The only woman I have ever loved has married another man
DEAR BEL HOW can I get over the regret of never telling my first (and only) love when I had the chance how I felt — now that she has recently married?
I thought I had resolved these issues when she moved abroad and met her future husband, but seeing pictures on Facebook and talking to her I realise I’ll always love her.
We met a decade ago as students. I was immediately attracted but decided not to pursue those lustful feelings, thinking they would be fleeting, and that I would be attracted to other girls as well.
Initially, that worked and we became close friends. It was only at the end of that first year and the start of the second that my feelings turned to love. My sense of great happiness and serenity in her company is still unique. I always compared new dates with her — which then ended badly.
I regret never making the most of the four years we had before her husband came on the scene.
At least I never gambled our friendship, but rationalised that we would have broken up when she moved abroad. And that I, as a disabled man, could never make her truly happy like her husband does.
I will probably never see her again or at least never be able to tell her how much she meant to me. So I’m low and very lonely.
How do I resolve these issues and move on? Can I keep her friendship or will I always be on my own?
BRENDAN
WhAT a heartbreaking letter — all the more so for being so brief. There is a swell of deep feeling within these short sentences that makes this problem as powerful as a long novel.
It’s hard to read your words without suspecting that your disability (not mentioned until near the end) was the reason you never declared yourself to the girl you fell in love with as an undergraduate, that you always felt you could never be worthy of her.
Confessing your feelings might have ruined your friendship, so you never did. The fear of rejection must have been terrible.
Nevertheless, I wonder why you think you will never see her again, and whether there is any doubt that you can hold on to her friendship?
her recent marriage has left you devastated — but that feeling of being ‘low and lonely’ won’t last for ever.
What remains is the very thing that is making you so sad: your unrequited love for this girl — yet maybe it is requited, even if not in the way you would like. I’m sure she knows you have always loved her.
The words of Dolly Parton’s hit song are so beautiful and so poignant, expressing all we would wish for someone we love, even if that beloved person can never be ‘ours’: I hope life will treat you kind, And I hope you have all that you
ever dreamed of, Oh I do wish you joy and happiness, But above all this, I wish you love.
The thing is, Brendan, you have to be strong and let go of this dream of
the past — just as the man who writes the next letter must do.
Let me introduce someone whose long-lasting agony of loss is due to death itself.
Social media will enable you to have many conversations with the wonderful woman you met ten years ago and, in that sense, share some of your life with her; will’s first love inhabits the distant stars in the night sky. DEAR BEL AFTER a troubled and traumatic childhood, I lost my love when I was only 24.
Some 30 years after her death, I’m receiving counselling for an alcohol problem — I self-medicate to help me through dark times.
My relationship of about nine years ended only three weeks ago, partly as a result of the process I am going through.
As part of the grief therapy I am undertaking, it was suggested I write a letter as a way of helping me release some of the pain, which I have attached here.
At this moment I am bewildered, so incredibly sad and so incredibly alone. Please tell me things will get better. WILL The letter/poem that was with this email was so beautiful I wish there were space for it on this page.
But lines like ‘You were the piece that was missing, the piece that made me whole’ and ‘You touched my soul and made me better’ should resonanate within your heart, Brendan.
All I can say to you both, Brendan and will, is that things can ‘get better’, but only if you achieve acceptance.
oh, I know that sounds as if I am asking you to climb Mount everest in flip-flops; nevertheless, it is an essential part of living to come to terms with an inevitable shortfall in happiness.
which means understanding that, at some stage or other, each of us will have to endure loss. The old saying that pain is the price we pay for love never ceases to be true — and as one who has known love and pain, I celebrate the glory of that truth.
Surely it is the very essence of being truly human — and therefore both of you must hold up your heads at last, realising that because of your deep feelings you can touch the clouds.
I have just finished a really terrific, perceptive novel by Tessa hadley, called The Past, which ends with the thoughts of an elderly estate agent, sad that four siblings are finally selling their old family house:
‘ This was because he’d loved their mother once, for a long time. She’d gone away though, and he’d had to make his life without her.’
Those poignant closing words are all the more powerful for their simplicity. he had to make his life without his lost first love. It was impossible to change the fact that she went away, then died. So yes, he had to. what else can we do but summon up the courage to endure?