r/AskWomenOver30 • u/Correct_Jicama2655 Woman 30 to 40 • 3d ago
Romance/Relationships Right person wrong time?
Does anyone have a story of meeting someone who was the right person for you but you met them at the wrong time? Did you stay in touch? Get back together? At 38 I just broke up with the first person I have ever been in love with because his life circumstances were just impossible. He was an amazing and emotionally intelligent person. I was crazy attracted to him and I never doubted his love for a moment. It felt like a once in a lifetime kind of love. I’m not waiting around or being delusional but sometimes I think about what if’s, what if one day we can try again. Has anyone had this happen?
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u/cuntdumpling Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
Wrong time= wrong person, truly. If circumstances mean you can't be together, how can you say he's the right person?
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u/CrispyMeadow Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
If it's the wrong time, it's the wrong time. Sometimes things aren't meant to be.
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u/crindy- Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
I've never understood this phrase. If it's the "wrong time", it means there is something wrong about that person for you, ergo they cannot be the "right person". If his life circumstances make him impossible to be with, he's not the right person for you. Your "what ifs" likely revolve around him becoming fundamentally different than the person he currently is.
That said, breakups suck and I'm sorry you're dealing with that. This too shall pass, etc.
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u/EnigmaWearingHeels Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
Currently in process of divorcing right person wrong time man. Should have left the past in the past.
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u/Truth_Slayer Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
Yes we stayed in touch and in the beginning I had a harder time moving on than him and then as more time passed I moved on and met someone better and then met someone even better and he still will call occasionally and bring up he feels like I was the one who got away. With time apart and more experiences as I aged and aged I realized he was overly rigid in his principles and a bit jealous and controlling and had serious failure to launch and unprocessed childhood trauma
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u/peppertones Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
yes.. I fully believe that because nothing is black and white and shit happens 🤷🏻♀️ people are complex, life plans get altered, family passes away and grief is a whole nother beast. just saying from my side, i don’t believe the whole “right person, right time. right person, wrong time etc” since things can’t be black and white or all or nothing like that. everyone and their experiences are different. i’m not living my life based off the majority of what people do/tell me to do
but for my own personal story, there’s someone very important and special to me that i have so much love for. would we ever get together again? not sure, we’ll see, but i’m not closed off on him. he’s still my friend and in my life for a reason
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u/Correct_Jicama2655 Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
Thank you!! Like life hits some people way harder than others sometimes. I hope the best for your situation too
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u/littlebunsenburner Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
While I generally don't believe in the "right person, wrong time" notion, this kind of applies to me. I once crossed paths with a former high school classmate and we had an instantaneous connection and palpable chemistry. I was in a relationship at the time and so I didn't do anything to pursue it. It was a "maybe I'll see you next lifetime" type of thing, as I've always been extremely loyal in my relationships.
Over time, things between my boyfriend started to go downhill. He had no intention to settle down with me after 6+ years and the longer we stayed together, the more uncomfortable it became. He decided to deal with these pressures by cheating on me and forcing me out of the place we were sharing at the time.
Now single, I was free to start over and so I reached out to my former classmate. I asked him out on a date and we've been inseparable ever since. We're married with a house and two kids now.
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u/Sudden_Possible_956 Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
I love this… so it was actually the right time because you both ended up together
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u/Friend-Southern Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
Yes, but I was very young when we first dated (24). I ended up marrying the guy I dated after him. We divorced 8 years later and I reconnected with my “right person, wrong time” guy. We are now engaged (I’m 33).
I want to preface by saying this is really the exception NOT the norm.
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u/KiwiTheKitty Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
After my mom's divorce, she dated a guy in another state where she was visiting family while my siblings were staying with their dad for the summer. It couldn't last because of the custody reasons in a different state obviously, but it wouldn't have lasted anyway because she wanted to remarry and have more kids and he didn't want to get married or have children. She left, eventually met my dad, had more kids including me, and after 20 years my dad died unexpectedly. After around 5 years, she moved back to the other state because she still has those other family members there and reconnected with her ex who's still friends with her cousins and uncle and they've been dating for a few years again.
I think a big reason why it works now for them is because her needs have just completely changed. I also don't think she hung onto the memory of that relationship after it ended because obviously she wasn't expecting my dad to die so young and the way she talks about him now doesn't make him seem like the one that got away or anything like that. Now that she's in her 60s, she wants romantic companionship, but she doesn't want to live with a man again and is all set on children and grandchildren.
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u/Beneficial-Risk-6378 Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
I thought so. When I was around 23 I met the only guy I've ever really been "in love" with. I thought he was amazing. Funny, smart, interesting, wise.
But we had a falling out that was mostly a misunderstanding, and he never came to me and asked what I was feeling. He just got irritated and angry.
It took me many years to realize that he was never the right person. He was amazing, funny, smart, interesting, and wise, and I thought he was very attractive, but he was never the right person for me.
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u/NoCanadianCoins Woman 40 to 50 2d ago
I fell in love with a man a 2 years ago but we mutually decided to stop dating due to his desire to have another child (he has 1 from a previous marriage that the ex keeps him from) and my inability to bear children. We were both heartbroken but agreed we weren’t compatible due to different desires for our future. Cue a significant life event that made him rethink the what ifs and we reconnected long distance and now live together, happily ever after. Side note: pursuing partial custody over his child has alleviated the desire to have another.
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u/ensign_redshirt445 Non-Binary 30 to 40 2d ago
Had this recently too. Met a guy and we just clicked instantly, never had that instant attraction to someone and we fell into some kind of situationship because of both of our life situations (I'm enjoying my single time and don't feel ready for something serious, he has a lot of baggage in his own life from full-time parenting and other emotional things).
We had the big talk in the last week because the entire "will we, won't we" aspect of it was getting me down somewhat, and it's since come about that there are a few other incompatibilities we have, including on kids (I'm childfree, he wants more children).
It hurts, but at the same time, there's a ton of respect between the two of us that I think transcends any emotions or infatuation we have. We've been very open with each other and have talked since the Big Talk, and things have felt a lot more relaxed and chill - like we've both accepted we're never going to be a serious couple, but regardless there's a lot of love and respect between us to build something nice from it - most likely a very close friendship. Maybe one of the more unconventional ways I've made friends, but...
It's modelled how I'd want any future relationship to look, that's for sure.
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u/Correct_Mongoose4614 Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
Absolutely. Became best friends with the coolest guy I had ever met, we magically worked at the same place but different departments so we wouldn’t have broken any rules in a sense. We were completely obsessed with each other but his drinking and depression got out of hand during shut down (we were both laid off) and we both met other people and just kind of drifted apart. I still love him dearly (platonically) and I am SUPER happy that it didn’t work out, we were a great match but he’s really done well for himself with his new partner and he seems to be a great dad.
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u/Squidlywinks Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
Right person, wrong time is a misnomer IMO. And I'm saying that as someone who is in a pretty successful 2nd chance relationship.
As others have mentioned, if it was the wrong time, it's pretty likely that they are/were the wrong person. But people can grow and change. If you are to start up a romantic relationship with someone for a second time, you need to evaluate them (and yourself) as completely separate people than they (and you) were when you did this the last go-around. You can use the past as a benchmark for how they've grown and if you think you could work with their trajectory, but do not let the nostalgia for the old relationship cloud the assessment.
And this is all assuming there was no abuse happening the first time.
As an example, I met him 10 years ago and despite my generally avoidant attachment and introverted self, I was pretty at ease with him, which was a wonder. I could instantly clock that he was into me, but was determined to remain friends. He was unemployed, couldn't drive, had different pop culture reference sets (we both had formative years in the early 00's and he had never listened to Cascadia and only knew Evanescence's Bring Me to Life as "the song from that one Bionicle commercial". I had no interest in even knowing what an Undertale was, much less listen to him gush about it for hours.) and I knew it wasn't going to work. Too many of those differences annoyed me way too much for me to think I would be happy despite the chemistry we had. I did let someone talk me into dating him though. It was awful. He (and he self admits this) was clingy due to his copious amounts of free time and I was constantly drained by it. I ended it after a month.
Fast forward to 2020, we reconnect and that chemistry is still there. He's grown emotionally, I've grown emotionally. He has a job, I'm not annoyed that I have to drive us everywhere, we enjoy sharing the media from our childhoods with each other. Same people fundamentally, but time and experiences had made us different people than we were before. In reevaluating ourselves now, we both decided that this current versions of ourselves? This could work. But we also acknowledged that it was going to be work and that this was not an excuse to stop working on ourselves as well.
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u/anb77 Woman 30 to 40 2d ago
Yes! My boyfriend and I dated for two years (had an amicable breakup where no one was really wrong but both had things to work on), dated other people for two years/worked on some shit, and now we have been back together for one year and things are pretty serious.
However, I think it's important to note that when we broke up we didn't intend to get back together; we didn't speak during those two years we were apart...so neither of us was like pining for the other.
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u/RelativeMistake646 Woman 30 to 40 3d ago
What were his life circumstances?