Now I Know

My daughter came to me today with a connundrum.  She has a longstanding friend who recently told her that he's developed romantic feelings for her.  When he initially told her this, she acknowledged his feelings, but said that she thought of him as a friend.  Since then, she's come to the conclusion that she has feelings for him as well.  She asked me what to do.  I told her to go for it.  She's concerned that things won't work out, and that she'll lose the friendship.  I still said that she should go for it.

When I was younger, I had the same thing happen to me.  I met Debbie my sophmore year in high school.  She was a freshman.  The first time I talked to her, I wanted to be more than friends, but she put me in the friend zone.  I was okay with this.  Over the years, we spent hours on the phone, hung out together all the time, and shared everything... except romance.  When I graduated high school and went into the Marine Corps, we still kept in touch... letters, phone calls, and the mandatory visits when I was home on leave.

When I was in the Persian Gulf, I called her one night while I was on liberty.  We talked for about 30 minutes, and during the call she said the magic words... "I love you."  I still remember it like it was yesterday.  I laughed out loud and said "WHAT?!?"  Yeah, that totally came out wrong.  I immediately apologized and clarified that my laughter and dismay was out of pure joy.  I had waited years to hear those words from her.

We corresponded incessantly during the remainder of my deployment, and when I returned to the States, I immediately went home... home to her.  We were inseparable until I had to return to duty, but we maintained a long distance relationship.  I flew her out to see me... the one and only time I did that for anyone.  We spent another glorious week together.

After that, things started falling apart.  I was a conservative member of the Armed Services, and she was a liberal Political Science major.  Both of us believed that our world view was superior to the other's... mine because I was out living in the real world and experiencing things she couldn't see in school... hers because she was receiving higher education, and I just wasn't enlightened.  Our conversations were increasingly confrontational, and then less frequent.  Eventually, I came home on leave again; but I knew that we had to end things.

When things ended, we went our separate ways.  Within a year, I got married and had my first child.  She went to law school and became an attorney.  As you'd expect, things were never the same between us afterwards.  I still called and sent cards for a few years, but eventually we drifted apart.  For a long time, I suspected that I broke her heart, but years later I learned that I probably loved her more than she loved me.

To this day, I occasionally wonder how she's doing.  Don't get me wrong, I know she's successful, and I strongly suspect that she's happy.  That's not really the point though.  The point is that I knew what I wanted.  I hung in there.  I won her heart... for a short time.  In the long run, things didn't work out, and we went our separate ways.  With all of that said though, I don't regret taking the chance.  Realistically speaking, we probably would have gone our separate ways whether or not we made the leap and tried a romantic relationship.  This way though, I will not spend the rest of my life asking "What if...?"  Now I know.