Old feelings coming back with a vengeance, advice?

Hi,
I hate to say this, but you said she has a husband, and is happy with him, so it sounds as though she's 'unavailable' and that therefore, you might just be letting yourself in for more pain if you try to start seeing here again, considering that, as it would seem from reading your post, a relationship deeper than just friendship will not be possible between yourself and her. Even having said that, I felt a kind of inspiration to see how you just can't seem to forget this one special person...still, and I know it's hard, but you might want to ask yourself that if friendship is all it can ever be, are you happy with just that, especially considering that by seeing her again, the feelings that arise for her might actually block you from falling for someone new, someone with whom you could share not just friendship, but much more?

 

A lot of this sounds eerily familiar to me. Believe me, I sympathize and I really think that, as far as possible, I do understand...

I think that we humans like to convince ourselves that love will always win out in the end. Love can conquer anything, right? Age...distance...time...existing marriages...

So we wait, and wait, and every time that we start to wonder whether maybe our time could spent doing something more productive (i.e. finding and settling down with someone else) we tell ourselves that - no - 'the course of true love never did run smooth', and that we owe it to true love to keep faith that things will work out in the end.

But sometimes we have to start trying to accept that life isn't always a fairytale. Sometimes we don't get to keep hold of everything that makes us happy. And to try to do so is to willingly put our lives on hold and let other opportunities pass by unnoticed. If you're not careful, years, even decades, can pass in this way...

I think part of it is psychological. That notion of "I will never feel this way about anybody else" - it's nonsensical, because all we have to go on is previous personal experience. We might never have experienced anything else like it in the past, but who knows what the future holds? Telling ourselves that the future can't possibly compare is a symptom that deep down we don't want to move on, that we don't actually want to acknowledge or accept the opportunities that might come our way because we'd rather sit around dwelling on memories and fantasies of the past. It's more comfortable, right?

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." ~ Albus Dumbledore

Maybe the blunt version of what I'm trying to say is that - you might be better served moving on from it. Getting over Jane, as such. But I know and you know that it's really not that simple. You can't just wake up one morning and decide to forget about someone. For you, 7 years have been testament to that.

Maybe start by trying to consciously imagine all the other positive ways that life could turn out. Allow yourself to dream a little. Take note of the people you meet and the opportunities that you find or create. Just try to...be open...to life's possibilities. Don't beat yourself up about being hung up on Jane (after all, the heart wants what the heart wants and there's really nothing that we can do to change that) - but when you do think of her, remind yourself that maybe one day you'll meet someone who is even more perfect.

Once you are open to the possibility, you may well find that it's not as unlikely as it feels right now.