I was in a long-term relationship with a man who was very much in love with me, and made that very clear constantly but there was always this failed, long term relationship he had hanging in the back of his mind.
They’d gone to school together and had almost gotten married with the intent to have kids but he pulled the plug and ran away from it all, potentially out of fear. I think he had always viewed her as the woman who should have been the one, but he screwed up. Over the years, I think her and their relationship took on this rosy haze and I felt like the ghost of her was hanging over us all the time. He still put me on a pedestal and was very devoted and loving, but he hadn’t seen her in years and it was just getting weirder when he talked about it. They started exchanging cards and emails for holidays and they were talking about the good times and what could have been. That’s when I put my foot down. I said screw it and that I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him to get his shit together and was pretty much ready to walk away, so I could afford to do something risky – I told him to take a weekend, get together with her and spend some time talking about all of their great memories in person (she lived an hour away) and to determine if they could make it work. He was shocked. He said he was in love with me but I pushed him on it to at least meet her and he arranged a weekend so that they could catch up.
They met with the intent to spend time doing all of those great, interesting things they loved to do and kept going on and on about in their emails….blah blah blah and he came back before the day was even done. What he found once he had met up with her was that neither one of them were the same person any longer. He had romanticized their connection for years, she wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful, funny, etc. as he had remembered and within only a few hours of spending time with her, he actually didn’t enjoy being around her all that much. He began to compare what he thought he had with what he actually had now and realized how distorted his perception was.
This changed our relationship for the better, for the short term and I felt like as soon as he got back, the ghost dropped away and he wanted even more of a commitment, but it just never sat well with me. It drove a wedge between us that ultimately was piled into some of the reasons why we finally ended it.