I realized something with my most recent lover – I didn’t feel very poetic, or creative at all with him.

I never noticed it until we were over but I always, ALWAYS write poetry every day when I’m in love and I didn’t with him. For my lover usually, but being in love? Normally opens me up creatively in general. I can make more products faster and get ideas at a pace it’s hard for my hands or lips to keep up with.

You don’t understand how close this new guy was to being the love of my life. We were great friends before it ever came to romance, although I’d say the attraction was immediate and electric upon our initial encounter.

By rights, of all the men I’ve ever loved, if we’d gotten our actual relationship underway he’d be closest to earning the title of soulmate. I’ve had that whole soulmate experience in about half the relationships I’ve been in, all the serious ones.

There’s just some kind of thing I know how to do, in building this empathic two-way bridge between me and another person.

When I’m truly in love, we sync up as a couple, mentally we have a link where we’re on the same wavelength and sometimes, full conversations without words. It goes beyond thinking the same thing at the same time to feeling each other’s emotions, to feeling a near-physical presence of the other person when they’re away.

It took me a while to realize that experiencing romantic love in this way is not normal to most other people.

I should have gone to him. I should have embraced him. I should have married him.

We’re going to call new guy “Flame” from here on out because I’m gonna be talking a lot about him. We’ll call my ex Droplet, since they’re as different as fire and water.

I initially felt that, because of some of the parallels of my relationship with Droplet to my near-relationship with Flame, that I’d be repeating the same pattern if enough time passes that Flame and I could get together.

For example:

I referred to my ex as my truest love. After further reflection and actually being with Droplet for extended periods, it turns out that Flame is much closer to this ideal if I’m being honest.

Droplet’s the first guy I’ve ever gotten back together with after having broken up. I have a rule about and it was a big mistake to go against it. He hasn’t changed, nor has he fixed what his issues were then that split us apart. In fact, our little honeymoon phase was over in about 20 weeks.

I work really hard to keep my relationships beautiful and loving to the last day. What I usually have as a relationship is the honeymoon phase to other couples, so you understand?

But what comparatively was our honeymoon phase would last the first year. That can’t-get-enough sex-every-day passionate you’re-my-crack feeling only JUST starts to get under control after a year. And even then we’re talking fade, not disappearance.

With Droplet, it evaporated. In 4 months.

And since he lied to me about just about every possible thing that made him that person who could have been my soulmate or love of my life, he loses that title.

There are similiaries in that Flame and I never got to be truly together as circumstance kept us apart.

But unlike Droplet and I, we had never truly started a relationship beyond declarations of love. We also didn’t have a point of failure we would be attempting to overcome. Tragedy struck, and I couldn’t be with Flame due to those circumstances. And since it involved him, he reminded me of it.

On the other hand, Droplet hurt me really badly, causing some of the circumstances that kept us apart.

So we wouldn’t actually be getting back together. We’d be starting out, going to try.

If I could bring myself to overcome my feeling about being with him. Which is just a whole other story.