Patrick_D Posted February 27, 2006 Posted February 27, 2006 I am a 61 year old, unhappily married man who's been involved with a 26 year old woman for the past 4 years...because she lives halfway across the country from where i live in california, our "relationship" has mostly been an online affair punctuated by frequent phone calls back and forth--she's only flown out to be with me several times in the past couple of years so in some respects I guess you could so a strong current of fantasy runs through our relationship...nonetheless, in all those years, the connection between us was incredibly strong and I had never experienced such a total feeling of being loved...the huge age gap between us didn't seem to matter at the time (even though in public we sometimes felt a little self-conscious about showing physical affection)... The momentum continued to build unitl around late 2004 when she was on the verge of moving out here to live permanently. At the last moment she backed out and decided to stay put..., mostly because of financial considerations and parental pressure (her parents don't know about us but they made it clear to her that they didn't want their only child to move so far away). As a result, the past year or so has seen a waning of the intensity and passion between us...the flood of weekly phone calls and emails has dwindled to a trickle...the hot phone sex that was once so exciting now has become a thing of the past. She has started to go out with friends more often, started singing karaoke in clubs instead of staying home nights and has developed an interest in a couple of young men her own age...nothing serious but she's definitely interested....Two weeks ago she told me that she still loves me but that she really sees no future for us. I knew this day would eventually come and I thought I'd be able to take the news calmly and rationally (at least on an intellectual level)...but surprise surprise it really bothered me...in fact, i sort of broke down on the phone and told her how much i was IN love with her (which i had never really said before...it was always "love ya")...now that she is drifting away i find myself feeling bereft and abandoned....i guess maybe it's inevitable...the fantasy romance has popped...she said she enjoyed just being able to hang out with people her own age...to not feel like she has to sneak around or feel like people are commenting about our age gap, etc. In the past couple of weeks, I have made a concerted effort to rekindle what we had (in spite of the realization that things will never be the same as before)... and things have sort of returned to the way they were before: we email every day, i call her several times a week..we tell each other we love each other but it's not the same as before and i know it never will be....now she is planning to come out here with her best girlfriend for a weeklong visit in april...she says she can't promise anything (about us being intimate) and that we will just have to see how things go...i plan to stay at the same hotel as her (different room) and she said she would stay with me in the evenings...even intimating she might stay all night (her g/f is supposedly ok with that)...I want to recapture the intimacy we once had but am afraid of becoming too vulnerable and getting hurt.....it would just kill me if she told me "let's just be friends" as i reached out to hold her... Should I just let it go? Being held at arm's length while being teased at the same time has really confused me. I know that I am just a "fill-in" now until she finds a permanent b/f her own age who can do "normal stuff" with her and with whom she can have a future...Why is it so hard for me to bow out? I'd appreciate any comments from anyone who's been thru this before...
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