Single male in unfamiliar territory. How do i make these doomed hopes stop?

[Sycamore Flynn]

I’m just beginning to enlist the help of my head in what has become a battle of the heart. Up to this point, I’ve been a most deficient negotiator for my interests in this matter, instead allowing my feelings to have complete reign. Thoughts of her invade my thinking, insensibly and unstoppably. I seem incapable of extinguishing my hopes--despite my best efforts, they spontaneously recombust.

[NYC_ABC]

I’m just beginning to enlist the help of my head in what has become a battle of the heart. Up to this point, I’ve been a most deficient negotiator for my interests in this matter, instead allowing my feelings to have complete reign. Thoughts of her invade my thinking, insensibly and unstoppably. I seem incapable of extinguishing my hopes--despite my best efforts, they spontaneously recombust.

I wish I had a solution for you, but, in its place, let me just tell you that I know how you are feeling and feel the exact same way. Extinguishing hope, excavating the feelings, moving on etc., is so tragic in itself, that staying in this state of false hope and despair feels like the better option.

[Sycamore Flynn]

I understand all too well. I really am beside myself. Gut wrenching and disorienting in the extreme.

[MzMelanie]

I'm in the same boat. It helps to read what others have gone through and how they got through out. Everyone's situation is unique. One day I'm good and the next I'm a wreck and just going through the motions. Just take it day by day...that's all you can do.

[DarkHorizon]

I would say if there is one great thread that everyone should read is this:

 

http://www.loveshack.org/forums/breaking-up-reconciliation-coping/breaks-breaking-up/567241-dumped-lessons-i-learned

 

Long, but worth your time.

[Sycamore Flynn]

I’ve cobbled together an anguished, accusatory, mean-spirited, but so far unsent letter. Am entirely divided on whether I will ever send it. I’ve been told that such a letter can actually aid in the healing process, but also that it comes with certain risks.

___________________

 

Enough time has passed that I can send this post mortem:

 

I understand that you didn’t want to communicate with me again. I get it now. I have so much more perspective. Not just the fact that you are a married woman, but the totality of your situation. My appearance in your life threw you for a Titanic loop. Great passion stirs great imaginings, and for a brief time you/I/we went with the flow, before the reality of the gulf that separates us began to assert itself.

 

A couple of months ago, passing by the Holiday Inn late one rainy night when driving home from a friend’s house, I felt a surge of sadness. I know you must pass that way from time to time. I wondered what it might mean to you. Probably the same as I, that our brief encounter was no more than two souls passing in the night.

 

You and I sort of invented each other, shadow and silhouette. Without knowing much about you, I superimposed an unrealistic persona. You did, after all, share that you were interested in the creative process. Given my initial attraction that about sealed it, because if I’m about anything, it’s the creative process. When I met you I saw an unwritten book. I’d be your Svengali, open some windows and expose you to something more. I had some runaway illusions. It took me a while to realize that you’re weren’t much interested in my something more.

 

A man outside your world and experience comes on to you, validates you, shows genuine interest and showers you with attention, it helps that he’s not an ogre, and being an outsider means he’s sort of safe, for a time at least, before the depth of his feeling scares the living daylights out of you. That’s what I meant when I said you’d gotten all you needed out of it.

 

You summed it up best at the start: ‘Just to be clear – when I meet a guy who thinks I look 84% like Natalie Wood, and sends me a friend request the next day with a nice text message, Ima-gonna pay attention.’ But once you did some research, checked me out and got the big picture that was enough, the details didn’t much matter, no need to dig further. It wasn’t me you were interested in - it was the idea of me.

 

When it seemed all over and done, I wondered why you were still contacting me, sharing bits of your life and speaking badly of your husband, why bother? Seeing me again at the pub must have stirred something in you. The rest was spillover, ripples. It’s past midnight and you’re in a mood, decide to phone that screenwriter, see how he’s doing, share some things, but all in the process of phasing him out and returning to your comfort zone.

 

There’s a good chance that even under the best of circumstances it never would have worked. I live a creative life. In theory, that spoke to you, but my creativity is largely solitary, contemplative. You’d have been bored to tears.

 

Friendship was impossible. For a while I held to the usual meaning of the word, a shared give and take, then eventually came to understand that you meant something very different. Rather, you used it to smooth over some rough edges. What you really meant was no malice intended. Never being able to phone you, playing entirely by your rules (no home or work address), every aspect under your control, a theoretically friendship was meaningless, useless because it’s never called upon, never put to use.

 

The high point was Marble Falls, my emotional utopia, when I was certain I’d never felt so close to another human soul, and before that, the brief interlude when you abruptly left the wedding reception, leading to the intoxication of the pub and asking me to return so you could kiss me. Everything after that was a downhill spiral, my post-Thanksgiving email leading to your inevitable “withdrawal” when it became glaringly obvious I was in it for keeps.

 

After that night in Marble Falls there were two of you. One, who became a ghost, drove away into the mist (okay, there was no mist, but there should have been) never to be seen again. Had I followed, I would have lost all trace of you in the night. The woman who appeared a few days later at a Dripping Springs restaurant was a pretender. A look alike had stolen your identity. There were more phone calls, but they came from the ghost girl, receding further and further until I couldn’t hear you anymore.

 

There came a point when you desperately wanted a way out, and in my final letter, in which I expressed a new way of appreciating you, I unwittingly gave it to you. I waxed poetic about fantastic possibilities, the glass being half-full, the goldmine of our connection. Instead, I got the deafening silence of a coalmine. Ironic that what should have been a new beginning became a death knell. I ending by saying we didn’t need to talk about it, to just live it. You found it in your best interest to take that literally. How else to explain that shortly afterward you cut off all communication? Saying I was moving to your city probably didn’t help.

 

You claimed that you and he were essentially roommates, you paid all the bills, doesn't have a dime to his name, you loved him but were no longer “in love” (that old chestnut), but it’s likely you have a better and more fulfilling life than you’ll admit to. Sure, there’s the usual amount of routine boredom and unhappiness in your marriage (my presence helped bring that to a boil), but there’s also companionship, loyalty, a long history, and perhaps most important, I’m guessing a new commitment to your husband (actually, that I don’t get, especially when I saw how he treats the hired help and won’t even fake reaching for his wallet when the check comes).

 

But there’s no accounting for the hidden dynamic that keeps couples together, the rest of us don’t have a clue. I know, it’s complicated, but I should think you’d be quietly miffed. Maybe you are. But hey, he’s your man. You picked him. You destroyed everything I sent you, while the guy who singled you out as his meal ticket posts his adolescent gobbledygook for everyone to see.

 

You robbed me of my voice and allowed me to humiliate myself. You accepted my apology when I didn’t have a damn thing to apologize for, and finally, inevitably brought down the curtain. When I became inconvenient, you threw me away like yesterdays garbage. Over and over you led me on with hints of your possible future availability. Be patient with me, be patient. Patient while I waited for what? Took me a while to get what you really meant – not patience while you rearranged your life, but patience while you untangled yourself from ME. After the Mexican restaurant, two minutes after you booted him out of the car, you were back on the phone, rekindling my hope.

 

Throughout, I behaved like a gentleman, swore I’d never sleep with you until you were free and clear. You boldly stated that it wasn’t me you were worried about. I kidded you by sending a photo of twin beds in Vegas. You teased back with, “Well, if that’s what you really want, mister.” You slid your tongue in MY mouth, not me in yours. You said December was a bad month for breakups, then later that it would take longer than expected. So how could I NOT have had expectations?

 

Try to remember why early on you thought the weekends were so hard, why you hated the idea of going to New York, why you were glad I didn’t go to Florida, why you had no desire to tag along on the South American tour. Now try to imagine what I endured when suddenly, without explanation, you broke off all contact.

 

It needed to end, but I did nothing to deserve being treated with such cruel disregard. How could someone who professed to care so deeply treat me so shabbily?

 

We had exactly one hundred days and much of what happened I wouldn’t have changed. They were replete with silver linings. I learned a great deal about my inner workings, what caused me to pursue a woman I couldn’t possibly hope to possess.

 

Something came over me on that October day, but seeing you now it would be with new eyes - a middle-aged woman sitting beside her frumpy husband. Anything else, a stirred memory, would be a mirage born on that Saturday. And you’d probably think the same about me - a better than middle-aged man sitting across the room minding his beeswax.

 

There’s nothing special about what happened between us. These stories play themselves out countless times a day. It’s how we choose to disengage that marks us.

 

Or maybe, just maybe, it went something like this: Our falling apart was an act of sheer will on your part. It can’t have been easy for you. You genuinely cared for me, experienced a deep infatuation, perhaps even some kind of love, were swept away, and finally came to your senses. You saw the renewed contact as a personal weakness, realized how easy it was to fall back into the old habits, a weakness you struggled not to give in to again. And yes, you handled it badly, did what you had to in order to save yourself, and if I drowned in the process, that was unavoidable. It’s possible. Either way, I’ll never know.

 

____________________

 

And then, IF I get great really, REALLY angry:

 

Jesus, you are so pissing me off. How’d you like to wake up one morning to a manila envelope containing 110 printed pages, 29,000 words of PMs and Emails sitting on your doorstep?

Edited February 12, 2016 by Sycamore Flynn

[angel.eyes]

Certain things should never see the light of day. This letter is one of them. It's fine to pour your heart out in a letter. But don't send it. It's not going to have the desired effect.

 

P.S. Next time, don't date married women!

[Sycamore Flynn]

I have no doubt you are right.