He Set the Bar Too High
Papi, will I ever find someone like him again?
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¡Hola Papi!
I’ve historically been unlucky in love. My relationships have ranged from painfully short to drawn-out limbos to full-on abusive. I’ve gone on several perfectly cute dates where there was simply no spark. I’m not cut out for hookups. I’ve often been lonely for long stretches. Months. Years.
But, last year, at 30, I began flirting with a longtime internet crush and wound up flying across the country for a date. Papi, what happened next exceeded anything I could have hoped for. The connection was immediate, deep, powerful. In the following weeks, for the first time ever, I finally got what it meant to lose yourself in someone’s eyes, to be understood by someone with analogous experiences, to feel so certain of a relationship that I even thought of marriage. He returned every feeling I had. To my shock, he was always the one moving things forward and getting more serious.
The time we spent in person together—making plans, 3-hour phone calls, the letters and packages, the sexts, the affirmations—made up the happiest period of my life. He was a wonderful communicator, and it didn’t hurt that he was the single most attractive person I’ve ever seen. I realize that’s completely subjective and sounds extreme, but it’s true. I was moved by his beauty in a way I’d never felt before or since.
Of course, things fell apart shortly after. It was the most painful thing I've ever endured. Months later, I’m still grieving this incredible connection, but that’s not the reason I’m looking for guidance. My question is this: How could anyone else ever measure up?
The romance of the circumstances, the intensity of attraction, the understanding. With a dating past—and present—like mine, I truly don’t know how to move forward in pursuit of something meaningful with the bar for connection set so high and the evidence for this kind of connection so scarce. Any wisdom?
Yours,
Hopeless Hurdler
Hey there, HH!
Ah, yes… pasión. Fireworks. Poetry. Those violent delights and their famously violent ends. I’ve been there once or twice. As someone with a similar dating history, I think I can help you out a bit. I’ve even hopped on a plane in the name of love, too. I don’t think it’s as wild an idea as people make it out to be. I’ve hopped on a plane for “no reason in particular,” you know?
I’m sorry it ultimately didn’t work out. I hope that in time you can take the good things, the fun things, the beautiful things from your time together and think of them with fondness instead of sadness. But as for your question, are you open to rethinking the framing? Because I don’t think it’s about someone setting the bar too high. I think it’s about the fear that comes after an intense romantic experience: Will I ever feel that again?