10 year Epic. Unsure what to think. Need to vent.

[thatdog]

Ok guys I apologize in advance for how long this is going to be. I'm not even sure what specific advice I'm looking for either since nothing can happen atm. I just need to get this off my chest and maybe get a little perspective on whether I need to avoid this friendship.

 

Part 1 - History

 

I got together with the 'girl of my dreams' when I was 20. We were together about 2 years and lived together most of that time. Until things went sour they were still pretty much the best years of my youth and the most passionate relationship I've ever been in. Things went bad and we broke up in retrospect mainly due to a- external issues (trusted friend lying to try and break us up) and b- both of us being too young and emotionally immature to settle down. The breakup was terrible and protracted but we both really wanted to remain friends so after about 6 months of NC we started hanging out together a bit though mostly in groups with other friends. Since then at least one of us has always been in a relationship. We've stayed close friends but mostly due to jealous SO's we have had minimal contact (occasionally meeting at parties, catching up for coffee maybe once or twice a year). She has since then always been the standard by which I measure new gfs and she has told me she does the same. For a long time, whenever I was single, my thoughts used to drift back to her rather than my more recent exes. However as time went by I assumed more and more that we had had our chance and wasted it in our youth and that was that.

 

5 years later - after a while I moved overseas. When I left there was a little weirdness between us but no declarations of undying love or anything and I just chalked it up to the fact we were still close.

After about a year of living abroad she asked if she could come to visit. In the days leading up to her visit I wondered a lot about if there was any meaning to this or if she was just coming to see me as a friend. Within a couple of days I decided from her actions that she had absolutely no feeling left for me there and we were just friends. I then started to get a bit annoyed at how she was treating me (mixed messages) and we had some minor fights and I gave up there and then. She stayed for the rest of the week and left amicably. This was the point i forced myself to 'switch off' and try to never consider her romantically again.

 

ANOTHER 5 years later - I'm back home. We have kept in contact ever since but the same way as before, catching up a couple times a year in public. So I've been going through some major issues with my current gf of 3 years (you can find my complaints about that elsewhere on LS). One of the things suggested to me about that was to maybe work on being more independent and maybe making her a little jealous. So I decided I hadn't seen my ex in a good while and thought I would catch up with her for a drink (good to spend some time with a friend and at the same time maybe make my gf a little uneasy since she used to have a problem with me keeping in contact with exes).

 

Present day - so me and my ex are talking relationships. She's telling about her new man she's chasing and I'm complaining to her about my woman problems. We start comparing our former relationship to problems we are both having now. In the course of which I mention the fact that I was still thinking about her for years and specifically didn't give up until after she came to visit me o/s.

She suddenly gets really defensive and asks what she did wrong there, and starts bringing up a million very specific details of our conversations and things we did together while she was there (much much more than i could recall anyhow).

I then discover that she came to visit me with the express intention of trying to rekindle our relationship and cried for days after she left because she realized I didn't like her anymore.... So then she asks me if I thought we would have got back together if one of us had actually SAID something. I know 100% I would've dived back in and say so. She immediately goes quiet, we have an rather prolonged awkward silence before one of us breaks it with some random change of topic and I leave soon afterwards.

 

This has made things very awkward for me for several reasons.

1- I forced myself to stop thinking of her that way because I knew it would ruin my life cos I had no chance of ever going back there. Now I find out the basis for that decision was completely wrong it has quickly started to dredge up a lot of old feelings.

2- In retrospect when I returned to my hometown she was in the middle of a pretty bad relationship. By the time She got out of it I had met my current GF. We both have strong moral standards about this sort of thing so It makes me wonder if she has actually maintained these feelings or if our conversation dredged them up too like it did for me (yeah 10 years is a LONG time but we have proof we both held them for at least 5 or them).

3- If 2 is true then is it possible to ever remain friends with her as long as I am with my gf? I know I need to back of now and not contact her for a while until I sort out my relationship issues and get these feelings settled, but if she feels the same way how am I to know? Therefore I guess I shouldn't risk contacting her again at least for a very long time...

4- I guess considering the precarious nature of my current relationship (I DO still love my gf and have thrown everything into trying to make things work), I think it's bad if 2 is true because it makes things awkward for my situation with my gf and meas I'm going to lose a friend. If 2 ISN'T true then if my current relationship continues to implode I face the very real chance of being single within the next few months and it would obviously have been very nice to know there was another amazing woman out there I new I had a chance with .

 

thoughts/commiserations/advice/flame/support/questions/jokes/etc all welcomed.

[Conscience]

I think you should go back with your ex, you obviously still have feelings for her? After all this time you wouldn't of kept her around if not .....