I fell in love with a guy across the Atlantic Ocean: A hopeless romance story.
Spoiler: It did not go well
I don’t fall in love easily. Why? Because I am attracted to the mind. I crave stimulating conversation and a shared sense of humor. This is not something you can find in everyone.
I talk to the person for a while before giving my heart away because I overthink every detail. I love those stories in Korean dramas that show how the love interests met as children in a flashback scene. These scenes usually make me wonder if I met my soulmate as a five-year-old while we played in the sand and chased each other.
In this story, I met him at 14. It was summertime, and we saw each other every day. We talked at length about random topics and visited places together till he returned to his country at the end of the summer.
It’s easy to develop feelings for someone that you see so frequently.
After ten years, he sent me an Instagram DM saying: “Happy birthday!”. Instead of sending my curated reply text, I decided to ask him how he was doing.
This was the beginning.
We talked consistently for three days about things I don’t even recall at this moment, and this went on every day for the next five months. We lived an ocean apart, in different time zones, but we involved each other in everything throughout the day so that we never felt like we were missing out on anything.
He had most of the things that I wanted in a partner, and I enjoyed talking to him. He made me feel comfortable like we had always known each other and had never been apart.
After five months, I could imagine being with this guy for the rest of my life. I began to wonder if he felt the same way, and I decided to get clarification because sometimes it’s easy to be in a one-sided love relationship and delude yourself.
I asked him. “What do you want from this relationship? Do you want to date, or do you want to remain friends?”
I asked this question to keep my heart in check, just in case we were not on the same page. If all he wants is friendship, I would be the best friend I could be.
He was upset that I asked because I supposedly ruined a good thing, and he left.
I felt replaceable because you can’t walk away from someone knowing you might not see them again without feeling that you will meet someone better.
It felt like he gave up on us before we even had a chance to start.
I was devastated, heartbroken and perplexed.
Three months after, he messaged me from time to time as if nothing had transpired, and I was not interested.
Then one day, I called him to hear his side of the story, and I understood. He said he could not imagine how our relationship would work logically and that he left so that I could get over him. I wonder how he thought he would be so insignificant to me that I would just move on as if nothing happened.
The thing about long-distance is that it is easy for you to convince yourself that this person across the ocean doesn’t care about you because you’re unable to see them, and sometimes you tell yourself this to protect yourself from heartbreak.
I cried as we had a heart-to-heart conversation about it. He confessed that he liked me, which prevented him from choosing friendship before, and we decided to be friends now.
Two years later, I messaged him randomly, and we talked just like before about life, the Olympics, and other topics. It was comfortable as usual. We had changed, but at our core, we still connected. It wasn’t our time then and probably not even now.
The difference this time is that I choose me just like he chose himself before. This time, I love myself more. I realize that I deserve to be cherished, loved, and given back the same energy in a relationship. I deserve someone who loves me wholeheartedly and will not walk away in the blink of an eye when things seem difficult.
As Ijeoma Umebunyuo says in Questions for Ada: “You are too full of life to be half loved.”
With the pandemic, I grew as a person beyond my imagination. I had time to think and reflect to see if this is a good deal for me. Every good salesperson knows that you don’t give people time to think about a purchase.
I had two years to think, and for that, I’m very grateful. I don’t regret loving him.
It took his reentry into my life to wake me up, show me that I didn’t have all the facts, and expose some of my flaws.
It took his willingness to decide logically works best for him to realize that I wasn’t even thinking of myself. I was ready to drop everything and change my whole life for this person because I was supposedly in love.
In the end, we are good friends, and maybe that’s all we will be. The problem is that I fell in love with his mind, saw his flaws, had a broken heart, and it was still worth it.
