The relationship between Maddie and myself has been pretty stable and strong in the years since my father passed away. I am still more than grateful for what she did for me that day, it actually makes me well up with even more love for her.
If that’s even possible.
We have a steady and honest friendship. We love each other, absolutely – but as has been the case for more than 40 years, there just never seems to be a time when we look each other in the eyes and kiss.
We never take that next step.
I think we are both scared to. I know that I am scared to. Neither of us want to wreck the amazing friendship we have.
Have we just come too far to ever get to that point?
I enjoy the time she and I spend together – our coffees and our lunches. Even the odd evening out here and there to catch a movie or some such. It’s a bond I don’t think will ever be broken.
As much as I do love her, I have spent the last few years trying to understand that love – am I just in love with the love I’ve always had for her, or is there something more?
The problem is, that the only answer I can form is that I don’t know.
I can’t ask her either – because of the not wanting to destroy the friendship thing. I’m caught between love………..and love.
I’ve been told by a lot of people in my life that sometimes I am just too nice to people. That women who aren’t 100% sure about me let go because they think I’m a nice guy, and that some other woman will snap me up so it’s okay to let me down if they aren’t sure.
I don’t know if that is wrong or right about me – but there is an element of it that makes sense.
If you have read right through this site, you’ll know that every woman who has come into my life – (including Maddie, to be completely fair) – has had a choice to make about me.
Every time that a woman has had to choose between me and someone else, the someone else has “won” every time. Sometime that “someone else” has been the choice of nobody at all.
But I never get chosen.
Jennifer? Despite everyone telling me that she liked me, she chose nobody.
Fiona? She chose to lead me on, while choosing the boyfriend she already had.
Shannon? Chose two other men over me, and denied she told me she loved me.
Amber? Chose her first love over me – though I always understood that one.
Sarah? Chose her abusive ex or nobody over me.
April? She chose to lead me on, and then stay with her soon-to-be husband.
The abusive no-name relationship? She chose me until she had milked me dry, then chose someone else.
Nadine? Chose someone new before ending it with me.
There’s definitely a pattern – when a choice needs to be made, that choice is never me. Even with Maddie, in the times we could have gotten together, she has chosen other men in her life.
The difference with Maddie is that she has always been open and respectful with my feelings – every time she’s known that she had to let me know about someone, she’s done it with grace and class.
But she’s never chosen me either.
I like to think I am a nice guy – so it would be easy to think it must be all me. I must be doing something wrong. If I am honest with myself, I am doing something wrong.
I always hold back, I always give them a reason to choose someone else.
I don’t know how to fix it, and I’m still alone.
All alone.
Maddie is with her new man, and she heads off in several months to her secondment overseas.
Once again I am left behind holding my heart in my hands. I am questioning how I feel.
Forty years of love for Maddie, and is my love now dying off? Would there ever be a chance again anyway?
I don’t want to stop, but I also want to be someone’s first choice…for the first time…