You were in love with someone post college, but the relationship did not result in a marriage...

[Anonymous]

Why? What were the reasons unless there was abuse, cheating, or an addiction involved? Are you still in touch with that person?

[Anonymous]

We were in love, but I wanted children, he didn't. I thought I could change his mind, but I couldn't. Smart enough not to stick around too long. Me, married 20 years, 2 kids. Him, married 24? years, no kids. We are both happy for each other. We are no longer in touch, but were for a while (I am not on social media - FB, Instagram, Twitter, SC, etc).

[Anonymous]

Relationships end for all sorts of reasons besides abuse, cheating, or an addiction. People fall out of love. People grow quite a bit in their 20s. Sometimes who was once a good match turns out to not have the same goals or vision for their life, and the relationship just ends.

[Anonymous]

She just couldn't be honest with me. Conflict -avoidant to the point of lying rather than have the slightest difficult conversation

[Anonymous]

A 7 year relationship, though long distance for more than half of it. He was semi-open to kids but not marriage, and I didn't want one without the other. I've been happily married for 15 years, and know my decision to end it was the right one. He had a child with the next woman he shacked up with, but no marriage. If it works for them, great. We're in touch on SM, but not regularly. Feels like a distant memory now, but I was heartbroken at the time of the split.

[Anonymous]

Soon after college I was head over heels in love but within six months things turned to chaos. I'm a pretty sane person but I couldn't figure out why things went so far off track and she just shut me down. It took me a year to stop pining for her and six months later I heard she had been hospitalized for depression which had apprarently been building for years. She ended up being married 2 or 3 times and sadly died ten years ago. I luckily fell in love a few years later and I've been very happy for a long time. I do feel sorry for her because briefly I adored her.

[Anonymous]

Different life vision and life goals. I felt like he wasn’t going to be ready to have kids until he was like 40, and since we were the same age that wasn’t going to work for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Soon after college I was head over heels in love but within six months things turned to chaos. I'm a pretty sane person but I couldn't figure out why things went so far off track and she just shut me down. It took me a year to stop pining for her and six months later I heard she had been hospitalized for depression which had apprarently been building for years. She ended up being married 2 or 3 times and sadly died ten years ago. I luckily fell in love a few years later and I've been very happy for a long time. I do feel sorry for her because briefly I adored her.

May I ask how she died? Sounds like it was a very sad life.

[Anonymous]

He was not post-college (and never became post college. Lol).

So that wasn’t it. But I think it reflected some maturity and decision-making differences.

I’m not in love with him because he said goodbye to me. But I glimpsed a photo on Facebook (his wife was suggested as a friend, since she now knows many people I know). I got a spine tingling “feeling” like “still there feeling.” I love thousands of miles away, have been married 10+ years, so I’m glad I can completely avoid whatever that feeling was.

[Anonymous]

Love = live. Ha ha my phone changed it (again, too)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Soon after college I was head over heels in love but within six months things turned to chaos. I'm a pretty sane person but I couldn't figure out why things went so far off track and she just shut me down. It took me a year to stop pining for her and six months later I heard she had been hospitalized for depression which had apprarently been building for years. She ended up being married 2 or 3 times and sadly died ten years ago. I luckily fell in love a few years later and I've been very happy for a long time. I do feel sorry for her because briefly I adored her.

May I ask how she died? Sounds like it was a very sad life.

Parkinson's. And her husband died in an accident a few years before. Yes, a very sad life.

[Anonymous]

I was madly in love with a wonderful guy but my parents were sadly racists and he just couldn't deal with them which was understandable. I hated my parents for that but they were my parents. They would say things and he just went right at them in a way I never could which made me love him more. But he finally decided he didn't want to have to deal with them ever again. He's gone on to be incredibly successful and I've never found the happiness I briefly had.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Different life vision and life goals. I felt like he wasn’t going to be ready to have kids until he was like 40, and since we were the same age that wasn’t going to work for me.

Same. He just got married last year after 5+ years of dating her. We have mutual friends and see each other occasionally. I wish them well but I made the right choice when I broke up with him.

[Anonymous]

I was a mess of unresolved issues related to my mother's death from cancer when I was a teenager. It was just too much for him and we broke up. About ten years and three therapists later, I was in a much better place and met my now-husband.

Through social media I can see that he got married and had a couple of kids. What's kind of weird is that one of his daughters shares my first name! The wife and I have the same ethnic background, and apparently the little girl is named after her mother, so it's just a coincidence that it's my name also. It's just a really uncommon name in the states (think something like "Olga" if we were both Russian), so I have to kinda think his friends who knew me when we dated found it odd.

[Anonymous]

We met at the very end of college, and it was immediate sparks. We got serious quickly and to this day he may well be the most influential person in my life. We were (obviously) young and both rather stubborn - especially early on - but we were extremely real with each other and enjoyed the heck out of doing pretty much anything together. Very, very compatible. But to be honest, I think we both had the general sentiment that a relationship wasn't supposed to be THAT serious at that point (22,23,24). We were very much in love but didn't trust that it could be "real" - you weren't supposed to find the person for you that young, if that makes sense? On my end that was influenced heavily by my parents (who liked him plenty, but had ALWAYS impressed upon me that it was important to explore and grow in your 20s, and not settle down "until at least your mid 20s". Looking back I'm not sure why I placed so much trust or importance in this, aside from just assuming they were older and wiser and knew what was best for me.) On his end, I think, it stemmed mostly just from the fact that he hadn't seen himself being on THAT track at such a young age - he definitely wanted marriage etc, but in his mind that was something you do in your 30s. So basically, we broke up when it kind of hit that point of get serious or bail. More specifically, he moved for a job and we tried long distance for awhile, but ultimately decided we shouldn't be wrapped up in that kind of commitment st our ages. He later cried and told me he'd wanted to ask me to move with him but didn't feel like he could; I have no idea if I would have (honestly, I know my parents would have been strongly against it and that probably would have been enough to stop me at that age), but certainly wasn't going to be the one to push it regardless. So we had a sad, drawn out, and somewhat dramatic breakup and then didn't talk for over 6 years.

We saw each other once when I was newly married to my husband, and happened to be in the same place (for a mutual friend's funeral, actually). When we hugged my knees went weak, my heart started pounding, and I felt like I'd just taken a hit of something intense - all jittery and alive. When we pulled away he just stared at me with an incredulous look on his face and shakily said something about 'wow, that was...quite a hug." All that to say, I know he felt it too. We caught up briefly and all those feelings came rushing back - it was way too easy to talk to him and I remembered (or recognized, really - as I attempted to describe above, I didn't truly appreciate the true rarity of what we had at the time we were together). He wanted to stay in touch and "be friends", but I recognized pretty quickly that only bad things and complicated feelings could come from that, so we don't stay in touch. We're not connected on social media or anything - no real good could come of it. I hear from him maybe once every 3 years - he'll send a 'happy birthday, hope you're great' or something of the sort. I respond but am careful to keep the conversation brief. I'm somewhat aware that there's something about the connection we have, and I know it would be too easy to get sucked in. I know for a fact he thinks about me wistfully, and of course I have similar feelings about him. He isn't married yet and I confess that i will feel a real twinge whenever that happens. Some little part of me will always love him (I am actually repeating exactly what he said to me with that), and he shows up in my dreams on a semi-regular basis even when we haven't talked in years. BUT, we don't talk because I know it would only complicate things and I don't want to put myself through that.

Bottom line: we met too damn young and we didn't trust it. I wouldn't say that I wish i'd ended up with him instead, necessarily - I have a wonderful marriage with an amazing husband who is, in many ways, a better matched partner for me in the long run. I have enough perspective to understand that part of what makes what we had feel so special is that it was short-lived and then it ended - the idea of us is all the sweeter in our minds for not having actually been lived. I'm truly in love with my husband, I love our life together and I would never throw it away for what might have been. But yes, sometimes I wonder...