The one that got away... coming back? What to do?

[reservoirdog1]

Okay... I need some suggestions here. Not so much with reading signals... because the signals are pretty clear... but with what I should do next.

 

In March, I went on a first date with a woman I'd met online. I was about 4 months post-separation, and she'd been split from her H for about 8 months.

 

That first date was unbelievable. Electric. There was amazing chemistry... we would have slept together that night had I not suggested we step back a bit and not take things quite so fast. Instead we met up about a week later and did sleep together. Did so again about 2 weeks later.

 

Then it stopped. It wasn't that the connection disappeared... it was still there. But she was pretty clear in saying that she wasn't ready for anything serious. I really liked her but I decided to respect her views.

 

Over the next several months, I dated several other women. Never experienced anything with any of them that reached the level of the "spark" I felt with this woman. However, we stayed in touch and have become very good friends. We can talk with amazing freedom about pretty much anything. We both have small children from our marriages, have similar views and sensibilities in a lot of ways, and get along amazingly well.

 

We'd only seen each other twice in the last 7 months, because she has a crazy work schedule, and both those times involved our kids. But we've also talked many times in that time.

 

Until tonight. We went for dinner and drinks as friends, first time we'd been alone together without kids since March.

 

Now, I must insert something here... for the last several months, she's been seeing another guy. I've been OK with that... always figured that just meant that she didn't figure we were right for each other. But I've still never found that same spark and level of chemistry with any of the other women I've dated since her.

 

Anyway, tonight, over dinner, a few things came out. She likes her BF and he's really into her, but:

1) He doesn't have kids, and doesn't deal as well with her son as she'd like (though he is trying).

2) Family is very important to her, as it is to me, but not very important to him. She told me, straight up, that that difference is a huge concern for her.

3) She's not sure that she sees him as any kind of long term thing. In fact, when she first started dating him, she was pretty sure it was a quick fling. But they stayed together because he treats her really well.

 

AND THE CROWNING POINT: she volunteered freely that, if she'd met me a few months later, things could well have worked out between us... she just wasn't ready back in March and got a bit freaked out by the chemistry between us.

 

I've spent the last 7 months wondering, with at least a small part of me, if she was "the one that got away." Over dinner, we basically got to a point of cutting off conversation on that topic because of where it could lead. We seemed to agree that we'd be interested in being with each other if we were both single. Unfortunately, I am but she's not. She also asked me at one point if I'd ever dated somebody, then become friends with them, and then gotten back into a romantic situation with that person.

 

All that, and things aren't all smooth in paradise for her with her BF.

 

I'm really looking for suggestions as to how to proceed. I think I indicated my interest in the idea of being with her without being overt. And the feelings I have for her are still there. I'm a bit hesitant to be forward because I don't want to make her so uncomfortable that I lose her as a friend... but at the same time, "faint heart never won fair lady."

 

Can anybody offer any suggestions about what I should do? Should I tell her how I feel? How should I phrase it? I'd love to hear any thoughts anybody can offer. Hope I don't seem like a pu$$y in this, but I haven't felt this level of connection with somebody in 12 years (when I met my ex).

 

Thanks...

 

 

P.S. I might not normally have started thinking about her in this way, but a few weeks ago she sent me an email when she was having a bad day at work. I responded with something that really cheered her up. Her response was, "You always know how to make me smile. Have I told you recently how happy I am to have you in my life?" That was BEFORE the events of this evening.

[hulavie]

Hey reservoir,

 

Read your post and trying to imagine being in your shoes. Erm..........

 

She's still with the other guy isn't she. It's not an easy task to gage into what's really on her mind at this stage.

[sami]

" If you know how to make her smile", and " she is happy to have you in her life" as you wrote, then what do you need. Lot of guys usually fail in their attempts to make their best friends happy.

[bluechocolate]

Proceed cautiously.

 

she volunteered freely that, if she'd met me a few months later, things could well have worked out between us...

 

It is a few months later and yet she chooses to remain with this other guy whom she has been dating for several months. So where was her magic cut-off point when she WAS ready to start seeing someone?

 

The fact that she is saying that she is staying with this guy only because he treats her well somehow rings hollow. If that is indeed the case then she is somewhat selfish (staying with someone ONLY because they treat her well makes for a rather one-sided relationship - I wonder how he would feel knowing this?). Isn't it more likely that she is waiting to see how the relationship develops between him & her son and if he becomes the man that could care for her child she will choose to stay with him?

 

Then of course there is the small matter of her, while being involved with someone else for several months, goes for dinner with a single man who clearly likes her and has, though not sexually intimate, an emotionally intimate conversation whose outcome has been to keep you thinking that there is a possibility that the two of you could get together in the future. Is she stringing two men along? Staying with the guy that treats her well and at the same time keeping the guy who treats her son well on the slow boil? Of course it could be that in her mind she is just dating the other guy & therefore owes no allegiance either way, but I would think several months is enough time for someone to reach a conclusion. Wouldn't you?

 

Sorry to sound so cynical. Whatever her real feelings are, at this point in time she has decided to remain with this other man. You sound pretty level-headed about it all so I'm sure much the same thing has gone through your mind. Plus you have indicated that you would like to keep this woman as a friend therefore I presume you're willing to accept the possibility that nothing romantic will come from this. Until she is available you'll have to convince yourself of that possibility.

 

In the meantime you're single & she's taken, so keep looking and keep dating other women. Let her know that you would be interested in pursuing something more serious with her if she feels the same, but as she in unavailable you're not getting your hopes up. Then back off a bit. You can still remain friends but I certainly wouldn't respond to any more overtures on her part until she is single again.

[PatientOne]

Res, I completely agree with Bluechocolate.

 

I'll even go so far as to come out and say it seems like she's keeping you in her back pocket for when the time comes when she and her boyfriend break up, if ever.

 

Blue was right, keep her as a friend, and never let it go any further than that while there is anyone else in the picture.

[reservoirdog1]

Thanks for the replies, everybody.

 

PatientOne: you're right. I have no intention of becoming her "other man" -- I was the recipient of that kind of crap in my marriage and it's a scummy thing to do to somebody. I've never met him, but I would never become an accomplice to her cheating on her BF, if indeed she'd consider doing that.

 

Keeping me in her back pocket? Yeah, that's possible.

 

BlueChocolate: her "magic cut-off point" supposedly came about a month after she and I stopped dating. She'd moved out to my part of the country to take a new job last June or so with her husband and son, and things fell apart for them (he'd screwed around on her a lot). She threw herself into her work, keeping her mind occupied, etc. In April or May (a month or so after we stopped dating), she had a rough few weeks because, she said, she'd never really allowed herself to mourn or grieve the end of her marriage -- she'd just pushed it all down, dated casually, worked a lot, etc. She'd told me at the time, after we stopped dating, that she hadn't been willing to make herself emotionally vulnerable to somebody. Then she had her rough month. Got through that. Met the guy she's now seeing. I was dating somebody else at the time, though not on a serious basis. Why she didn't approach me then, once she was over the rough patch and before she met this other guy, I don't know.

 

I also don't know to what degree her BF knows totally how she feels, though I gather he knows some of it. The way she tells it, he seems to be pressuring her to "formalize" things (i.e. live together) but she's told him she's not ready for that, particularly given her uncertainty about him.

 

I do agree, however, that the optics would look iffy from his perspective. He knows that we went for drinks last night and knows that I'm a friend of hers, but he doesn't know that she and I dated or slept together back in March. And, I concede that, if I were him and I read the email she'd sent to me a few weeks ago, which I quoted in the postscript to my original post, I'd have some questions.

 

Blue, I think your idea might be best... tell her how I feel, and then let it go. Leave it to her to make decisions about her own life.

[whichwayisup]

Well Res I would seriously see how it goes. I am not saying you sit and wait by the phone but if you feel as strongly and passionately about her after all this time then you have to see what happens, let it play out because from what you said, it is far from over between the two of you!

 

Just continue being honest with her and when things come to a halt with this guy (And it will cuz the family issues and how he feels about her child...) then you two talk and see how it goes.

 

I do think it's possible to have some romance, then be friends then have it all again. Just when the timing is right you will know in your heart!!

 

Good luck and I really hope it works for you because after all that you've gone through and suffered you definately deserve it!!!