Yes. It can. Just happened to me.
I’ve been hanging around on I Am Married But Lonely, at first. Looking for support. Looking for help. A cry in the dark. I started to settle into this marvelous community, building a reputation, the usual stuff.
She was on the other side of the door. She caught me! I loved her so much, and I was so broken up, and addled over 13 years of trying my best, all for nothing… We fell deeply in love, wound up making a pregnancy, and decided to make a family. We lost that one, but kept trying and wound up having the most beautiful little girl… I wanted to name her Pebbles she was so gorgeous to me. LOL. We got married, started a family… on the road to happily ever after.
Time went by, there was trouble… Things started getting worse. I posted plenty of stories about that. There was a very bad event that took place that affected everything we had together.
Today it’s complete and total sickness. I’m still madly in love with her, would still to this day take a bullet for her. But I’m not even sure if she has any feelings at all anymore, much less for me. She’s not operating under the same programming she had when we met. She’s like a totally different person now.
I really really need to leave. I gave her final notice, over the holidays. She turned herself around in a snap. Looked better than it ever did before, but it’s still an act. The signs are starting to show it. This marriage was mortally wounded over a year ago, and is failing to respond to any attemts to resuscitate.
But….
As I was poking around the Internet at large, looking for self help, shouting cries for support into the darkness, an answer came. It was someone in a similar situation. She was so sweet, and we wound up helping each other out with support and validation, started to trade secrets, our friendship became closer every day. We started to flirt. Then it got pretty heavy duty.
The next thing I know I find I’ve fallen in love with her. It took me completely by surprise. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t help it. The irony here is… She just had the same thing happen with someone else and had just had HER heart broken, right when my love for her hit me like a ton of bricks. Right in the middle of trying to help her get through what she was experiencing. She started to detect something was going on with me… I’m hiding something… she pressed, gently. It didn’t really take any effort. I was ready to explode! I wound up confessing. I knew it was wrong, she needed my support. And what I was doing was making me look like a predator. And she had just been through a rough time with someone else. I felt awful. I began to implode, right before her very eyes. I felt so bad, she felt so helpless.
All of this happened over a span of a few days.
Today we were talking and I was trying to get my legs back. I tried to swing our discussions back to where we were before, talking about my problems, her problems, but it was to no real avail. Little things kept creeping out in my words… I couldn’t proofread them all out, I didn’t catch them all, then they started getting more blunt and obvious. I really have it bad. Later today, I wound up expelling such a ferocious confession of my love for her I couldn’t even believe it as I was writing. I want her mind, body and spirit. I want her in my arms, or to be in hers, crying tears of joy, put a ring on her, watch each other’s kids grow, hold hands as death finally takes one of us from the other. All of that. I really was reeling from the force of what was going on in my heart.
You see, my heart was in shattered pieces already from my failing marriage. It was wilting to almost nothing when she found me. She showed me such kindness. I had a crisis and she was there for me in an instant, virtually holding my hand while I shook with the fever of love going horribly wrong right in my face. That little act of empathy started a loyal friendship that snowballed so fast it was unstoppable for me.
She’s not able to return those feelings. She’s just been double-whammied by her own recent events. I totally understand where she’s at. I try to get myself under control, I tried to shut up, she told me it was okay and I should be honest. I got pulled back in and every time I speak to her it’s like I keep falling deeper in love with her. I told her I would give up anything just to keep her in my heart, even if just friendship is all she can offer, I understand, I’ll try… But if she were to ask me to say goodbye I would be crushed.
Things kept going on between us… I got more tragically fallen for her while she helplessly watched me do it. I tried to cling to something, I started talking TOTALLY off-topic, and she responded, but we were multi-threading about this thing going on inside me, too. I wound up having a panic attack. While we were messaging each other. I managed to pull myself together. I did my best.
Se felt so bad, and I felt so guilty.
Finally she sent me a message telling me maybe it would be better off if we stopped talking to each other so I could forget her.
Yes. A broken heart can still be broken.
UPDATE
There is some good news.
This lady and I – I told her “OMFG” in my reply and went into shock. I wrote the posting above. I was at work – and my boss turned up while I was sitting there all shattered, and we had some product engineering to do. It took my last hour of the day. I was dying inside but had to keep my pro-face on and it anchored me a little. When I stepped out to go home, there were a string of frantic messages from her, thinking I’d decided to vanish without a trace in a fury. I tapped a reply that it was nothing like that, but after I had settled down, I realised she was right. I had no right to force her to watch me falling to pieces for my one-sided love, she’s got troubles, too. We’re both in a bad way right now. Back and forth a few times … I didn’t want to lose her, but I couldn’t see how it would be good to go on. I know she agrees.
But the bond of friendship had grown to agape for both of us. She said she wanted to keep in touch as before, even though it was selfish. I totally understand. I feel the same way. But we’ve weathered some tough stuff with each other’s aid – in only a couple of weeks! -and have grown to depend on each other’s compassion. Her support system has shrunk recently, and mine, well – she’s all I have. Besides a few other well-wishers on EP.
So we’re going to continue as before. But it’s colored a bit now. I confessed strong feelings I have no business developing, we barely know each other. It’s going to be painful for both of us to stay in touch. But luckily we were already smart enough to draw some good boundaries before, so we can depend on them to keep things from getting out of hand. And there’s time now… it will be a guilt trip for her and tragic for me, but in time one or the other of us is bound to change. Perhaps my heart will forget her name and stop whispering it to me in my dreams, or perhaps hers will start beating for me. I doubt it. But who knows? Either way it’s going to be okay sooner or later.
For now, all I can say is “I still love you more than I have right to or deserve… my Dream Girl.”
#COPIED.