Regrets Over a Long Term Relationship

Last updated on September 21st, 2023 at 01:19 pm

Sometimes we meet the right person at the wrong time. I met Joe 10 years before my first marriage. We spent about 2 years together. I didn’t have the tools I needed at that time. I needed more experiences, more disappointments, and more lessons before I would be ready to commit to working through the difficulties of a long term relationship.

Dear Joe,

I have thought about you throughout the years.  More than anybody else I’ve had a relationship with.

I’m happily married now, to someone I love deeply, to someone I consider “the one,” but you still float through my mind. Not as anyone I want to be with, but as someone who I loved and who I have regrets about. I wish I had been more mature. I wish I had been there for you more completely.  I wish I had appreciated you more fully. I wish I had fought harder to work through our difficulties.

I wish I had been able to communicate and tell you how much you meant to me. I still think of when you were taking a bath, and I would sit down near the bathtub, and we would talk. Those times felt special to me. Intimate and close. You were fun and creative. Playful. Serious. Different.

I don’t know if you are still on the planet. I haven’t been able to find you. Maybe we would have nothing in common now. But I wish I had honored you and wish you to know that.

We spent a few years together… as we do with many. And those times are precious. Sometimes they end and pass by without having ever been consciously honored.

I know you had significant issues. I know your father use to beat you up. I know you got caught up in cocaine. I know that that woman at work was trying to seduce you and perhaps succeeded. I believe you dated for a while after we broke up.

After I had moved to NYC, we talked at some point, and you were dating her back in Philly. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t understand what you were trying to tell me. I was mute. I didn’t know how to reach out and comfort. I just know when you hung up, I felt empty and alone.

 You were a dear and lovely being.  And I didn’t have any idea of what I was doing in a relationship. When the conflicts came up, and the in-love feeling left, some part of me was out of the relationship. I needed love so bad I couldn’t tolerate the difficulties. That was on me.

I found it – the initial love that felt like a drug. Time and time again. The quick in love fix. It took me years to learn how to have a long term relationship that worked.

I want you to know that. It wasn’t just you. It was me. Me more than you. I had the bigger issue. I was the one who left.

After we broke up and were trying to be friends, I fondly remember the times you took me out to eat in Chinatown in Philly. I remember your kindness. I remember you telling me you loved me after it was too late.

I had already fallen for someone else. Someone completely spellbinding, and also completely unable to have a real relationship. Someone who did not love me like you.

I know I caused you pain and suffering. I am so so sorry.

I hope you know this in your heart, in your soul. Even if you have passed, I hope that somehow these words, my intentions infuse you with love.

In some ways, I am the same person. I have the same sensitive soul. But I have grown. I have developed a voice that can speak. I am no longer mute. My journey has changed me. I am now able to stick through the difficult times. I am able to find out where I am triggered, where the other is triggered. I am able to unknot the knots.

I wasn’t fully formed before. Nor were you. But we each had hearts, and my heart remembers yours.

I hope you found a true love, a long term relationship or marriage. I hope your life was or is happy. I hope you found someone perfect for you.

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