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Guys vs. Girls: Pen Pal/Email Friendship w/ Friend You Were Once Attracted To?


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What you are looking for is the question' is there still hope?'

 

The answer is from the movie Highlander, namely 'there can be only one'.

 

Two become one flesh, so if somebody else steps into that life, even if its a friend of the past, it becomes adultery. So you are probably talking about yourself and feeling that your crossing a line, you should listen to your gut feeling and understand that YES a border line is being crossed here, and not to a good end. My advice Take a step back and NEVER cross that line ad infinitum until eternity.

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hun, why are you obsessing over this guy so much? Everyone has told you the same thing, I'm sorry that he isn't responding or anything, but it seems clear that he has moved on. Out of curiosity, have you been mailing him a lot? Like more than several times when he didn't respond? If so he is probably scared off by it...especially if he is married. He may see how attached you are and realize he made a mistake and you are taking his friendship out of context.

 

I really hope for your sake you can move on from this guy and find someone worthy of all your affection, who feels the same way about you! I seriously doubt this guy is the "one." You may need to talk to someone about your feelings, like a therapist at school? I know at my college they offer it for free, and when I go back I'm definitely planning on going to talk to someone to get over my ex, maybe you should look into something like that.

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Well, there are so many 'what if's' that maybe I'm a bit lost! I don't think I have ever replied to your posts so here goes.

 

If the man is married/engaged, leave him be!

 

If you happen to 'run into him' while out and about..say hi, how ya doing, and leave it there!

 

If you are 'trying/wanting' him to leave his wife/fiance, you may get ignored! He is involved because he wants to be not because he has to be!

 

If you value your own dignity, find your own friend/boyfriend and stay casual with the old flame/friend.

 

I wonder if he simply told you to stay in touch because he doesn't want to hurt your feelings. He would have responded by now if he wanted to carry on with you!

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I'm getting the feeling that you are hoping someone here will tell you he still likes you and was pressured into dropping contact with you by his wife. Is that what you are hoping to hear?

 

Perhaps we are all saying the same thing because the situation looks quite clear from the outside... that he has moved on. He got married (as far as you know) and you haven't heard from him all summer. it seems he is not interested in carrying forward the friendship. you should respect that and move forward yourself.

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I agree with annie. I think for you it's best to move on and not maintain any form of friendship. He has clearly moved on, why would you want a friendship if in fact you feel more? That's just putting salt in an open wound, in my opinion.

 

Ilse

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Mish Dashwood (cute user name, by the way):

 

Sorry, although it seems as though you are looking for something different, I have to agree with all the others. This is a guy with whom you had a mildly flirtatious friendship, and then he started dating his girlfriend and fell in love with her and backed off from the friendship with you. He then married his girlfriend and had not contacted you since.

 

I think you are trying to twist and turn the situation to make it something that it's not, but I think it would be better if you put this guy out of your mind and looked forward to a new start at college.

 

The facts are there when I read through your posts on all the different threads- he became much more reserved around you when he started dating his girlfriend, you hadn't seen him for a year when you invited him to your graduation party, he only stayed for 20 minutes, and despite multiple attempts from your side to contact him since, he has not responded.

 

I think those facts are pretty clear, and that is why everyone is giving you the same advice. I think you are trying to put some sort of "star cross'd lovers" spin on this whole situation that is simply not there.

 

Unrequited love or unrequited crushes can hurt, and you have my sympathy, but it is an exciting time in your life (leaving for school) and I think you will find someone who returns your feelings and this current guy will be a fond but distant memory.

 

Good luck!

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Perhaps he simply had a change of heart...changed his mind about wanting to stay in contact with you.

 

Maybe he thought about the situation and thought it best to break all contact with you because he didn't want to mess up the relationship he has with his wife. Maybe it isn't worth it to him!

 

It's possible to cause a break in their relationship, to answer your question, but I highly doubt it. They are married, it most likely would take a whole lot more than simple contact with another woman to end a marriage!

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From what I understand there was nothing that ever actually HAPPENED between you, and for some reason I doubt that the relationship would of been broken up because you sent a letter. Unless you insinuated there was more to it then a friendship, I would doubt she gave it much thought to be honest.

 

There are a number of possibilities, but you seem really stuck on believing there are only certain ones that could be, and not simply that he is just moving on with his life, and putting you in the past. You really seem to want to believe he is pining for you perhaps.

 

Chances are pretty darn good they got married.

 

Look, we don't know what his marriage is like...but neither do you. You have made a lot of assumptions, but you don't really know. I suspect he was enough into her, and liked her enough to choose to marry her.

 

I think you really have to just make a decision to CLOSE this chapter, even without "knowing the whole truth" and move forward with your life.

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if you two were friends, why didn't he invite you to the wedding?

 

reading this thread, I'm reminded of the scene in "My Best Friends' Wedding", where Julia Roberts kissed her old friend, and his soon-to-be wife, Cameron Diaz, saw, and she ran away running. Her fiance ran after Cameron, and Julia starts running after the fiance. Julia calls another friend on the cell phone during a mad car chase, and her friend says:

 

Friend: "Who's chasing you?"

Julia: "What!?!"

Friend: "He is chasing cameron, you are chasing him, but who is chasing YOU? That's your answer."

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Yes, well, if you guys all believe that the guy simply wants nothing to do with me, please explain why the guy would give me his home address, his work email, and his private email that he knows I already have but is reminding me for the sixth time, and then tell me twice to write and to also give him my college email as soon as I know it!!? I am at a loss as to why his tactic of ignoring me is by encouraging me talk to him!

 

my response is that what you find when you are buying a new stock or mutual fund. it is also the disclaimer you see on every commerical for every financial trading company. And i am sure you will come accross it when you take college economics:

 

Past perfomance is not indicative of future results.

 

I remember reading this somewhere, so this is not my 'original' idea - that you should treat love more like how you would the stock market. Say you had a great stock, and the value shot up years ago. however, then the stock stops going up, it just stays stagnant. so, you decide to hold on to see what happens next. that is fine. but, if the stock starts plummetting (and trust me, a man getting married and not contacting you all summer is definitely a plummetting stock), then you just sell it and move on to another stock or mutual fund.

 

just because things had gone well in the past (ie, he gave you all his numbers and told you 6 times to stay in contact), does not mean those same feelings or intentions are still there (as evidenced by his silence).

 

If we wouldn't hold onto an underperforming stock in the financial world, even if it was great last year, why would we hold onto a past love who has since gotten married?

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Hon - I think he's keeping you around to stroke his ego.

 

Don't worry, ongoing contact won't undermine his marriage - it'll just keep you in CrazySpace.

 

If he were a FRIEND, he would give you closure and tell you to feel free to contact him in a few years when you've moved on and can look back and laugh at the situation.

 

 

 

 

Wanna hear it from the wife's side?

 

There were a couple of women who kept this kind of contact with X, and it didn't bother me. He liked to keep in touch with people anyway, maybe write an occasional postcard or e-mail and a note for their birthdays. Of course he got a bit of ego boost from hearing from women who'd been into him. Nothing wrong with that either. I pointed out when I thought one woman was jerking him around (example: she threw a huge party and his invitation was postmarked on the day after the party), but I objected to him letting himself be treated badly, not to the contact per se.

 

In the case that reminds me a bit of yours, it turned out there was suffering he hadn't recognized. In retrospect, she'd stopped all contact when her parents received our engagement announcement. Then, after we'd been married 18 months or so, he was on business in her city and called her to see if she'd like to meet for coffee. He was just like that, always worked in personal contacts on business. If he was going somewhere, even if he had a layover between connecting flights, he'd figure out whether he could catch up with someone.

 

Over coffee, she was almost crying. He thought she was just lonely and under a lot of stress. Her insistent offer that he spend the night at her place rather than the hotel didn't strike him as personal - he thought it was just an offer to save him money, and he saw it as a business expense and preferred to stay in the hotel so it was a non-issue. I didn't pick up on any personal interest when he told this, just thought she was overworked and maybe stressed from not meeting her parents' expectations in the marry&breed area. After that she wrote quite a bit, always to his office or his parents' address. He files ALL the letters he receives and occasionally brought home a folder full of her letters. If I'd had any indication of interest on either side, I'm sure I'd have felt curious about the letters, but they were just papers he was filing.

 

As soon as she heard I'd moved out, she pounced. Cards, e-mails, phone calls (he never picked up, so she e-mailed requesting his mobile number), invitations. He was answering maybe one e-mail out of three, and she seemed to take anything short of a restraining order as encouragement. You know, the WIFE was out of the way and all, so he must just be shy and really busy and gosh knows what other reasons she found. I never met her, but I know the twinkle in his eye and special secret smile he had about women who'd once caught his fancy, and this one wasn't in that game.

 

Probably she would have felt a bit uncomfortable if she'd known that he finally rang me up to 1) ask whether I thought he was correct that she was looking for something from him, and not just lonely or presuming he was lonely and trying to play good samaritan, and 2) ask for advice on making it clear that he saw her as just friends.

 

I told him to bake brownies and send her a care package with a note saying he was sharing his favorite comfort food and he wished her strength getting through the lonely times. He wrote that he was doing very well and thanked her for her concern, he was working hard but managing to enjoy some free moments with someone special (I told him, if he doesn't say there's a woman in the picture, she'll keep applying for the job) and he wished that for her as well.

 

NO answer, not even thank-you for the brownies. And he bakes excellent brownies.

 

 

LONG story short: don't be the one the wife feels sorry for, never mind the one the EX-wife gets called about.

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Wow, you spend a lot of time analyzing him, eh?

 

You are off in never-never land about this. Everyone else is telling you diplomatically, I tried to tell you through example. It's not about brownies or dorm-overnights. It's the concept. Instead of getting how pathetic you're being, you say "oh, no brownies here!" It's about being realistic. Whether he's immature or not, he's married, and not to you. He was NOT enthralled w/ you or he would have waited. Friends of my parents met that way. She didn't seem to notice him as anything other than a teacher, and he didn't show ANY signs of his interest until she was in grad school. His behavior was reality based, and led to a future together. They are the EXCEPTION.

 

You apparently don't get just how common it is in high school to fall for your teacher. And how common it is for teachers to be flattered by this.

 

If you want an older bf, then go get one. Just leave the married teacher alone already, okay? Either that, or go all-out and put up a hyper-analysis blog-shrine to him, and ban comments from those of us who've replied here.

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While he's shown the immaturity after meeting the girlfriend and in other aspects, when he was around me and we were very close, he was very giving and warm and thoughtful and kind, and he lost a lot of that after meeting her. I think he'll wake up one day and feel he's down a path he didn't set out for. He got too complacent.

 

To be honest, this makes you sound slightly unbalanced. Why would you expect you would remain very close after he got married?

 

It seems to me that you have put his wife in the role of thwarter and alchemist. That is really quite childish and you should not pretend to know what goes on in his marriage.

 

It is time for you to move on from this. Your writing is becoming quite worrying.

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Not to mention the various posts in other forum subjects about this very topic. It is very concerning, obsessive even.

 

The main thing here is this. He's not with you, he's with her. There was never a "you two". He was just a friend. He probably contacted you after so long hoping that maybe you'd realize he wasn't interested in you that way. Only as a friend. Honestly, I think that was a mistake on his part... your last post almost sounds like you expect him to start dating you any day now as soon as he realizes he made a mistake with his fiance. It was one e-mail...

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I'm going to close out my posts because this is pointless. You people do not know me nor the guy who I have been speaking of so it's rather pointless convincing you of circumstances without showing you a video of the five years I've known him and everything that happened. So there was never a definitive relationship! There couldn't be! But the fact remains that he and I got too close to the point that it became an emotional relationship and no longer strictly teacher/student and indifferent. The fact remains that the situation soured and timing was off and I am slightly neurotic when it comes to him these days. That's it. I posted this story in multiple threads because i figured there were a lot of members and perhaps I'd get more comments from DIFFERENT people from different threads; it turns out the SAME people posted. It's not obsessive so much as impatient in waiting for comments and wanting as many perspectives as possible. I resent being labeled things when you don't know everything about me nor him. So, adios.

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I for one am sorry to see you go. Please don't get mad though because you got advice that you didn't want to hear. Of course we can't know everything about you and him. We only could comment about what YOU told us and what we were able to see in between the lines.

 

Honestly, my original opinion still sticks, I think the backed off so long so that you would get the hint that there is nothing between you two, that he is with his wife and that's not going to change.

 

I do ask one question though, if another guy came into your life right at this moment, just perfect for you, would you immediately act on it or would this ex teacher come to your mind first before you act? I only ask because he shouldn't even be a consideration, but I get the feeling you would consider a "what if" with this teacher first.

 

That's why I think it's best to leave him be, especially since it's obvious you don't like his wife. Being a friend to someone you have feelings for while disliking his wife will only drive a wedge between them.

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Out of curiosity, I decided to see who responded to your posts, and you have had 24 different members reply to you. (McGyver, nottoogree, lonelyinasmalltown, Jane, lady00, annie24, lozic21, jenny mcs, njron, raykay, beec, aurian, gath, tylercdurden, scout, crazyaboutdogs, ilse, syrix, helpme2, gur, robowarrior, melrich, doyathink, lessy20). And yes, everyone did say the same thing: he is married, you are going to college, he chose her, move on and find someone new in college. when a man loves you, he will not let you slip away so easily - he will marry you, not another woman.

 

It's very rare that 24 different people all have the same advice (to forget him and move on), but here you go. i have a feeling that even if 240 people replied to your thread, it would be unanimous also. Despite the huge divorce rate in america, people are very much in support of love and marriage and will never recommend interfering in a marriage under ANY circumstances.

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Hi Miss Dashwood, I posted this in another thread but don't think you'll see it there so am re-posting here :

 

 

If you really want varied responses, try putting it on different forums altogether. Here's a relatively broad spectrum for you:

 

link removed - like the name says, men. includes relationship section.

link removed - divorce board for under-35s, about equal men-women

link removed - answers write-in questions

link removed - kinda like ena, presumably diff. ppl

link removed

link removed

link removed

 

24 isn't a big sample (go Annie - great work rounding up the suspects! I can see you doing that eyes-on-you gesture the FIL does in that Meet the Parents movie) AND ena probably attracts and retains people with similar mindsets, so even if you got 124 respondents here you're not going to get a very broad range of responses.

 

 

@ annie ... I saw a video clip yesterday of your sig, and I still can't figure it out!

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Hm, i don't know the statistics off hand, but most posters get about 5 responses per post, so if you have 5 threads or so, that is 25 responses. (And when i say 24 individual posters, I mean people, not responses). So she is probably a bit above average on responses.

 

But, I would agree, in general, enotalone attracts people who value relationships. Many here are also fresh off of a breakup. thus, people will never root for 'the other woman' or encourage messing with a marriage in any way. or to even think about it, not to do it, most people would say that it's just a waste of time.

 

Hm. I do know of a message board dedicated to "the other man/woman" (people dating married people), but honestly, I think most of the people there are off in lala land.

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