Mr. One And Only Wasn’t, Isn’t

How many people in life are lucky enough to get a second chance? What if you’re one of the lucky ones? What if you got that second chance, and it still didn’t work out?

Allison fell in love with Ryan in college. “I loved him deeply, and to this day, he is the only man with whom I ever really felt I could spend my life. His wit, eclectic taste and interests in music and literature surpassed even my own and I felt our relationship helped to shape me.”

Unfortunately, Ryan had some problems. He was an alcoholic. He used drugs. His father was an alcoholic and they had a tumultuous relationship. Then Ryan got kicked out of school and went to live with his parents.

“At home, he became angry, even violent and his problems with drugs and alcohol got worse. I was supportive and tried to help him, but I couldn’t fix him and by the time he sought professional help, I had had enough. I broke up with him and it was the most painful thing I have ever done. I still loved him deeply, but his problems were more than I could handle at 21. We went our separate ways, but in my heart, I always considered Ryan the one.”

For the next seven years, Allison maintained a fantasy: She and Ryan would get together one day. All his problems would be gone, no more drinking or drugs. And they would be together. She never really believed it would happen, but it was a nice fantasy.

And then, it did happen. He was back in school, clean and sober for five years. His father had died and his mother had remarried a wonderful man.

“The feelings came flooding back. Nothing could stop them and I didn’t want to stop them because it was a thousand times better than before.” They went on a vacation and people thought they were on their honeymoon. They took a walk in the woods near her parents’ cottage and found their initials carved on a tree. They knew it was a sign.

“I wish the story ended there,” says Allison, “but it doesn’t.” A couple of months after they started dating, Ryan started drinking again and cutting classes. He began to sink into depression and Allison watched him go down. But this time, she was determined to hold on to him. She was older, stronger and would fight for him.

But he didn’t want to fight. He told her he could clean up better on his own and he broke up with her. They went back and forth several times, over several months. Allison would take him back, he would break up again. Finally, he stayed away.

And then one day, a year later, he stopped by. “We chatted, catching up on each others’ lives. I was thinking how nice it was to talk to him when he casually mentioned his ex-girlfriend and how much he had loved her. He talked about how she had broken up with him, saying that she had too many problems. How she needed to be alone and that she had broken his heart and now he finally understood what he had done to me and he just wanted me to know.”

Helloo?

“I was absolutely stunned to think he felt he could just come back into my life after almost a year and after five minutes of conversation, lay that on me. That was the last time I spoke to him.”

Allison walked away from that conversation realizing that Ryan is not the one. But now she’s starting to wonder. She still compares every man she goes out with to him, and they all come up short. She has passed up highly eligible men, because she didn’t feel the spark she felt with Ryan.

At this point, she doesn’t know if she should hold out for the spark, or settle for something more realistic.