There are two times that I can remember where someone made an offer that would upend a relationship to attempt something with me. I'm not trying to be opaque, I'm just not sure that either situation would have resulted in an actual relationship or not. From that it should be clear that nothing substantive came from either situation.
One of them I am fairly certain I have mentioned before. Briefly, a friend's spouse threw out the idea of divorcing him and if she did, would I be interested in seeing if something was there. It does not sound great but in hindsight there were a lot of factors at play. I shut it down at the time for, what I thought, were good reasons. And looking back all this time later, I think it was the correct thing to do. They seem to have sorted out their issues and it would have never worked with me and her. Or, I cannot see how at least.
The other occurrence was the opposite situation where the other person was single and I was in a relationship. This one was more difficult.
As an aside: When a relationship I am in ends, it is always hard on me. It does not matter if I end it, if they do, if the situation we are in just explodes and is untenable. I attach and even when the result is for the better, ending that attachment is difficult. So in some small way, I always wonder a bit about that other person, but it fades pretty quickly. End aside
There were a number of reasons that it was difficult in this latter instance. I don't know how other people work, so I don't know if this makes sense or will just sound silly, but this is one of two people I have always wondered about—still do. Specifically, what would it be like to be in a relationship with them, would we work or clash, that sort of thing.
A factor in this instance is that we had tried in the past. More than once. Whether any of those "count" as relationships depends on your definition, and whether they were fair attempts is a good question. But I know I hurt them before. And it wasn't as if it was obvious that a new attempt would be great, nor was it obvious that I should hurt the partner I was already in a relationship with in order to make this new-old-new attempt.
A problem with describing it that way is that it probably seems like I did some sort of happiness calculus or success-rate analysis. I didn't. What I did do was think about how I'm tired of hurting others, and that's all I could see coming from that.
Unlike the first one, I'm not sure I'll ever know whether the second one was a good or bad decision at the time. Sometimes you get to see outcomes, sometimes not. I hope both people, in both instances, are better off. I think they are anyway.
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I won't be seeing you for a long while
Oh, I hope it's not as long as these country miles
I feel lost
I feel lo-o-ost
