Miscommunications and missed opportunities

This past year I turned 53, and several events have compelled me to look back at my life both professionally and personally, Back in my murky past, and by this I mean high school, that festering cesspool of hormones and learning that we all love to hate, I met a couple of girls who had a big influence on me and my life in general.

The first was a girl (P) I met in my Junior year and we had our ups and downs, getting together and breakups.  Kind of standard fare for those years. She ran into problems in the school we were attending and her parents pulled her out and moved her to another school. There she met a guy who would be her first choice. they too would have their ups and downs and eventually marry, but first she would become my first wife and mother to my twin boys.  Our marriage was good, but ultimately based on both of us settling for less than our first choice in partners. I guess from that perspective it was doomed to failure.

The other girl I met in senior year in high school (let's call her W) was my first choice at the time but ultimately our relationship was doomed to never start let alone doomed to end. This was due I'm finding out neither of us being able to communicate with each other, instead we communicated past each other. Neither of us ever knowing the way we truly felt about each other. I think she was the first woman who I truly felt love for. We dated a couple of times, but it never turned into an exclusive for us for one reason or another lost to the mists of time.

As an example, take senior prom and grad night. I'd originally planned to go with P (who by this time was out of my school and dating the boy who was her first choice) , even though I really wanted to go with W,  who in reality was my first choice. But I was under the impression that W was dating someone else and was thus unavailable to go with me to prom. I recently found out that this was erroneous thinking on my part. By extension, W wanted to go to prom with me, but thought I was going with P by choice. So she went with someone else too. So because neither of of communicated with each other well, we both missed going to prom with the person we really wanted to go with, Each other....  I now wonder what would've become of us if only we'd talked.

W and I would drift through each other's lives over the ensuing years and relationships, never both being single at the same time, missing each other sometimes by years, sometimes by months. My love for her never really faded, but morphed into a good friendship that I felt was fated to be our lot in life. Yet I always had that one regret that we never had a chance to be a couple with all that entails.

There's a lot more to W & I, that may or may not have bearing on the choices I made in life, all again based on the fact that our timing was off  for each being available to each other, and not being effective at communicating with each other. There've been times that I've not been the best friend I could've been, but some of that was due to not knowing what was going on in her life. There's that communications thing again.

We've recently gotten back in touch with each other and I asked her to go someplace that was important to me, that my girlfriend refused to accompany me to. W initially said yes she'd join me, but ultimately was unable to . But we made plans to meet at something else I was going to. This date (and yes it was a date from my perspective) afforded us a great deal of time to talk, to discover things about each other, and just bask in companionship. Both of us are in a similar situation with our respective relationships, contemplating ending them (though in an act of self sacrifice I'm not sure I understand completely she's encouraging me to work on my rocky relationship with my GF) .

If we do end our current relationships with other people, I fully intend to not miss another opportunity to try with her. I have no idea where it would go, and I'm afraid of possibly ruining a great friendship. We're pretty much caught each other up on our pasts, and current situations, including things I'd never told anyone else and she still wants to be around me. that's a big relief to me, because I've done things I'm not proud of and didn't really want to reveal. but she deserved to know who she was  dealing with.  I know I look forward to seeing her each time we get together.

I need to get better at communicating not only with W but other people in my life. It's a skill I'm working on.