I. Need Ur Support on This One :(

You need to get counseling. This is just not normal. I don't think any of us can help you beyond suggesting get help. Sorry if this sounds mean, it is not meant to, it is just that is all I think will help you.

If you let him know you will just feel stupid, because he will probably ignore you. He is happily married with a daughter, he's not interested in you.

In life, we don't get everyone we want. I still don't have George Clooney.

You are nourishing a fantasy, and I don't know how what to tell you to get you to stop. Just let him go. Stop thinking about him. He will never be yours. Now it is time to live your life.

I like Tracy M. and B's responses. Read them again.

For one thing, you can stop checking Facebook while you are at work.
Ok, I'm not saying this to be mean but you need to get your thinking straight about this.
You need to really realize that you are not who your first crush needed in order for him to be happy - he's happier now without you.
If you really ever loved him - let him go.
(He didn't come back to you so he was never yours.)
That he's still with her after all this time means he could commit to her like he could not to you.
He's moved on and you are yesterdays news as far as he's concerned.
Really?
He cheated on you.
And you MISS him?
Gee, what an ideal dream guy HE turned out to be!
You are actually fondly thinking of insecurity and rejection?
You deserve better and you need to believe you are worth it and entitled to it.

What ever is missing from your life to be making you reminisce about a first teenage infatuation from 12 yrs ago - you need to focus on identifying it and fixing it with the current people who are in your life - your son and your son's father (husband?).
If you are having problems with your husband, resolve it or dump him and then RAISE YOUR CHILD before looking for another relationship.
Ultimately each of us are responsible for our own happiness and it comes from within - that's where you need to be looking for it.

I am not sure what you want us to say...this is not normal and is frankly counterproductive to you have a happy life now.

Everyone has that first love. That being said, the person he is now is probably not the same person he was back then. You are attached to the person that he was back then. No one stays the same. Do you look at things the same way now as you did at 17? I kinda doubt it. Was he really that great? This was a guy that cheated on you...sounds like you dodged a bullet to me.

Yeah, it is not fair. Logically we want those that hurt us to pay for that hurt in some way. It is hard to see that this person that hurt you so deeply didn't end up living in a trailer by the river and regretting each day the hurt that he caused you. Tough...we cannot control how other people turn out.

The best revenge you can have is to make yourself happy. There is a reason this didn't work out...and you are probably better off for it. If you truly cannot move past this, then yes counseling is in order.

Saying the following to you with concern and caring:

By pining for someone you knew as a teen and very young adult, you're robbing your present life and gambling with your future. And that of your child's as well. It's also pretty unfair to the man you're with now to be with him in body and with your former love in thought.

Are you serious about getting over this, or are you seeking support for reconnecting with this person from your past? I hope it's not looking for support for the latter.

If you are serious about getting over this and getting on with your life, you need to seek some therapy. This has been going on for far too long, and you're stuck in a really self-destructive loop. You're attached in a very unhealthy way to a fantasy, and for all these years, you haven't been able to disconnect on your own. You need an objective, mature person to guide you through this process and help you learn to live your life in a meaningful, realistic way.

DO NOT "friend" this person on FB or contact him in any form. Nothing good will come from that; in fact, only pain and misery on both sides would likely occur. Don't do it.

Limit your contact with the co-worker "friend;" no real friend would try to drag you in such a dangerous, immature, and drama-filled direction.

If you're serious about getting on with your life and being a mature, responsible parent and partner, you'll start searching now for a good therapist.

Don't waste another day of your life living in the past.

I do wish you well with this...

J. F.

Do NOT contact him, and get into counseling. YOUR family deserves more of you.

Nope. You DON'T need him to know how you still feel to get over this. It won't help you. Instead, go tell a therapist how you feel.

Count yourself lucky that you didn't get pregnant at 17, marry the guy, have more babies with him and in your 20's, be stuck at home with a bunch of kids and a husband who is SO immature that he leaves you without a car and badmouths you to everyone because you don't work (having a bunch of kids isn't work, after all - rolling my eyes). That's the kind of stuff we read on here, A.. Instead, your first boyfriend did what boys do, (and I'm talking BOYS, not MEN) and had more than one girlfriend. No, it's not right to step out on a girlfriend, but at least you knew it and you didn't stay with him. He was GOING to sow his wild oats. You could have gone through a tremendous amount of grief over it if you had stayed with him.

It sounds like you haven't dated many people. Maybe if you had, you wouldn't be feeling this way. Work with a counselor to get your head on straight. You have no business talking to this man who has a REAL wife and children about your feelings for him as a 17 year old and the fact that you aren't over it as a 29 year old. It would be totally inappropriate.

Go talk to a counselor and help yourself out of this mess.

Okay, it has been 7-8 years since you had a relationship with this person, so your deep feelings and thinking about it every day is not normal. The relationship you had was not stable or healthy and he cheated on you. What exactly was so great about this person that you cannot see the trainwreck that it was? You have to let this man and his family be, do NOT message him. Say you did message him and you did get back together? Could you really be fulfilled breaking up two marriages for him? And what chance would there be that he would even be committed to you, considering that the best indicator if future behavior is past behavior, and in your past relationship there was no stability.

I get that first love can be special. I still get butterflies in my stomach when I think about mine. But that is not very often and we have both moved on to healthy and loving relationships and there is a very good reason we broke things off.

Perhaps you need to go to therapy. This is not healthy/fair for you or your family and I would imagine it causes you to build walls between your love and it's potential with your husband/boyfriend/father of your child. Invest everything you can into forgetting this guy, and to rekindling the love and emotional commitment to your current life.

If you can't let go of this on your own, please see a counselor who can help you get through this.

PLEASE do not contact this person and turn his life upside down. That would be completely wrong and selfish of you.

You are doing a disservice to your own family for putting this much energy into something like this. Think about your child and his father.... they deserve better from you. Please talk to a professional.

I'm not being facetious here... therapy. And you have to make the choice to move past this.

I'm concerned that you would call his wife, the woman he committed his life to and shares a daughter with, " the girl he cheated on me with at age 17." You're all adults now. You were in an immature relationship then which was apparently fraught with drama and yet you're choosing to view it as ... what? True love? Something to miss? Something to be jealous over? Something to risk your marriage and family over?

You're choosing how you respond to all of this. You're responding like a 17 year old child. Why? You broke up for very good reasons or you wouldn't have broken up and honestly... why are you pining after someone who not only cheated on you but didn't consider you his true love soul mate? He chose someone else. He's still with her. You chose someone else. You married him and I presume you have children with your husband.

So. Think about what you do have, not about what you think you don't.

Don't contact him. You think you need him to know how you feel for you to move on? How do you feel? Upset that he seems happy? Upset that he is still with the same person? Still in love with him? How would it make you feel better to tell him any of this? You think he will feel guilty about hurting you? Honestly, you are just going to make yourself look pathetic to him that you have not moved on. That would be embarrassing. How is that going to help you heal? Are you hoping he still has feelings for you? Is this what you really want? To pursue someone married with a child? Maybe you're still angry with his significant other and don't care about her, but think of that innocent child. She does not deserve to have her parents' marriage put in jeopardy. And for that matter, neither does your son. You know in your heart this is true because you admitted this isn't fair to your family. I really don't want you to take this as a mean response, but I honestly think you are being selfish here. I really think you ought to examine what is missing in your current relationship that keeps you so focused on this long-time ex-boyfriend. Maybe you aren't with the person now that is right for you, but you owe to your child at least to give your relationship with his father every chance it deserves. Tell your "friend" from work to stop bringing your ex up, because you want to move on. Don't look him up on facebook anymore either. I hope you get the help you need, it sounds like counseling would be a really good thing for you to do for yourself.

Life is messy.
Life at 17 is not the same as life at 29.
Relationships at 17 are not the same as relationships at 29.
Married guys and guys that cheat on you should be off the radar.
Teenage relationships are not the same as 7 yr adult relationships with a child.
You know this is not fair to your family.
Get some help to be able to move on with your life.

He's your first love, of course you have a special place in your heart for him. I don't think that is unusual at all. Is he good for you, no. You need to realize that you are worthy of love and support from a beautiful relationship. He's not the one to give you that. He blew it and you moved on. Now it's your job to let it go. Think of him fondly and remember the good times, and understand that he was only right for you for a brief moment in time. Fond memories are much better than chasing something that won't happen now and getting yourself all worked up. You are worth more than that.

Hi A.,

One way I have found good closure in a situation similar to yours (where approaching that person and speaking to them would not be welcome or end well, realistically) is to write that person a letter and just dump out all the feelings, all the things youwould want to say if you could. Just take the time t0 tell them everything you were thinking, feeling, remembering. Then, when you am done, find a good, symbolic way to let go of those feelings. For some people, they would burn it with the thoughtful intention of releasing those feelings and all that negative energy. For myself, I have burned those letters at some times; at others, I have torn up the paper into pieces and let it go into moving water ( a river or stream).

This way, you can let those feelings out in a way which is meaningful and therapeutic for you without risking the real problems which would arise if you try to make contact. Telling him how you feel would really only make YOU vulnerable, not him. He's moved on, is happy, and maybe likely is cheating on his wife. Be GLAD it's not you, A.! Be really, really glad you found out early enough and that you have your own family. Don't hold onto that anger, really... I think we all know the saying that being mad and not forgiving is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die.

He's not worth it. :)

ETA: re-read AKmom's post. It brought to mind a common saying "Forgiveness: giving up hope for a better past". We can't fix what happened back then. Enjoy your NOW.

I would consider seeing a therapist. My guess is your feelings are not really about him but about how his cheating made you feel and that you may have never fully dealt with that. When I was cheated on it made me feel like I was not good enough, not pretty enough, simply not enough. I still struggle with those thoughts and feelings even years later sometimes. Find a good therapist that can help you find the true roots to your feelings and help you work through them.

Contacting him will do you no good, let sleeping dogs lay. He may be sorry he hurt you and say something kind, but he also might just pity you, or tell you to move on. Just let him and his family be and focus on you and yours.

You've fallen into the pattern of taking a person from your past and making them more important than they should be in your life. Your ex was on and off for a reason and you need to see that there's a reason it was on and off and not a committed forever relationship.

Thinking of this person every day is taking time away from your current life. It short changes your son't father and diminishes his importance. You need to realize that things happen for a reason and it helps you become the person that you are currently. You aren't the same person you were at 15 and your ex isn't either. He's grown and is now a married man with a child.

You don't need to let him know how you feel in order to move on. What you need to do is to get your feelings down either in writing or just saying them out loud to yourself. So get out a pen and paper, write everything down and burn it. Drive to the grocery store, park the car and say everything in your heart, cry, pull yourself together, and move on.

i think it's sort of 'normal.' you're 29, about to hit that big 30 milestone. you have a toddler, which is always life-disruptive, and i gather you're not married to his father, which has got to create a level of insecurity.
so i think it does make sense that you're looking back with a degree of longing to a first love, when you were younger and more carefree, and then getting tangled up in the hurt feelings that relationship produced.
but being normal doesn't mean it's healthy.
you've got to stop looking at his FB page. it's only fueling the flames, and those flames will consume you.
your need for him to know how you feel is a sign of how dysfunctional you're becoming. can you see how massively unfair (and embarrassingly uncomfortable) it would be to make him, and his family, aware of your still-burning torch? you need to move on without disrupting THEIR lives.
sometimes 'normal' means 'needs help.' it's normal to need help sometimes. it's okay to get some counseling when you need more coping tools. so don't beat yourself, but also don't allow yourself to wallow in this any more.
i suspect you need to create boundaries and get more focus in your current relationship.
good luck, sweetie!
khairete
S.

Looking at his Facebook page tells you nothing about his life or how happy he is. If you saw my FB page it looks like my life is perfect because I only put the good things and the happy occasions on my page. Don't you??

You need to change the way you think. If things did not work out the way they did, you must realize you would not have your 3 yo son! You are also correct that this is not fair to your family to be putting this much energy on what ifs and maybes. I am not sure what you feel like he should know about how you feel but I do know nothing good can come out of contacting him.

If you need professional help to get over him then I encourage you to get it. It sounds like you live a tortured life and that is sure no way to live and you don't have to.

Could be jealousy.
Could be sour grapes.
It's always easier to find fault with a real live man than a memory.
After all, if he was SO great, why was he unfaithful?
Try to concentrate on 'character' in a man.
Try to concentrate on the here and now and on the man that supports you and loves you NOW.
Good luck!

You are living in fantasy land, though it is not unusual for those first love's to stick in you brain with all the "what if's", but in reality, many don't turn out the way you thought.
My first love was infatuation (only kissed a few times and it was awful)and even though some thoughts still occur after nearly 50 years, but am so over it. He has been married 3 times, no kids, and I saw the "real" him at a class reunion, he drank to excess and was sloppy drunk, how appealing is that? NOT! It was like he never grew up. His idea of being social appears to be drinking.

I had another 'relationship' off and on for about a year, when I was about 20, (non sexual), and in my early 30's, I decided to look him up one time and he literally did not even remember me, but remembered my best friend. A very humbling experience.

No way would I have ever wanted either one back in my life as a "boyfriend" type. Cherish what you have, the grass is not always greener on other side of fence. Don't mess up what you have.

oh my gosh do not contact him at all. You will just screw with your head even more, and mess up his life. Why do that? Concentrate on your own child and the relationship you already have. Woulda Coulda Shoulda. We all have things in our life that we regret, or think we should have done differently. The main thing is now, to be mature and THINK RATIONALLY about things. This other guy is happily married. Do you think he'd leave his wife for you? Probably not. It would be horrible for you to even think that way. Getting over your first love is something lots of people wrestle with, because it's a good memory that you want to hold on to. You need to keep it there - as a memory.

This is high school girl drama. You're a mom, and a grown-up. It's a failed relationship. I got news for ya - ALL relationships fail. Until you find one that doesn't.

I mean, sheesh, a successful relationship ends in death! I'm sorry you haven't gotten over your high school crush. I really am, that sucks. But you gotta stop carrying this baggage.

Live the life you're in. Day dreaming about what you think is green grass on the other side of the fence only takes time away from your REAL LIFE.

You need to work out your issues with a therapist, and share your feelings only with him/her. You need to figure out why you haven't been able to put this past you and be happy with the life, husband and child you have.

Well I don't think this is is AS abnormal as some other people so far. I mean who doesn't carry a little bit of a torch for their first love? Most of us really think that first one is going to be "the one". I still feel a strong connection to my first love, and that he and I would have been a great match. But if that were meant to be, it would be right now, you know? Instead of pining for him and reminiscing though, I have framed it to myself as a great fondness and deep care for him. He is also married with a kid, having his own (I hope) happy life.
You really need to keep this in perspective. This is a relationship from your teens. Think of how much you've grown and experienced since then, you are entering into your 30s. There is no way that teenage relationship would translate into anything viable now. Are you happy with your current significant other?
I think if it upsets you to look at his Facebook, don't. On the other hand, maybe connecting with him would put your mind at ease and make you really see how different and happy BOTH of your lives are now. I touch basewith my ex about once a year... On a completely positive, superficial level. I enjoy keeping track of what he is up to, and I think I just dont want him to ever fall off the face of the earth. Never, ever, ever would I go into anything personal, or talk about anything from the past (other than "hey do you still talk to so-and-so, how's he doing?) Its strictly, where are you working now, you and wife bought a house/had a kid/got a dog etc. I share what my kids are doing how old they are and stuff. That's about it. I think that helps me not really think about him because there is no more to think about. It solidifies that things have moved on and are moving forward for both of us. But it takes away any wonder too.
If you can't have THAT kind d of communication with him, and you feel you would have to go into personal stuff for your own closure "I've always loved you" etc) then yes, you should work that out with counselor I think instead of disturbing him.

I agree, therapy is the best way to deal with this right now. It sounds like you do need closure and need to move beyond some issues in this past relationship...... but it is normal to remember your love from HS. I do.