~I Might Be Hopelessly Obsessed~
What drew me to this website in the first place:detective: Some of us carry baggage that we can't really discuss with anyone. It's not that I don't have anyone who would care to listen. It's just that I don't think these people really want to hear my bullshit. I'd rather they just know me as a pleasant person to be around, not some whiny sad-sack. Maybe that's why many of you are here as well.
I know what my friends and family would likely say to me, and they'd probably say the right things. The things you are supposed to say to someone in my situation. It's hard to view things objectively when it comes to your own deepest emotions. I am reluctant to admit to them that I've been *constantly* thinking about the same girl for a little over two years now. So that's why I'm here. Maybe I'll gain a new perspective on this, if I am lucky enough to get responses.
SO: My last relationship began in December 2009 and lasted over a year and a half. At the time, I had been single for over 3 years and was really ready to get back into a serious relationship. She was in her last couple years of college, and I was working. We lived a couple hours apart and visited each other frequently. We went on a few trips together. We shared some interests, but others not so much. At times, we had too many petty fights for my taste, and IMO, they were usually started by her getting pissy over something extremely trivial. Above all, we just both wanted a relationship that worked, so we made it work. It also helped that she was extremely pretty, probably in the 9-10 range.
We met several of each other's friends, but I definitely hung around her and her friends way more. They were all around 5-6 years younger than me, so most of them I felt like I had little in common with. There was one friend, however, who would ultimately make me feel something stronger than I've ever felt.
About a year and a half in to the relationship, I had a conscious realization that I Could Not Stop Thinking about this particular friend of hers. Whether at work or at home, She was on my mind. It crept up on me gradually over time, though I think it just hit me one day, when it broke through the realm of subconscious into the conscious.
I was working at a newspaper at the time. I had helped my girlfriend get an internship designing house ads for the paper. For one of the house ads, she decided to use The Friend as a model. When I say model, I don't mean like MODEL, but you know, just to have a face in the ad. The Friend is also beautiful, but kind of in a more ordinary way. This made my realization even more profound, because I knew I liked Her for all the right reasons.
I found myself looking at The Friend's Facebook page a lot. Thinking about how great She was, and how I wished She was my girlfriend instead. At some point around this time, I found out I was going to lose my job at the newspaper. It was a part time job that was being cut, just another cut to a newsroom already slashed to the bone. I wasn't too worried about that, though. I had other interests, and I knew I'd eventually figure it out. One night I was putting together a page in the sports section, and I used the house ad with The Friend as a filler ad. I decided to email her a PDF image of the page, so She could see what it looked like on an actual newspaper page. This happened probably right before I had the conscious realization of my obsession.
I never flirted with Her. Every time I was around Her, I behaved properly. My girlfriend was always present, and I didn't know I felt that way about Her until after the last time I saw Her. She seemed to get me from the very start. I can't really put it into words, but you just pick up on chemistry intuitively. The way She looked at me when I talked. It's almost as if Her reactions were exactly what I was looking for. Her expressions said she understood. My girlfriend didn't really get me. She certainly didn't get my humor. She rarely actually laughed when I made jokes, preferring instead to laugh at non-jokes. The times I heard my girlfriend laugh the hardest were social situations where she was trying to "make nice" with someone.
And The Friend's interests were much more in line with mine. She is a woman of taste. A TV/Sci-Fi/Literature nerd. She and I always had things to talk about when we were around each other. She was about 23. I was 28. Even though she was a good bit younger, She is very mature and intelligent for her age.
So there I was, a year and some 7-8 months into a decent relationship where I was content. And suddenly, Her.
Guys, I Never. Wanted. Anyone. So. Badly. :emot140:
I had been in love before. I fell in love at 18 with a girl who was 16. We dated for 3.5 years, even when I went away to college, which was a 5 hour drive away. When my first love broke up with me, I was heartbroken. I dated some between her and my currently-under-discussion Ex, but it took YEARS before I was willing to put my heart on the line again in a serious relationship. When I met my 2009 girlfriend, I was excited that finally I felt able to be happy. She was so pretty, and I wanted very much to be in love with her. I convinced myself that I was in love with her, but, as The Friend would teach me, that was not true.
Upon my major revelation of feelings for The Friend, I quickly counseled with my sister, who is usually the first person I talk to with stuff like this. My sister is 5-and-a-half years younger than me, and she is also mature for her age. We've always been close. Maybe it's no surprise then, that I fell for someone right around the same age.
My sister affirmed what I was feeling, and said that she agreed that my current girlfriend probably wasn't right for me. I had discussed the prospect of marriage with a few close people, but these feelings woke me up. The intensity of my feelings were a beacon of truth.
I determined that I had no choice but to break up with my girlfriend. Within a few days of my realization, I did. I called her up and told her that we were too different, and it just wasn't going to work. But I did not tell her I had feelings for The Friend.
This is where things start to get ****ed up. The very next day, not surprisingly, I'm still thinking about The Friend non-stop. At this point, perhaps I should have sought better counsel as to how to proceed. I had an OKCupid profile which had been inactive for a long time (it was how I met my Ex). I get on there and find that The Friend has a profile. Of course, our match percentage is in the high 90s. (With my Ex, it was 69 percent. And we joked about how that didn't matter at all).
On Twitter, a close friend of the Ex and The Friend tweets something to the effect of: "I find it creepy when people I know find me on OKCupid, even if it's someone I like."
At this point I freak out a little. Of course, She had seen that I looked at her profile. OKC includes that functionality. And I had just broken up with Her good friend.
Probably should have just let things be at this point. But instead of that, I write The Friend an email explaining what just happened, and how I think She is super great.
There's no way this ends well, if she's the good person that I know she is.
A couple days later, I get a thoughtful response from Her that basically says no matter how great I seem to her, we can't keep talking. It was heartbreaking to read. It was like getting dumped, and I was about as depressed as when I got dumped by my first love.
Here's the thing. The email actually did seem to acknowledge that we had some sort of chemistry. She listed off things we had in common, that She thought I was a good person, and that She tried hard to downplay the "thickness" between us when we were around my Ex, which was every time we were around each other. She said I was a good person for not telling my Ex the Full Truth. The email ended with "if it makes you feel any better, just know things would be different had you and I met first."
A day later, I wrote a response. I knew this would be our very last correspondence, and it was. I prefaced it with "Before I let this go, I want to say a few things." I then apologized for putting Her in such a bad position. I then said a few other things that came to mind reading Her email. I closed with making a brief case that someday, my Ex might actually approve of me and The Friend dating. And I made clear that this wasn't some fluke, that I had real, intense feelings that don't happen every day/month/year that woke me up. And I assured Her I wouldn't push things any further.
That was the last time we spoke.
In the days/weeks that followed, Her Tweets suggested internal conflict. One read: "Just had a dream that I am positive is testing my subconscious." Another one: "I'm doing that icky thing again where I put everyone else's needs ahead of my own."
Of course, I can only speculate those were about me, but it was within a time frame that seemed to apply.
I stay true to my word and don't cross the boundary. Months go by. After months of no talking, I get a Facebook message from my Ex, a simple "saw this and thought of you" type of thing. And I started to think about my own past, and how long it took me to get over my first love. A couple of months later, The Friend enters what would turn out to be a very short relationship (I know this because of Facebook). I then make the (ill-advised, perhaps) decision that my Ex deserves to know more of the truth, because it will help her move on. She also has started seeing a new guy, which doesn't surprise me. This guy turns out to be pretty much a rebound. She puts up a tough front toward me, but I think I hurt her pretty deeply. I explain to her that the reason we broke up was that I started to have feelings for "someone". She asked me if I got with this person, and I said no. I decided to leave out The Friend's name because I didn't want to affect their relationship.
I was hoping that more information would help my Ex in the long run to understand why we weren't together. When I got my heart broken by my first love, all I got was "my feelings changed", and that never satisfied me. At least here there was something a little more concrete that would prove we weren't right for each other.
Although my intentions were good, this did not turn out well. Within a week or so, someone (I presume The Friend), confessed to my Ex that She was the one that I had feelings for, and probably also told her that I had written to her confessing my feelings.
My cue that this had happened was that my Ex had unfriended/blocked me on Facebook. The digital slap to the face. Within a week, The Friend also unfriended (but did not block) me. She has also unfollowed me on Twitter. Ouch.
I emailed my Ex and told her I was sorry and asked her if she hated me. Her response was short, and pretty much stated that she never wanted to talk to me again.
Time goes by and I still think about The Friend every day, often every hour, and sometimes more frequently. Now that all contact has been severed with my Ex and The Friend, the only insight I have into their lives is slivers of social media. That is, Twitter, Facebook friends we have in common. I know, it's stalkerish. But I can't help myself. Everything from this point on is extrapolated from social media, and I find out just how much of a desperate weirdo I am.
As I mentioned earlier, I lost my job. You could say I enter into a quarter life crisis. Unemployed, I move back home into my parents' house. My self esteem hits an all-time low. My career in newspapers is dead to me, as I decide it is not a practical future and I don't want to fight for a low paying job that will probably be cut anyway. So I decide to enroll at a technical college in the summer of 2012 to start working toward a career in IT.
During that summer, I've created an entirely new OKCupid profile. After I fill it out and answer a bunch of questions (which it uses to match you with other people), of course I can't help myself from comparing it with The Friend. But I'm not so stupid as to actually click on her profile. I already learned from that mistake. Instead, I only glance at the match percentages that show up in search results. I've answered over 1000 questions and our match is 99 percent. The first time, on a different profile, we matched in the high 90s. This time, it's 99. Around this time, She tweets: "Sometimes things are just so perfect you couldn't change them even if you had the power to." Again, can't be sure that's about me, but my brain likes to think so.
If you've read this far, I thank you. Stick with me, it gets a little weird, but maybe not completely. You decide. -CONTINUED IN COMMENTS-
