How do I F25 live with an unrealised possibility despite being very happy with my boyfriend M28?
TLDR: Childhood crush with whom I had a very significant but unrealised connection came back into my orbit years later and reopened a lot emotionally. I deeply love my boyfriend and don’t want to leave him, but I’m grieving the “what if.”
I F25 deeply love my boyfriend M28 and genuinely want a future with him. He feels like home to me.
But recently, someone from my childhood somehow came back into my orbit and it’s emotionally confusing me 😭
“Jack” M25 and I had one of those intense childhood crush/nemesis dynamics growing up. We teased each other a lot and there was always this weird emotional tension between us, except he was incredibly stoic and unreadable so I spent years wondering if I had imagined the significance of it all. I absolutely adored him back then, although I never showed it openly. Only much later did I hear from mutual friends that he apparently had really strong feelings for me too.
We never dated though. Years ago, before I met my current boyfriend, we briefly crossed paths again in a context where romantic interest was implied, but nothing really happened and life moved on.
Now suddenly, after years apart, we keep randomly running into each other again through overlapping orbits despite both having moved on with our lives. The weird thing is that he seemed strangely self conscious and affected around me recently, which completely reopened the emotional archive in my brain because I had convinced myself this was mostly a childhood thing I’d eventually outgrow.
The thing is, I do NOT want to leave my boyfriend. If Jack confessed tomorrow, I genuinely would not want to lose the relationship and life I’ve built now. But I’d be lying if I said there wouldn’t be some ache attached to finally confronting the reality of “what could have been.” This is someone I had such strong feelings for and still have a soft spot for. At the same time, the thought of losing my boyfriend feels far more devastating to me. Jack also has a long term partner.
But I still feel grief that something so emotionally significant never got reality tested. I think part of me always assumed we would somehow end up together one day and now I’m confronting the possibility that we never will. At the same time, I’m also not even sure adult him and adult me would actually be compatible beyond the emotional history and symbolism attached to it.
I would give more details to explain why I’m pretty certain the feelings were mutual and why I think he was acting differently when we recently bumped into each other, but I know he browses Reddit and I really do not want to be identified 😭
Has anyone else experienced grief over an unlived possibility rather than an actual relationship?