Is It Possible to Carry a Torch for 30 Years?

Love is a beautiful thing except when it isn’t.

Most people, when they realize a relationship isn’t working, go through a period of mourning and move on. Then there are the torch carriers—people who pine long past the point of good sense. People who can’t let go, even though they walked away. I know about them. I’ve been there and still am.

One woman told me she resorts to torch carrying as a distraction from more important issues, such as her troubled marriage.

She told me more but I did not pay any attention. I was married, on paper for nineteen years. We were together for sixteen. And, except for co-creating two of the most terrific young men I have ever known, very little was good during those sixteen years.

As times became worse I yearned for the person I was always most happy with. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I dreamed about her. I thought about her. I remembered the fun we shared.

And here come the voices. “But you broke up with her. All you are doing is seeing the good because of all the tumult in your life.”

I thought about that, wrote about it, and here’s the thing. I broke up with her. So for the third time, I broke up with her. We were friends for years and then, finally, I somehow slept under a lucky star and we began a romantic relationship. It took every fiber of my being to get there, but we did.

And then, just like that, almost in an instant, it ended. The girl I wanted to be with most. I cherished our time together. I walked away from her. The nicest, sweetest, and most beautiful person I ever knew. Poof. Over.

Like an arsonist, I willfully and maliciously set fire to our relationship.

Due to outside factors, all stupid, and all of my own doing, I ghosted the greatest person I ever dated. Somebody I really believed in told me she was too good for me and that was that. And I listened. Now, that bears repeating. I listened to somebody tell me that I was not good enough. And people ask why I have such low self-esteem.

There’s more to it, but you get the picture.

So here I am, three years divorced from a toxic marriage and I still think about the greatest relationship I ever had.

So, it’s three fifteen in the morning, my sheets are soaking wet and the sirens in my head are ear piercing. What would you do?

Well, it’s 2020. You turn on your laptop and find a site featuring people who will tell you exactly why you must move on because the odds are stacked against you. Don’t reach out to her because the narrative is ridiculous. Just keep rolling on the train to Loserville. Or not. Maybe there is hope.

I found my site. I asked my question and within two hours and my second cup of coffee, answers were pouring in. Who are these people? Don’t they sleep? Don’t they work? Well, there IS a pandemic, so there’s that.

So here we go.

Annonymous tells me, “Torch carrying feels like OCD—in fact, researchers have found that low levels of serotonin are linked to depression, addiction, OCD…and the first thrilling, obsessive stage of love. Is torch-carrying a plunge of serotonin that gets stuck, like a toilet tank that won’t refill, causing that endless, irritating sound of rushing water?”

Jesus. Toilet tanks? Depression? Addiction? Terrific.

But wait, there’s more, “Addiction sounds right, too–which is why cold turkey is probably the best way for torch carriers to end a relationship. It works for smoking, drinking, and drugs. Being friends is probably just methadone; you have to kick that eventually, too.“

Yeah, well, just so you know Anonymous, I tried being friends. For ten years. I’m not going down THAT road again.

By sheer definition, carrying a torch: To have unrequited feelings of love for someone. People who love someone who does not love him back is carrying a torch for that person. He is holding onto a one-sided love that will not be returned.

Now Queensgirl tells me: “I think it is very possible to continue to have a strong attachment to a past love or even a dear friend from childhood over a long period of time. However, adult love is very different. Although I believe it is certainly possible for true love to happen between a couple that reunites over a long period of time, jumping into something abruptly is probably not a good idea.“

“When you are older (as I am), you start thinking about your life — things you’ve missed and the amount of time remaining to capture them and sometimes you become tempted to grasp onto things that may appear to be real. It is not desperation … it is more of a longing. Having been in this situation and having friends who have experienced the same, my advice to the OP is to learn each other and let things evolve naturally. If you’ve already waited 30 years a few more months won’t change much.”

“Although I am not a religious person, the passage about love (1 Corinthians 13) seems fitting here:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.“

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.“

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Queensgirl is onto something. It has been thirty years or roughly 12,369 days give or take a few leap years. Talk about patient!

And along comes DennyCrane, who, let’s face it, I added his response because I really like Boston Legal.

“People change after that much time. If you’re still carrying a torch for someone, then the person you’re longing for is probably long gone, replaced with a different version. You’re setting yourself up for a disappointment because odds are the person won’t live up to whatever expectations you’ve built up.”

Denny brings up a good point, one I’ve heard before. I don’t know. In my heart I know she is the same person I developed a crush on the day I first saw her. It turns out that she was not only beautiful on the outside but more so on the inside with a heart of gold. I DO NOT believe that can change. Call me a fool.

Andrea gave a good point of view. “My grandmother (now deceased) and my grandfather (also deceased) were married 7 days after meeting and remained married for about 60 years. Now, right before she met my grandfather, she had another b/f, he had gotten her a “promise / engagement” ring (not sure of the difference, lol) and alllll those many years ago, she turned him down to be his girl citing that he was going off to war, they’d never see each other etc etc…”

“Fast forward to a few years ago, say 5’ish. My grandpa passes away, my grandmother does her thing, goes about her business and starts volunteering at local nursing home…”

“Low and behold who does she find there? Yep, you guessed it, her old flame, “Lee”. Well she and Lee (who was suffering from alzheimers) got to talking, “rekindled” their romance and the funniest thing. Even though they both married other people, had families, etc…”

“You know he STILL had that ring? He gave it to her but she gave it back, said that she wasn’t ready or something to that effect and in the meantime, his daughter came in and took the ring away from him, said that my grandmother couldn’t have it etc etc… Big drama – but the fact that he still had it, never gave it to his own wife but never forgot my grandmother was something for sure…”

“I don’t know that he or she carried the proverbial torch that long but it was some story. She visited him there for the last few years of his life and then about a year later, she passed away.”

“Reminds me of that movie, The Notebook – whoa, talk about a tear jerker!!!”

And finally MovedFromFlorida. “Oh boy, this hits close to home right now.”

“My first real boyfriend was in college. We both met when we were 19. Dated for about 2 years (most of my college years; he was one year behind me) The college was in Georgia. He was from a small town in GA and I was from Florida. I broke it off suddenly when I graduated and returned to FL. He was shocked and heartbroken. (he was one year behind me in school but we were the same age)”

“Well, here we are 17 years later. It turns out that most of my friends (sorority sisters) and my cousin all met their future spouses at that college. All of those couples are still together now.”

“I got a message from this old boyfriend on Facebook that just said “Long time…”

“We sent some messages back and forth this past week and it became quite clear that he still holds a torch for me. He said he has thought about what went wrong with us and wondered if he did something to cause it. He wondered where I was and what I was doing.”

“Ok, so both of us are married and have kids about the same age. I think his wife even has a strong resemblance to me. All of the things that I feared about him turned out not to be true. (I was scared of being stuck in some small Georgia town for the rest of my life, scared that he was too conservative for me, scared that he was moving too fast, etc) It really seems like he turned out to be a great man, and he looks even better now than he did back then.“

“So now I have done some very heavy soul-searching. I can’t help but wonder what in the world my life would have been like if I had stayed with him. But there is no going back now and *nothing* can ever come of this. Maybe 30 years from now, if the universe tilts on its axis, who knows. But I know that somehow I am forever etched into his mind and that is as real as it gets. I have no doubt that he would have loved and adored me forever, no matter what. I just hope that he has found that with his wife!”

Dr. Roy Baumeister, who wrote a book called Breaking Hearts: The Two Sides of Unrequited Love, wrote an academic paper, the one without feelings. Everything placed in academic terms that make you cringe:

“Unrequited love emerged as a bilaterally distressing experience marked by mutual incomprehension and emotional interdependence. Would-be lovers looked back with both positive and intensely negative emotions, whereas rejectors were more uniformly negative in their accounts. Unlike rejectors, would-be lovers believed that the attraction had been mutual, that they had been led on, and that the rejection had never been communicated definitely. Rejectors depicted themselves as morally innocent but still felt guilty about hurting someone; many rejectors depicted the would-be lover’s persistent efforts as intrusive and annoying.”

Great. Just great. I keep dreaming about my life with her and this so-called expert is dowsing me with a fireman’s hose.

So just as I’m preparing to throw myself out the window along comes my new hero. Her name? Randi Gunther Ph.D.

Full disclosure: I found Dr Gunther as I was awaiting more responses. She was not on the site.

“In my 40 years of counseling couples, one phenomenon never fails to intrigue me. It is how intimate partners, who gave up on their relationship in the past, rekindle their love again later in life. When their prior relationship ended, they truly believed that they would never be together again, yet are now back and more in love than they were the first time around.

The options of finding old loves are much more available today because of the Internet, and people are doing so on a regular basis. Having observed many of these rekindled relationships, I have learned that the past just doesn’t ever determine what options may lay ahead for partners who have left a past relationship behind.

The people who are doing the searching are sometimes currently in established relationships. They may be feeling unfulfilled or concerned that there might not be a possible future for their partnership. For people between relationships, their searching may be driven by nostalgia, haunting feelings that they left a past relationship prematurely, or being reminded of a past love. They begin to wonder and question whether they left that relationship for the wrong reasons. What if fate is somehow intervening, and by some miraculous chance, that old lover might be feeling the same way?

Many people start off their relationships filled with hope, purpose, and the intent to stay in love forever. I mean that is the goal, right? But, somewhere along the way, they often forget to keep the energy and magic alive. They begin to feel that the cost of their relationship starts to outweigh the benefits and what drew them to it in the first place. Discouraged by their present relationship, they begin to wonder whether they can find what they have lost by going back to old loves.

Way too often, disappointments and disillusions can turn people into love cynics. They go from seeing relationships as wonderful adventures of the heart to ever-potential failures. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” becomes “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.” The past begins to determine the future as they become more concerned about being hurt again than they are in the genuine potential of transformation.

“Loving “full out” is always filled with the possibility of heartbreak. Yet, loving guardedly and fearfully is never the answer. Many of the people who return to old relationships are not just looking for a lost love. Sometimes they are really looking for the part of them who, at one time in their lives, were willing to risk loss for the joy of true connection.”

So where does that leave me? “Intrusive and annoying” or ready to go back to that place where I was at my best and willing to take a risk for the joy of true connection?

I’ll let you know as soon as I find a good therapist.