At least not for this romantic comedy girl. I never got over my first love. We wanted different things; I wanted a career and he wanted a wife who would stay home with the kids, cook his meals and clean. We were together for 4 years, I have no idea what made him thing he was going to turn me into “that” woman.

So we broke up. It’s awful breaking up when you’re still in love. Through the years, whenever things have started to go sour with a boyfriend, I knew it was time to end it when I started dreaming of FL (first love). I also knew it was a bad sign when I’d start Googling his name and trying to find current pictures of him.

I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in 16 years, when out of the blue, he contacts me on LinkedIn. Amazing how seeing his name in my inbox, after 16 years, immediately made my heart hurt. I was freaking out. I wrote him back, and he wanted to talk on the phone and catch up… TALK ON THE PHONE! I thought I might throw up. Then I talked myself down, knowing he was now married with kids, and enough time had passed that we could have a mature conversation. He was set to call me the next day and I was in a panic the whole time waiting for his call.

And then it came. And you know what? It was very mature, and we did catch up and it was nice… it was fine. But then when it came up that I was going to be in NY he asked if we could have lunch. Maturely I said, “Fine.” Enter best friend and sister both telling me this was a HORRIBLE IDEA. But I knew that nothing was going to happen. One thing that will never happen in romantic comedy girl’s story is cheating, either on the guy she’s with OR with a guy who’s with someone else. So I figured it would be harmless.

I figured wrong. Oh, it was harmless enough as far as all we did was talk and pick at our food, but the after effects were anything but harmless on me. But after a few days of coming to terms that I will always love this guy and that it just wasn’t meant to be, I decided, he was right. We could be friends and stay a part of each other’s lives.

WRONG AGAIN! A few weeks later he was in LA, and we decided to maturely get together again. I spent the day driving him around, showing him my favorite spots and my life in LA. We even stopped at a mutual friend’s house so she could see him and how maturely I was handling the whole situation, which I was until…

I drove him back to his hotel and we went for drinks in the bar. Don’t get worried, I don’t drink, so no vows were broken. But he did drink, and he said things to me that just ripped me up inside. He had no idea how badly he was hurting me. It felt like the scenes in The Notebook, when Allie had a husband and she spent the day with Noah (minus the sex in our case). I think that’s why I love that movie so much. I think it reminded me of FL. So, I finally left, and I cried for the entire hour ride home. I even felt nauseous because I felt that even having that conversation with him was wrong.

Sidebar: By the way, his wife has a full time job, HE does the cooking, and a nanny takes care of their kids… figures!

We tried to stay friends after that, he was helping me with something professional, when out of the blue after a week or so, he just stopped emailing and texting. I certainly wasn’t going to initiate, so 7 months of nothing. While the first encounter took me a few days to get over, this took about two months.

Then yesterday, I hear my iPhone sound for “you’ve got a text message” and when I check my screen, FL’s name is what I’m staring at. For 30 minutes I didn’t even check the text. I was in shock. Why now? When I finally broke down at read it (did I mention I was at my best friend’s house?) he said he was going to be in town and would I like to have Sushi Saturday night. Best Friend said NO! (did I mention that best friend and sis said no, last time too? And that they were right?). So I didn’t write him back… until the next day.

That’s when I had a vote: Heart said YES, Head said NO, Stomach had to be the tie-breaker. Damn it! Stomach can’t say no to sushi, Stomach said YES… and so did I. So now I will have knots in my stomach until Saturday, my brain will keep searching for why I’m torturing myself, and not come up with any answers that will cause me to change my mind, and my heart will be broken once again. Bummer!

©2010