But, I need to get over it.

A year ago I thought a very interesting man was attracted to and interested in me. I don’t think it was my imagination. His pupils were definitely dilated. But, it scared the hell out of me

I really could not see how this accomplished man would be interested in me. I told myself it was my imagination.

I had to discover on my own that it seemed he was estranged from and separated from his wife. So, I guess I held out hope. I didn’t even want to be involved with anyone-yet. I wanted to fix my my life: get a better job and move into a home I wanted to live in, accelerate my writing, and hopefully start to earn money with it.

I didn’t get to see this guy much because of the nature of our relationship. The more I reflected back, though, the more I realized there were the stirrings of sparks much earlier.

I was too shy to ask him the things I wanted to ask him about his marital status and, he’s one of those guys who does not wear a ring. I think due to his profession. My own, accountant, father never wore his ring. It sat in a jewelry box with my mother’s jewelry. He wasn’t a jewelry kind of guy. It didn’t seem to bother her much that he never wore it. Unless, she just kept her hurt secret. That’s possible; she hid a lot of psychological pain-more than I ever imagined. I didn’t find out about most of it until she was dead.

I spent much of last year not being sure about how this guy really felt about me. My last almost relationship was just that-almost. And, I had my heart crushed. He was 12 years my junior and he also was the initiator of the attraction. That had happened about 15 years prior. So, I was terrified to let my feelings be known to this new man, who was also younger than me. This time by ten years.

Even though I am cognitively accepting of age differences between romantic partners being significant, there’s a part of my mind that always feels that a typical man would never be interested in a woman that much older than he-at least not for the long haul.

My intuition was right about the first guy. Even though he had chickened out on me, my gut told me he was still thinking about me. For almost five years we played this game of romantic tag. I always hoped he was trying to get the courage to get the romantic ball rolling. He turned out to be damaged. I used to think it was just excessive shyness. It was that and more. Last year I discovered he had, indeed, been thinking about me-too much. He’d been obsessed and I soon discovered he’d been cyber stalking me. Not exactly what I wanted in a boyfriend.

So, it was against this backdrop that I felt mutual sparks between me and this new guy. I was afraid to return his flirtations cause I just couldn’t believe they were real. Plus, I thought maybe they were simply part of his slightly goofy, endearing personality. He kind of reminds me of a big happy, playful yellow lab, yellow not chocolate, even though he has gorgeous medium brown eyes and seems to be able to tan in ten milliseconds. Me? I glow in the dark.

Now, he’s back with his wife and I am stuck trying not to put myself through the, “what if,” torture. I really liked him and felt like there was a connection building. I guess it was the 20-30 seconds of solid, silent eye lock that got that started. No one, not even my husband, EVER held a gaze with me like that. It was weird cause it didn’t feel weird. After I broke it, he seemed very pleased it happened. I wasn’t sure what exactly HAD happened. I just knew I’d been hit by a bus and my stifled attraction to him had been revealed to each of us. I KNOW my pupils must have dilated.

My gut tells me that eventually he got scared I wasn’t interested so he returned to the devil he knew. I don’t know.

I truly am trying to move on and I am doing pretty good with that until these moments suddenly come along and that’s what they are-just moments-and I feel the hurt so deeply I have to vent it.

Another male friend has been helping me through this and he recently made me realize the importance I put on sharing a deep emotional bond with my romantic partner. That’s probably why I lean really hard toward singular committed relationships. I think unconsciously I felt I had met my deep emotion prince.

I guess I will never know.