Dear Daisy
A few years ago, I met up with an old friend, (who to this day, is the closest thing to perfect I have ever met) and fell madly and deeply in love with him. He told me he was single and we hooked up. But turns out he was engaged at the time and then got married a few months later whilst still staying in touch with me (and still keeping his marriage from me).
**When I found out his secret, I told him to never contact me again. Recently however, I found out his marriage has ended. I haven't heard from him in two years and it's taking me a great deal of willpower to not get in touch. **
On the one hand he broke my heart and I ended up suffering from panic attacks and depression. But on the other, a part of me is still in love with him and I've yet to meet someone whose company I have enjoyed as much as his. What should I do?
Lucy
Dear Lucy,
Oh, love, that’s heartbreaking. You’ve been carrying so many thoughts and hopes and wonderings around with you for so long - you must be exhausted. Firstly, well bloody done on having the strength to end it when you did, and leaving him alone when you were desperate to contact him. Plenty of great women wouldn’t have been able to do that, because we’re not ourselves when we’re in love - or rather, we’re often the worst version of ourselves. We behave like addicts, and that makes it very, very difficult to do the right thing. But you did.
That means that you’ve already done the most difficult thing. You have a strong moral core, you know what is right and wrong and how people should be treated, and you’re prepared to exercise that knowledge. Which means that you have to do what is right for you. Please don’t waste your emotional energy fantasising about this liar. This man might be handsome and charming and brilliant, wonderful fun - but he deceived two women, women he was supposed to cherish and more importantly, *respect. *
**If this was a film, he’d be under your window with a boombox right now, singing ‘My marriage failed because I’m still in love with you! Come back to me!’and you’d spend the rest of your lives drinking champagne together in the bath. I wish that was the case. But if he couldn’t make his marriage work, I suspect that he has a huge amount of work to do on himself, by himself. A relationship with you would feed his ego, but I’m not convinced that it would nourish you.
When we’re hurt in love, we become so vulnerable and it’s easy to construct barriers - emotional barbed wire and hazard cones and signals that tell the world not to approach us, not to get to know us because their tenderness might eventually destroy us. We’ve been there once and we’re not doing it again. So I suspect this might be why you’ve struggled to meet someone you like as much. A tiny part of your subconscious just doesn’t want to let them in, because it went so badly before. You won’t be able to change this overnight, but if you keep it in mind, you might find yourself more open to awkward first dates and difficult small talk.
People who seem ‘perfect’romantically sometimes aren’t what they seem. I’ve lost count of the number of friends who get taken on dates by ‘charming’men, who love everything my friends love and basically want to know when they can get married and have children - only to get their ghost on and disappear before the second meeting. I suspect they’re addicted to the idea of being everything to someone for one night only, and promise more than they can ever live up to.
I don’t know your ex, and he might be perfect for you in some ways - but your dilemma makes me wonder whether he was addicted to possibility and connection. If he was already with someone that he was planning to marry, you represented freedom and an escape from the reality of his existing relationship.
With all that in mind, I know that sometimes an itch just has to be scratched. We know white wine makes us drunk and horribly ill, but we still wave our bank cards at bar tenders and demand second bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. We know that we have to pay our rent at the end of the month but we still buy too many non essential things because someone stuck a sign on them that says ’70 per cent off!’or ‘Kim and Kanye use this!’We continue to squeeze our spots. So if part of you feels that you cannot rest or move on with your life until you’ve followed this path to its logical conclusion, that’s understandable.
If I were in your situation - and I’ve been in variations of it - I would be beating my chest and crying ‘But I *loooove *him!’Ultimately this is about your self love and happiness. If you truly believe that you have to find out whether he feels the same way that you do, and his marriage was an aberration, I suspect you’re going to. But please put yourself and your feelings first. This man will always be part of your love story, but you’re the heroine. You might need a completely fresh start before you get to the happy ending.
Daisy X