My Feelings For Her Are Back

Friday | October 23, 2020

Love Letters Dating

My Feelings For Her Are Back

Send your own relationship questions this weekend to [email protected]. I am reading and pondering.

Dear Meredith,

I’m a bisexual woman in my first long-term relationship with my boyfriend of one year. I recently reconnected with an old friend from high school whom I had an intense crush on during my senior year. She ended up dating another friend of mine for a while around that time.

When we saw each other last week, we figured out that we had mutual crushes on each other that neither of us had acted on because we thought the other wasn’t interested. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since we met up. I’m feeling a mix of excitement and bubbling up of old feelings for her, but I feel guilty. I certainly don’t want to leave my boyfriend over this or anything, but I wish I could come to a conclusion and stop thinking about her so much and regretting not taking action with her so long ago. How do I stop thinking about this?

– Regret

I don’t know what conclusion you’re looking to come to.

I know this crush information is very new to you, but … who knows what would have happened had you acted on those feelings? Maybe they would have gone away. Maybe you would have pursued someone else. There are no time machines here.

Be flattered, and file this important lesson away in your mind. Often, when you have romantic feelings for someone, it’s worth asking if they reciprocate. That’s the conclusion. The end.

Unless … unless, well, you aren’t as committed to this boyfriend as you’d like to be. Excitement and old feelings are OK, but if you find yourself distracted every day, if you’re imagining your fantasies becoming reality, you might want to think about whether your loyalty to this boyfriend is about love or routine.

Maybe you’re not ready to be committed to one person in a serious way. If you are ready, your feelings for this woman should haunt you less over time.

– Meredith

Readers? Is the relationship with the boyfriend as solid as the letter writer says? How can the letter writer let go of the old news?

High School 🖤 Dating I reached out to my ex Crush One That Got Away Fear Of Missing Out

Featured Comment

I can see why you would feel conflicted. Try to remember, though, that the two of you are different people now than you were in high school. You’ve also said that part of what you feel is regret. If you can come to terms with what happened back then, you may find it easier to make sense of your current feelings – and whether or not you want to act on them.

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