Just because love is ‘True’ doesn’t mean you can or should have it.

I am in my mid-50s but apparently look much younger. I met a woman at work who was then barely 30. I’ll call her Annie (nothing like her real name). We became friends. I thought she was physically ok but nothing spectacular, but she had a profound inner beauty. I flirted slightly with her. Then one day she told me she was going to go back to Hong Kong so her ex-boyfriend could see his son. She regarded him as a creep. She then tried to persuade me to resign from the company and got to live in HK and not to worry because “we would both be together”. I said no but it preyed on my mind because she was the kind of woman I had always wished I had met when I was younger. But she was too young. You can change, or get around, just about any aspect of yourself … but you can’t make yourself younger. But over time I realised I was falling in love with her. I even tried to get her to go out with guys. I never dated her. And I didn’t even touch her because I knew my resistance would collapse completely if I did that.

Annie returned to HK for a little while and came back. She came back pregnant. But I didn’t care because I was completely in love and trying so hard to pretend she was just an acquaintance. She seemed not that interested in being friends anymore.

Anyway, eventually she planned to go back again by taking a year off. In the meantime the team I worked in had hired a young woman, Betty. I got on well with her, mostly because she had secretly phoned me before accepting the position (we had a mutual friend). Then one day Annie came to me and we had a short cryptic conversation. I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that after it Annie stopped speaking to me. The conversation had been about Betty.

Eventually I became so troubled with this I asked my daughter about the conversation, since that was the last thing that might have caused it. I thought I had said something insensitive. My daughter told me that it was obvious Annie was deeply jealous of Betty. I asked a couple of female friends about this and was told the same. That was when I realised that she loved me, but that I had also completely lost her. It was the worst time of my life.

I still love her. I always will. I did eventually tell her the truth by email but after a few emails she stopped talking. I suspect she is married now, to the guy she described as a ‘bastard’. I can never love another woman like that. I loved my ex-wife for 20 years, but I loved Annie even more than that. I always thought that at least I would be friends with her but now I know I don’t even get that consolation.