe you can love someone forever...even if you're not with them.

Ladyintheradiator you have helped, of course you have. It makes sense...want to hear more about parallel universe thingy though!

Dafty...I tried and tried after he went. The more I cried and begged, the more he resisted, naturally.

I was furious then, for a while, but got past that. It really was like grief...the first day after he told me he wasn't coming back, I handed over ds to my mother, went and sat in the pouring rain in a field and wept and wept. I felt empty as though I could never be happy again. I just wanted to stop breathing, I felt nothing. just this pain.

So I don't think trying to get him back would work. He feels safel, he married someone who is quite bossy, quite cynical...he said staying there was 'like being at boarding school' which was clearly very comfortable for him. That's what screwed him up in the first place.

The best thing I can do is get on with it, really. He'll just stay in the cupboard at the back of my mind, once this latest sighting fades.

Basically it hasn't sunk in yet that he has gone...it never made sense at the time and still doesn't. What are the five stages of grief? I did the anger, did the bargaining, did the immeasurable sadness. But am somehow still in denial.
Sorry, if that seems arrogant, i know he hasn't really died.

Please explain more the theory of parallel universes ladyintheradiator.

Flight I fully understand where you are coming from. I have only had one all consuming love and I knew it from the moment I saw him. (I know I know) - this was years ago. We had about an eight/nine month relationship then.

We have since had an on-off liason since I split from exh - I honestly don't think anyone will ever compare to him nor will I ever let anyone in the way I have to him. Is that love? Whatever it is its certainly overwhelming.

Upon reflection I don't think I felt real love for my exh. And I am not sure whether he is capable of loving anyone - he has aspergers I am sure.

Mal surely you feel what you feel about someone - doesn't mean to say you have to do anything or act upon it.

Not sure if I understand the term 'choose to love' sounds too forced to me.

Also think you can love two people at once and that there are different types and degrees of love.

liaison

Yes I agree there are degrees of it, for instance I might have said briefly that I 'loved' the man I had my second child with...well, I did, in a sense. I love many of my friends and have flashes of love for some men. But it isn't the same, is it - something that gets into your lungs and you find every breath is for this person, with this person...they are in you, they are part of you.

Sincity, I am glad you have been seeing this man again...were you in touch the whole time you were married?

There have been other people I believed in, also - my first boyfriend, with who I never had sex but we shared a house - he is good, and will always represent 'good' in my heart but then, I wasn't properly in love with him. Very attached, yes, but not the love thing - I felt wrong about it and never settled.
The one I loved properly, it was - what was the word he used one evening, when we had been sat in a pub talking for hours...he said it had been 'sacred'.

The final stage of grief is acceptance...I think..?

Was it also love at first sight Flight?

Mine was, I literally walked in, saw him and knew he was going to change my life.

I often think there's some connection with its eternal quality and that as well.