if you have a connection with another person - does that mean the connection will last forever?
or is it something you hold on to because the potential of what could be was never realised, so you hold on to that dream?

i've recently ended a two year relationship with someone whom i thought i may end up with. or rather, he ended it because he felt we lack a connection. that hurt. you feel a bit dumb. a bit naive for thinking that you liked this person a whole lot more than they liked you. it's the age old fear of letting go and then getting burnt. your pride screams at you for letting go. maybe you deserved this fall because you were stupid enough to let go in the first place.

was it worth it? maybe. if you never let go, you would never have experienced the intimacy and fun. but then you're left to pick up the pieces and build your ego up again.

the thing is, even when i was in love with this person, there was someone else in the back of my mind. i think everyone has that person - the one you think about when things aren't rosy in your relationship. you ask yourself what it would have been like with the one who got away.

the one who got away because the timing was never right. you were both with someone else when you met. you valued relationships enough to not even declare or show your feelings to the other person. you think for some reason they are out of your reach. so you put it out of your mind.

then one day, three years later, you happen to be drunk. he happens to return to town for a few days. and you mention something to him, in a drunken relaxed stage, about how you felt. and he replies in a druken or otherwise enhanced state that he used to feel the same way. and you feel so hopeful, yet so beaten by the bad timing. especially when he tells you that if he was not leaving town he would give it a go.

so in the next two years you see each other three times. the first time you're both unattached so you give in to your feelings - knowing this time it's you who's leaving town in a few days time. so you may as well enjoy every moment with him and push it as far as you can. the next time he's visiting town with his girlfriend - and you're with the guy you loved who ended up being mr. wrong (but of course at this stage you have no clue about it all) - so you meet as friends.

still, your heart beats faster when you see him. even though you also truely realise that deep down you do love the one you are with. you're not too worried about the heart accelaration. it's just like seeing a celebrity or a really scary roller coaster.

then another year later you see each other truely as friends, for an impromptu lunch in the park. munching on delicious mexican from a secret hole in the wall from a corner store, in a sun drenched garden on a bench surrounded by flowers tended lovingly by the local block community. it was perfect in that honest, real way.

then one day five years later you find yourselves living in the same town.
one with a dented ego, the other with a partner across a wide ocean in another time zone.

and no matter how much you fantasise, you can't bring yourself to distrub a relationship. because, despite your own experiences - or perhaps because of other women you've encountered who do not value someone else's relationship - you still believe that each relationship deserves respect and should not be distrubed.

but you walk together down a quiet street one saturday morning. and you just want to put your hand in his. you stand in the cold against a bus stop poster with your arms around each other for warmth. and for once in your life you don't care if the cab ever comes even though you're about to become an ice sculpture. and it's taking all your willpower not to push it, not to look up at his face in case he too feels the pull towards your mouth, because he has a partner. because you also don't want to ruin the friendship with awkwardness. (and you know you're growing because you're thinking of all these things instead of pure rejection).

you spend the next few days wondering what would have happened if you did. maybe deep down inside you respect him enough - or know his values enough - to not want to go there because you don't want to cause doubt. and despite his naturally coquettish and flirtatious nature, you know that he's not the kind of guy to let his girlfriend down.

but you still think about how right it felt to hold him. and you wonder if it's wrong to feel that way about someone else's boyfriend. if you are truely in love with someone, but you still have a connection or chemistry with someone else, what does it mean? is it something that will happen between the two of you forever? are you both just chemically conditioned a certain way that you will forever feel that with certain people out there no matter how happy you are with your partner? what does it take to ignore it? are we always tempted to give in? is it worst for your partner if you give in, or if you don't give in out of loyalty?

or maybe this connection is not there anymore, but you think about it and imagine it's there because he's a genuinely friendly guy who makes everyone - men and women - feel that connection?