To the extent that it's possible to bring a sense of hard-headed practicality to affairs of the heart, Dan brings it.

Good luck with the current GF, ONE. Something tells me that hard-headed practicality won't sooth her feelings.

29-year-olds say things like "love of my life." what is lw's excuse?

@2: I was gonna say: if your SO asks if they're the "love of your life," consider running for whatever hills are nearest. Especially if they're out of high school, and thus old enough to know better.

@3: Saying it isn't terrible, but believing there will only be one love and that was the One Who Got Away... that's definitely unhealthy. They're only on that pedestal because he never got a chance to be grounded in the reality of her as a fellow human. With so much built up (and with her ending it) there wasn't and will never be anything approaching relationship.

And the woman who wants to be with him and reveals who she is more fearlessly... bores him apparently. Gotta look within, LW. Your fixation isn't self-justifying, move on with your life and drop the teenage fantasies (or at least appreciate them for what they are.)

@4: Eh, there's nothing wrong with replying in the spirit of the question, but also if the guy can't even do that he needs to get over his own fear of commitment to the point where he's pining for someone who doesn't and won't love him.

People want to feel loved and while I wouldn't put that question on someone beyond that they love me, its not "run the fuck away" in and of itself.

ONE, perhaps to re-frame what Dan said, relationships are about myth-making. Conceptually, you understand that because the story you've told yourself about Nina being the love of your life is nothing short of myth, a narrative construct that helped you understand the events in your life. So while you're worried about lying to your current girlfriend, and claim that lying doesn't come easy to you, you have, in fact, been lying to yourself in some manner since you initially broke up with Nina.

So start telling yourself a different story in which your current girlfriend is the love of your life, I think you can come to see her as The One, and in so doing, may find yourself wondering why Nina ever had such a hold of your imagination.

@6 - I don't think the LW is a "guy." The LW doesn't reveal her gender, but Nina is now in a same-sex marriage.

Re the "love of your life": I agree that it's an overly broad cliche, but from personal experience I can say that it is possible to meet someone who is such a good match that it's impossible to imagine being with a better match. That describes the relationship I'm in now, after a 20-year marriage to someone who was definitely not that. I "love" her very much, and she is likely the best match I can find in my lifetime, so you can put those two concepts together and say she is "the love of my life." My mother, who is on her second marriage, is in the same position.

My strong suspicion is that a 29 year-old doesn't have the experience to know if they've met "the love of their life." But I can tell you if you have to ask if the other person they feel that way too, if you can't just tell from the depth of the relationship and your daily interactions, you are NOT with the love of your life.

Let the poor man grieve, and I'd suggest his current gf needs to be dissuaded from thinking he's marriage material, for her.
I didn't marry the love of my life, and I see now why it couldn't have worked. And I wouldn't have my beautiful children and grandchildren.
Park the memory, LW, and relax. Maybe not this partner but another will come along who will catch you deeply again.

* let the poor man or woman or other, grieve, ...

Just curious, does anyone else think this LW is a lesbian female? LW mentions their ex's wife, so...

I think Dan hit the nail on the head. Stop pining after someone who never will be yours again, and enjoy the one you're with. Relationships are not helped by labels like "love of my life" or "the one." It just adds pressure.

@8: Yeah, likely. And I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the rest of your post either when I argue in favor of supporting the spirit of the question over some lofty in love with being in love interpretation (but that's why they're head over heels for Nina!)

"But I can tell you if you have to ask if the other person they feel that way too, if you can't just tell from the depth of the relationship and your daily interactions, you are NOT with the love of your life."

Well, the LW definitely doesn't seem ready for commitment with her, so a bit of a moot point. But insecurities happen, and it feels good to hear such things. It's hard to know what their life is like together and the context when the LW prioritizes her as some fallback.

I still think you and LW are using different meanings, them as more "soulmate" and you as someone perfect for you and that you are undoubtedly lucky to have. The context of you finding someone who shares your vision and that LW is one-sidedly closing themselves off to other possibilities is quite different :)

I don't think the makers of romcoms and other assorted purveyors of the myth of "The One" have considered how dark a view of humanity they are really peddling. Let's do some math!

There are currently about 7.42 billion human beings (all data are from census.gov or https://www.statista.com/statistics/2414… ). Gotta narrow it down by age and preferred sex at least. Rather than getting bogged down trying to decide exactly how else to filter, 'cause I got more to do than dig around for demographic data, let's let "limit geographic area to the US" and "limit age to +-5 years" stand in for whatever other broad limits you like. So, say you're looking for a woman age 45-54 in the US. That gives you 21.68 MILLION options.

Then figure we should slap on a whole bunch of other filters - education, political preference, kindness, opinion on Your Pet Dealbreaker Topic, whatever. How many criteria you have and how optimistic or pessimistic you are about what each criterion works out to as a multiplier will determine what percent of those 21.68 million women you could potentially have a long, loving relationship with (assuming that's your image of what it means to find "The One"). I have no idea how to really figure out anyone's number, but let's say 1%, because it sounds vaguely plausible and it makes the math easy. So that gives our hypothetical person 216,800 women in the US in a ten-year age range to have a good shot at happiness with. 216,800! Even with age/sex/geography filters and a conservative assumption of other filters!

Of course the numbers are WAGs and YMMV, but I think the basic point is clear: if I claim there is only one person out there for me, I'm either pathologically picky or depressingly, shockingly pessimistic about how many people I expect to make it through my personal filters.

I don't think "The One" is out there; I think we pick someone we think could be "A One" and if we both work at it and we get lucky, maybe we become each other's One over a lifetime (reword as needed for polyamory). Nina wasn't your "One," LW; the question for you is, do you think your current gf could be A One? Good luck!

@11: I noticed the difference between "her partner" and "my girlfriend" and thought male, but I don't think it really matters much.

Re the gender question: the LW uses "girlfriend" to refer to the current relationship, which clearly has not reached the "partner" stage. The LW refers to the person Nina was with when they had their affair as Nina's "partner," and future spouse. Though it really doesn't matter, I think it's more likely than not that this is about people who identify as women. It certainly shouldn't matter.

I agree the gender of the LW doesn't matter, but for shits and gigs I think if they were male that they'd likely try to brag about having a much younger girlfriend.

Props to the folks that can read letters like this without getting totally confuzzled over the 'first this person, but then that person, but affair with person A for X number of months yadda yadda yadda'... Sometimes I feel like I need a flowchart.

Nina is not "the love of your life." Nina is "the one that got away."

Is your current girlfriend "a love of your life"? Doesn't really sound like it, if you're still pining for the one that got away. Perhaps ONE could explain to her that she (or he; it's ambiguous but unimportant) may have only had one life-love by age 29, but by age 49, statistically she will have had two or three, as ONE herself has done.

I also agree with Dan's challenge to the phrase "fear of commitment." Realising that you are not compatible enough with someone to make a longtime commitment isn't fear, it's self awareness. I hope Nina and her wife are happy, and I hope ONE can get over Nina so that she can some day love someone else the way she apparently doesn't love her current toygirl.

People like POOTUS make me want to never date men again. People like LW make me never want to date women again. Sigh.

If the LW is female, her marriage couldn't have been before May 2004 (in Massachusetts). So was divorced by 2014. Since then, LW reconnected with (partnered) Nina, had an affair with Nina for a year, and broke it off when Nina decided to marry her partner. So late 2015 or later. Then two years ago, Nina fessed up to her wife about the affair and cut off contact with the LW. So the time line all fits - barely - but only if all parties are pretty frantically jumping from partner to partner without any gaps (which they appear to do), and the LW got married as soon as legally possible.

Or the LW is a dude and is pining away for a bi-woman or lesbian. BTDT. Which makes her being the "love of my life" even more problematic.

Regardless, Nina clearly doesn't want to be with the LW long-term .

@20: Please don't get pedantic about the legalities of gay marriage. People have been getting gay married before and after governments gave them legal recognition.

At any rate, the letter writer reads very clearly to me as a straight male.

It seems strange for a 49 y.o and an almost 30 y.o. to still be believing in "the love of my life"!!

LW, do consider that maybe you think Nina is the love of your life because she rejected you twice. She was finished with your relationship before you were, so part of you never moved on from her.

As for your current love, if you love her, then tell her her she is tge one you love now, your past is the past, the other women aren't part of your life anymore (and MAKE SURE THEY'RE NOT).

Maybe your current partner is worried about you saying that your ex-wife is family, and that will never change! That's a bit strange, LW, unless you have kids with her?

I see no problem there Isuelt @22. Good sign he can be divorced and still feel his ex is family.
The real problem is this man, I'm sure this is a man, is just on fifty years old and he's stringing a much much younger woman along. Let her go LW, so she has a chance to find a mate who will love her.

So to recap, Nina was uninterested in committing to you, and is the sort of person to cheat on her committed relationships. Doesn't sound like there was a lot of "love of a lifetime" possibility there. Drama, intensity, trauma-bonding and (I'm sure) good sex notwithstanding, a passionate affair is not the same thing as "the love of your life" if such a thing even exists.

@24: "is the sort of person to cheat on her committed relationships. Doesn't sound like there was a lot of "love of a lifetime" possibility there."

One thing I never understand there, do you consider the person who convinces the other person to cheat much more reliable? Not respecting boundaries is a problem for both parties.

@25: I wouldn't call it sterling behavior, but the side piece isn't the one betraying and deceiving a person they claim to love. Being the third party means bad judgement and questionable ethics, sure, but it's more "you're a sorta-bad person" vs. "you're a bad person to someone who loves and trusts you, whom you claim to love." If Nina was willing to cheat on her spouse, what's to stop her from cheating on LW?

@24 has it right. Rebound relationships and trauma bonding etc- that feeling like it's the two of you against the world- combined with good sex and untested fantasies about what might've been make Nina seem like she's the love of his life.

Who knows, maybe she is too. I'll take a slightly different perspective because I know of several cases of people who had hot and heavy affairs off and on like this throughout their early years and in between other longer relationships who then ended up together in old age. (Think Charles and Camilla, but I know two couples like this in real life). When they tell their story, they make it sound like they have always been the loves of each others' lives, but if they had just gotten together when they were young and stayed together and raised children and built finances and juggled careers together, they probably would've faced all the same problems they faced with their then-partners (now divorced exes) and they'd have had other hot affairs with other people, etc.

The point is, it's ludicrous to try to apply these "meant to be" narratives after the fact. He's not with Nina now. There is no chance he's going to be with Nina any time soon. So back to the real question. Can he commit to anyone else or is he already applying that "Nina is the one" narrative to his current relationships and making a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, if he commits to the 29 year old and then Nina becomes available, is he going to jump ship and be with her if she's willing and then later tell himself it's because Nina was always the one?

And I'm saying "he" b/c it made me think of people I know. The LW could be a woman. I don't think it matters in this particular case so I'll try to be gender neutral going forward.

My advice is, if the LW and his ex really are like family and if the ex already knows about and has processed/accepted/no longer traumatized by the relationship with Nina, the LW should ask the ex about it. Sometimes the people who know you the most intimately can hold up a mirror for you if you are ready to look.

The "love of your life" is usually someone from your past, who enjoys the benefit of you wearing an industrial pair of rose-colored glasses. Personally, the woman I could view as my "love of my life" came at a time when I was fairly young and the world was still all sparkly and shiny. She was an exceptional woman, and a fantastic lover, but there were numerous factors that contributed at the time to make our relationship as intense as it was for a short (year & a half) period of time that would have been (and were) unsustainable over the long run. My current relationship isn't as fiery and passionate, but in so many ways this woman is a much better fit for me...a fact I realize due to a lifetime's wealth of experience. Even if I could reconnect with the old girlfriend, it would never be the same. The time and place that made what we had so special has long since moved on. I'm grateful for what I had, but I'm even more grateful for what I have.

BTW, as for "love of my life" stuff being bullshit, I only mean that it's bullshit in a pre-destined way. Life, experience and will can make people the love of their lives. While it's true there were probably a bunch of people that I could've built a life with when I was 20, there is only one person now that I can have this life with after we've already built it together. But, I had no idea I was choosing the love of my life when it happened so if he had asked me this question early on, I would've had no answer, much like the LW. It's only something you know afterwards and then impose the narrative on it retrospectively. Which the LW might do with Nina or with his GF or with lots of people throughout life like Dan says.

The long-term outcome isn't actually up to the LW who can only decide what to do in this moment. And in this moment, the choice is to make the GF the life love or choose to linger in the belief that it's Nina or make no declaration at all and just say "I love you now and who knows how I will feel in the future" which is the truth for all of us but not really what any of us want to hear from our lovers. In any case, whatever choices the LW makes now will affect the outcome either way but they won't determine it.

It's pointless to ruminate over stuff like this, which is why I said the LW should go back to the immediate question of: If I commit to my GF and Nina suddenly becomes available, would I leave my GF for Nina or have an affair? That's the piece of info the GF wants, I bet. She's asking how she stands in the LWs life which includes two other women. And I think it's probably best for the LW to be honest about it, even if the answer is "I don't know". I doubt the LW will actually say this, but if the GF is considering a commitment, she has the right to know if the LW would leave her for Nina. I wonder how many people who are with someone would leave them if another specific person became available? I'd bet a lot, and I'd bet most never know it.

@28 Donny

Thanks for that. It was what I was trying to clarify. Can the LW see Nina the way you see this woman in your past? Or would the LW go back to her if it were possible? Probably the LW won't even know until time goes on. You can't know these things ahead of time, but you can get to a point where you make a choice about what narrative to tell yourself about the roles people played in your life.

Also I think your post demonstrates well what Dan was saying about focusing on what you have rather than what could have been. One thing is real and in front of you now.

@23 Lava She's nearly 30. She's a lot younger, but not so young that she's being strung along anymore than any other grown up in any other relationship. If she were in her early 20s and the LW was 50, OK. But she's been a grown ass woman for some time now.

@6 Undead I agree. People want to feel loved. There are no guarantees in life, and therefore people sometimes feel insecure. This is normal. The extent to which you want to manage insecurities and the extent to which you desire reassurances are both going to vary depending on individuals and even for individuals it will vary over time.

@8 Soul I agree with all that too. I got the impression that LW and GF are having a talk about commitment though which makes sense in the early stages of even a good relationship. But you are probably right.

@13 Mad Scientist yup, exactly. Also it's amazing how much you can make someone "the one" if two reasonably compatible people with a decent sex life just make the conscious decision to treat each other generously and prioritize each other. It's also amazing how hard that can be sometimes.

@20 David, On one side of my family, I grew up with gay married aunts decades before they had any legal right to marry. I don't know if they ever legally married, they are elderly now. So I don't see what difference that makes. The LW is telling his/her story in the way that everyone involved understands those relationships- as marriages- regardless of their actual legal status which is irrelevant. It's like if someone talks about their kids but perhaps the kids are not biologically theirs. They don't go around adding that info to all their anecdotes unless it is somehow relevant.

@28: "Even if I could reconnect with the old girlfriend, it would never be the same. The time and place that made what we had so special has long since moved on."

EXACTLY. It's a snapshot of a small period in time, carefully selected to avoid drama, hardship, sorry, and occasional banality of living with someone and seeing them for the fellow human they are. Whether they didn't know the party long enough to see them as a real person or never really care to, it's somehow both self-destructive and self-centered.

It happens, but LW is running a little older to not have reached that conclusion already.

She is a grown woman EL @31, I didn't say she wasn't. She's still young and he's twenty years older than her and not young. And he's wasting her time esp if she's hoping to have a family, by stringing her along and not telling her the truth about his feelings, that he's not that strongly connected to her.

Since everyone else in the comment section has thoroughly dissected the issue of Nina's bullshit "the One" status, here just an addendum re: the new GF.

Dan hit the nail on the head in the last sentence. LW should stop being an autistic Spock/Sheldon about it, stop analyzing the content of The Truth in that statement, and just tell her she's the love of his/her life. Because she apparently is the person LW wants to commit to (well, now at least), so she deserves a white lie once in a while. Or maybe not even a lie. Because, damn, who says that the definition of "love of someone's life" does have to include drama, crazy hot emotion and rom-com romance?

I'm wondering what the letter's actually about. It could be about the purported subject, which is 'should I tell my current girlfriend she's not the love of my life?'. Or that question could be a placeholder for other issues--like 'how do I go forward, if at all, with this woman?' and 'how do I feel about my life, now that I'm middle-aged and possibly going through a midlife crisis?'. Clearly the LW (probably to me a man, for tonal reasons; but I'm not saying that with any certainty) doesn't feel 'his' love life and relationships have gone in an ideal way. He isn't with the woman he found most exciting or interesting. But, as everyone else has pointed out, she didn't want to be with him (or with her/them); and there's no such person as someone's 'best', 'only', 'ideal', partner. The question for the LW is a large and difficult one: What does s/he want to do with the rest of his life? (I get the impression that by writing the letter, s/he is explaning to herself that she doesn't want to be with her girlfriend longterm, and thus has a frighteningly open field ahead of her). The LW has my complete sympathies. Middle age is scary and bewildering; you wonder what it's all about and judge yourself. She or he has to try to be honest and kind, not lying to himself or his girlfriend.

@34: "LW should stop being an autistic Spock/Sheldon about it"

There's nothing at all Spockish-ASD to grok about this letter. They don't discount emotions, on the contrary they're wallowing in their teenage in love with being in love feelings, falling back to pining for a relationship that never was and never will be rather than moving forward (or not!) with a person who chooses to be with them.

Self-awareness may not be present, but this behavior is plenty common in neurotypical persons. They don't understand their own behavior and desires, they're not confused about the desires of others beyond not quite grasping their fixations on a fantasy relationship and a woman they don't understand.

Now that I'm musing a little further on this, the ex they keep around alongside this new obsessive fixation might suggest that they have issues letting go in general.

If persons are able to work out and be friends, great! But i could see potential issues with heathy boundaries and codepdency if this is at all common with LW.

@35: Well, and I guess devoting so much headspace to constructing a false relationship can distract from having to take a serious assessment of your current life and relationship, hopefully they get over their current self-destructive impulses.

EmmaLiz@30 ~ ...would the LW go back to her if it were possible? Probably the LW won't even know until time goes on...
I get the longing for something that seemed so good. It's easy to wish for that greener grass on the other side of the fence – it looks so inviting from a distance. It's not until you're standing in the middle of that flowery meadow in your mind that you notice it's full of gopher holes and crabgrass.

There are times that I miss my ideological young self, the guy who saw possibility (too often) where there wasn't any.
I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high and life worth living
I dreamed, that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving...

Life hasn't killed the dream I dream, but it has altered the way I interpret it. I'm more likely to lust after the things I actually have or can reasonably get.

Plenty of people of all ages believes in "the love of your life"; I'd posit millenials are the least likely to believe in it.

@37. Self-destructiveness can take many forms; and one is being paralyzed by a sense of what might have been.

It isn't hard to form the thought that ' "the love of my life" isn't that great an idea'. The LW is almost certainly familiar with it. So why hasn't he (I'll just say 'he' this time) realised the question is preventing him from engaging with what he wants to do with his life right now? Possibly he's internalised a sense he should be grateful just to have a younger lover? Not necessarily--if she isn't the person he wants, or if he doesn't see her as a long-term prospect. Does he want children? That has to loom fairly large in how he moves forward.

@40: Many possibilities, hard to guess without a harsher and more honest assessment from the LW on why they're so firmly rooted in a fantasy that originated ten years ago.

I imagine life didn't play out as they wanted it to at the time before their wife, perhaps during their marriage and certainly after when "Nina" was fully uninterested in any further relationship with the LW.

Undead @41, I think your second paragraph probably gets to the root of LW's malaise.

Does it really matter what LW's gender is? I'm pretty sure they're human, and as many have pointed out, it's pretty common for most of us to sigh nostalgically for the One That Got Away. But LW seems seriously stuck, both psychologically and emotionally. It sounds like they are nursing a fantasy that revolves around imagining how things could have been with Nina, not about their actual history as a couple. Meanwhile, current-day, real-world GF is left hanging out on a limb, waiting endlessly (or not) for LW to make an emotional commitment to her. Instead of focusing on all of Nina's sexiness and magic, LW should focus on the fact that he has been repeatedly dumped, ghosted, and un-friended by this so-called "love of his life." What's wrong with this picture?

I can't remember who it was, but I remember some years back that one of the SL regulars said that if you are "in love" but the object of your affection doesn't love you back, it's not really love at all. I hope LW is reading this and either finds a way to commit to current GF, or breaks up with her so she can find a better partner. And as Stephen Stills aptly said: If you can't be with the one you love, honey - love the one you're with!

I was thinking that too Capri, all these LWs are human beings, their gender is not the issue.
We all have hearts.

@43: "Hearts" creeps up on justification of this teenaged pseudo-romantic pining, perhaps we all have bad ideas? :D

Oh undead. You are such a hard nose.
Hearts and fantasies and delusions.