You can’t love a man you don’t know
Q: I am deeply in love with a man whom I know loves me as well. He is a police officer in my area. We have never spoken to each other (because I am very shy), but we share many stolen moments. He always protects me and watches over me. I always feel that extra sense of safety and security when he’s working. He is the kindest and most gentle soul I’ve ever met.
I have fallen head over heels with this man over the past two years. I know he is in love with me too, by the way he acts and interacts with me. I am a woman of colour and he is white. I am separated and have children. I am not looking for a father for my children (they have a father who’s involved in their lives and loves them very much), nor do I need anyone to financially support my children (their father and I do that). I do not know whether he has any children or is in a relationship as I’ve never seen a ring. I am hoping he reads this letter and knows that I love him more than anything in this world.
I wish that I had the guts to tell him, but I am pathetically shy. Please help me connect with the love of my life. If he reads this, tell him to send me two dozen red roses and one white rose (he knows where I live).
Love is Blind
Note to Readers: This column promises anonymity regarding letter-writers’ names and actual locales, so I won’t aid directly in the roses request. It’s also because I won’t let this space, which is dedicated to relationship advice, be used as a dating site. To the letter-writer signed “Love Is Blind” — Though your sense of this police officer is positive and complimentary, you do not know him. You’ve detected some fine qualities in him, but only from his behaviour on his neighbourhood beat and from his very limited interactions with you.
That perception tells you — and especially him — nothing about the possibility of you two becoming a potential couple.
Since you never speak to him, his own comportment has to be professional only. He knows that if he were to make any kind of move regarding contact towards a date, he could be accused of inappropriate conduct, if that’s a factor in the police force’s code or your jurisdiction’s laws.
In order to have a relationship, you two would have to be introduced in a completely different way from that of a policeman helping a resident in the course of his duties.
Yet I’ve published your letter to show how far an unrealized fantasy can go … and how important it is to keep it on the healthy side of a crush.
If, from this letter, you or many women and men receive two dozen red roses and one white rose at the door in the near future from a previously silent admirer, you may be personally responsible for a charming surge in romantic dreaming.
But to you and to all such dreamers, here’s my relationship advice:
Acknowledge your daydreams and crushes as being just that. Do not obsess on someone you barely or do not know at all, nor build expectations based only on your imagination.
Love may be blind sometimes, but it has to be real, and mutual, to flourish. Ellie’s tip of the day
A romantic crush can be fun so long as it doesn’t become obsessive, with unrealistic expectations.