Blech. Heartache and silly feelings after exiting bad idea fling

[K2z]

Me: 49 year old dude. Her: 25 year old former coworker of sorts. Smart beyond her years.

 

We had a two weekend fling and I fell kind of hard. But she is too young, is eager for broader experiencesand needs to be free so I have cut off contact.

 

I feel a constant voltage circulating around my chest, my arms. A restless unrequited love, frustration, embarassment, endless fruitless what if, despair and longing. It's like someone dropped a live battery into my chest.

 

I suppose there is no ptoblem to solve here but I want to tslk. I feel surges of love for the wrong person and it is exhausting me. I hate this.

[FMW]

Maybe it wasn't necessary to completely cut off contact if you both are still interested in seeing each other. It was only 2 weeks, it's not like you tried to make something work over a long period of time and it just wasn't working.

 

If you're going to get stuck on the what ifs, maybe you should just play it through and get it out of your system.

 

You would just have to keep your expectations low, so if you feel you can't do that then ending it was probably the right thing.

[K2z]

Well, for a whole host of reasons it's just an impossibility tocarry this thing in any direction so I suppose I could enjoy going further down like a fly in one of those predatory funnel plants but it would just mean more pain getting out.

 

The whole experience has awakened a fight or flight sdrenaline response in me.. no appetite, faster movement, less sense of muscle fatigue. May as well use the pain positively. And I have suffered this kind of stuff before so I know it lets up, even if it tingles like hell right now.

[elaine567]

You are 49, any strange chest sensations could be a problem with your heart, especially as you are stressed out, go see a doctor, get it checked out.

[K2z]

You're probably right. Unfortunately I know this sensation all too well from countless previous episodes... it fits like a ratty old bathrobe. This is the girl got away blues and its attendant butterflies and restlessness

[K2z]

Will see her on the weekend for an overlapping group thing. Tough not to contact, just have to keep reminding and reminding

[K2z]

What's fascinating to notice in this intergenerational thing is that sex seems to be like a faucet for younger people. On, off. Constantly available. No feelings, or a much much longer or more difficult to discern curve of actually developing feelings. It makes sense. There is a non-stop 24 hour buffet of partners out there available on social media at any given moment, no strings attached and no consequences. Would I be any different if I were young and in that circumstance? On my side, it's just a source of more pain that I am a damn fool who developed feelings, and am just hollering into an empty well.

[K2z]

So, I am gonna see her Friday night for a bite and to return some of her stuff. I already want to barf. I have slept very fitfully and nervously all week. I feel everything, she feels nothing. It's awful. I hate being in this state of emotion. What the hell is wrong with me.

[K2z]

Just gotta be honest I guess. No airs, no false pretenses. Just mindfulness and realisticness and universal respect. Dignity and politeness. I'm so nervous to see her. Nervous I am gonna make some stupid confession. Ugggh.

[FMW]

We never truly know what someone else is thinking/feeling unless they explicitly tell us. Unless she has told you that she has casual sex with lots of people and she has no feelings for you, then you just don't know.

 

Sure, as a young woman she probably has more options for sex than you do as a little older guy, but that doesn't really mean anything unless she's actually doing anything about it.

 

Men aren't the only ones who like to play it cool about their feelings, she could have feelings for you that would surprise you but she doesn't want to be the one to reveal too much too soon.

 

Seriously, if you're this into her then give it a shot and get it out of your system at the very least. At least you'll know for sure.

[K2z]

Thank you very much. Mostly I am just typing nervously, and trying to disperse my energy.

 

Verbally and in other ways it has become clear to me that she is at life's buffet and wants to play. I have no right to stop her, but I have feelings. She knows this. 99.9% likelihood is that I am playing the fool here.

 

Still, this idiot's escapade has awakened an energy I have not felt for a long time. I am a bit like someone skiing too fast downhill. It's exhilarating, but it's probably not going to end well. And I am doing what I can to snowplow and come to a stop.

[K2z]

And, tonight's the night! I'm a little dressed up (nice shirt and jeans) and I'm bringing her stuff to her in a drinks meeting at a fancy cocktail bar.

 

Here comes that train light down at the other end of the tunnel... it should make impact about 930pm. Heartbreak explosion!

 

And the best part is I get to see her again at a gathering tomorrow.

 

Yeah, my heart is a FIFA soccer ball this week and I am full of raw fight-or-flight adrenalin, the kind when you are mildly panicked but know what's going on. I'm channeling it as best I can. Driving over a cliff is exhilarating if nothing else.

 

I speak in hyperbole because I am full of nervous energy and spinning like an emotional washer/dryer inside, but in seriousness my hope is that over a drink we achieve some sort of sense of gravity and fulcrum in this rapport with each other.

 

I have seen her go through so many avatars in the last two weeks that it has almost challenged my sense of reality. My challenge tonight is to show vulnerability without making sappy confessions, and to be sincere and true to myself while ensuring that I am respected by her. Do that, and let go of the results, is my only option.

[K2z]

Whew. Ok. Ok. I verbalized. It's nothing. Nothing will work out. She ain't there or with it. But I got a lot of beautiful and heartfelt words out. I feel a bit better. I came, I spoke, I left.

 

Just saying stuff feels awfully good. As I am now. Thank you, thread, for being here.

[K2z]

I cannot stand this feeling, and the associated biohemistry. I feel awful. I am like something out of a bad sitcom. An old idiot in love with a young woman who does not care one whit, and has been honest about it. I feel out of control. My stomach flips over and over. I occasionally cry randomly. Something has moved inside me. You know when you watch the polar ice caps calving off huge chunks into the ocean? That's what happened to me. Everything is bobbing and floating inside. I hate it. A cocktail of undirected energy, angst, frustration. I want to contact, and spill my guts, but I have already spilled, and there ain't a spectator in town lining up for a ticket to this drama. It's my own private hyperactive squirrel running around inside of me.

[Eternal Sunshine]

It’s because you are aware that she is wayyyyyyy out of your league.

 

You could be her father. Time to date women your age or you are going to get like this frequently. I know too many men your age with similar outcome. Older men always get hurt.

 

In terms of her options, this girl has the world at her feet.

[K2z]

Boy have you put your finger on it there. And I know it, and she knows it, and we have pretty much said as much to each other. And, among young girls with the world at her feet, she's a cut above... as in, far more attractive/smart/charismatic/talented than the average woman her age. She is, as a friend said, "settling into her power." This is the main frustration, as you rightly diagnosed. The only reason I got to taste it in the first place was because I am yet another experience, something to sample.

 

I know these things. I know she feels NOTHING. The other night when I returned her stuff and had a drink and chat with her, she said, "so, we're pretty much back to where we were two weeks ago, right?"

 

And yet here I am. A Tasmanian devil trapped in a phone booth. So I am using this platform, which has helped me in the past, to sort of live blog the agony. I want it very much to settle down and to become sane. I dwell in madness.

 

There is one upside. I have a raw energy cycling through me that I have not felt in a long time. Something has shifted. I might be able to tame this raw electricity for something positive.

Edited November 25, 2018 by K2z

[K2z]

hey, and to top it all off she's a fantastic camera model and my photographer friend has built an entire Instagram profile around her and only her! (which I have blocked.) I am just roadkill. Spatula me off into the ditch.

[K2z]

Oh man. The anxiety. The regret. The craziness. So much in my chest and blood.

[K2z]

I know I have been jokey and light so far but I am now sinking into a dire depression. This episode and its attendant feelings show me just how empty and ridiculous my life is, and it is so late in the game. So much is over. I do not feel good about life, for real.

[lana-banana]

The way you write suggests you're more depressed about squandered opportunities than anything particular to this girl (who, it should be reiterated, was young enough to be your daughter). What are you going to do with the time you have?

[FMW]

K2z, you really seem to have lost all perspective. Unless you only post when you're drunk and don't really feel this way all the time, then you probably need to go talk to someone about this.

 

If you don't like your life, then change it. Make a plan, take productive steps.

 

Go have a hot one night stand, pay for it if you have to, get it out of your system! Then move the f*** on. You're willfully wallowing. Stop it.

 

I mean this with the best of intentions

[K2z]

I appreciate these reactions.

 

Some quick data points:

 

- I am talking to a counselor (who I haven't needed for a couple years) about this a week from Thursday. Feels like forever till then.

 

- I have reached out to friends.

 

- What complicates this is that she is a long time work colleague still kind of enmeshed in our circle, and she is a participant in a group podcast/youtube channel we are starting up.

 

- what complicates my feelings is the sheer rollercoaster rapidity with which she casually signalled girlfriendy-ness, then ran off with my photographer friend to shoot this whole amazing portfolio of wonderful and occasionally sexy shots. I feel abandoned. And I feel mocked by youth.

 

But yeah, ain't nobody gonna tell me any different than move on. I feel paralyzed. Kind of desireless and obsessed.

[K2z]

I'm also being selfish, I know. I tasted a drug, and I am acting like an addict. This has given me some insights into what real drug addiction might be like.

[lana-banana]

You spent two weekends with a girl half your age. His you got "girlfriendyness" from that, especially given the age difference and the exceedingly casual circumstances, makes me think you are over-romanticizing this to a dangerous degree. What did you expect from a 25-year-old? She still has at least three more years before she settles down with a venture capitalist who likes trail running and ska bands.

[K2z]

We are in Asia so it's not quite that paradigm but you are right nonetheless. What is aggravating me to the nth degree is the photographer friend glomming on to her and OBSESSING over her, with her full participation. He has shot her like 8 of the last 12 nights.

 

Tonight-- literally two nights after I spoke to him about my jealous feelings that he was moving too intensively on the woman I introduced him to-- he posted like thirty shots of her in a wedding gown. There's something going on there that ain't right. My friendship to him is gonna die, I fear, and I am gonna depart this podcasting/YouTubing collective in which the woman and I are together.

 

Am I a self-absorbed obsessed fifty something a-hole? Yes I suppose so, but dammit, I feel trapped.