The One That Got Away

If you have ever dated, and especially if you have dated as prolifically as I have, you may have experienced “the one that got away.”  For all of those who do not know, “the one that got away” is that special someone you dated who, for some reason, never seemed to work out…no matter how hard you tried.  There was always some obstacle; be it distance, age, work schedules, or that universal reason of “not being the right time.”  Sigh.

Over dinner last night, I polled my husband and my in-laws (Tom and Judy) about whether they had “one that got away.”  Okay, I admit it, my polling system is intrinsically flawed but I thought that the wine and beer had lubricated their jaws enough that they would fess up.  No such luck. Everyone claimed that they were with the one they were meant to be with.  A huge sigh of relief from me, being that one of them was my husband.  Is that true? Do they really believe they are with the one that was meant to be?

They all said, and I’m combining their statements to paraphrase, that when things are going well, of course there isn’t the “one that got away.”  When things are less than perfect, there is a possibility of an ex or two coming to mind... however, when it came down to brass tacks, they were all happy and there was no "one that got away."

I, of course, am ridiculously honest, especially when I drink.  I tortured poor Emmett by blurting out that I had “one that got away,” and wondered if he could guess who it was.  He guessed wrong twice!  Jeez!  Shows how much he pays attention.  It was not “my first love” (that deserves a blog posting all of its own).  It was not the gorgeous personal trainer (he ruined any possibility of being "the one that got away" when he gave me exercise equipment for Valentine’s Day).  It was a colleague of mine who worked in Chicago.  Why was he “the one that got away?” 

Why?  That is a good question.  He was not very attentive.  He was far away.  He was older than me by nine years.  He was divorced with three teenagers.  He was absolutely unavailable and that, was the reason it didn’t work.  Of course, he was gorgeous (in a Marlborough man kind of way); made a good living; was brilliant, funny and charming.  And that was the reason I tried to make it work.   I think, if I were to guess (which I am) why he garnered the status of "the one that got away," it comes down to a lethal cocktail of him not being available (emotionally or physically) and me not having closure with the situation (we never did talk about our break up… he just moved to California).  Those elements combined made him “the one that got away.”

You can’t make sense of “the one that got away.”  “The one that got away,” holds a special crazy spot in your heart.  I am completely in love with my husband – 100% in love, and yet, when I heard from Mr. Chicago last year, via an email, my heart skipped a beat… for about the next three hours.  He wasn’t trying to seduce me (he is married now as well); he was just touching base to see how I was doing.  Still, I had to wonder, was I the “one that got away” for him too?  And, if so, how is it that two people who have that “one that got away" feeling were not able to work it out?  It’s like Mr. Owl in the Tootsie Pop commercial: ‘“one, two, three… (crunch)”… the world may never know.’

I am happy knowing that things worked out the way they were meant to be.  I am confident that all of those barriers that were in place during the relationship with Mr. Chicago, would be even larger now had we progressed.   I am happy with Emmett.  Bizarrely enough, we overcame of those same barriers I had faced with Mr. Chicago.  Emmett lived in Florida, was divorced and had two daughters and was younger than me by six years; and yet we are together.  Do you know why?  Because, we both wanted to be with each other and distance, age and  ex relationship baggage didn’t matter enough to keep us apart. The reason that “the one that got away" exists, is that someone didn’t want the relationship badly enough.