I wish I had a badge to give you, Saydrah , because this thread is giving me hope, even theadvancedapes struggling to make sense of being dumped. I haven't been in a relationship for a few years. I kind of gave up. I'm middle-aged, kind of weird, a dreamer, got a big nose and crow's feet, got one kid still at home, bills I can't pay and a non-career filling coffee cups for southwestern yuppies wearing bolos and tooled boots. I'm nobody's fantasy. But maybe! You folks make me believe, at least in the reading of your accounts.
I'd rather have the comment than a(nother) badge -- the thread's having the same effect on me, though for rather different reasons and at a totally different stage of life (although I too do have a big nose). I've always been better at other people's relationships than my own, but I'm at a weird place in life where I'm in a relationship, I'm happy, I'm fond of him, but I'm not in love and I don't know if I'll get there, even though I could see myself raising adopted kids with him very happily. I'm not sure how I'll act on the thoughts that have come up as part of this thread, but I don't feel like I need to know that to be happy and hopeful while reading these comments. If so many different people with different wants feel so much, I'm sure that I have felt all these things--even though I can't remember them in the "feel it again" sense now--and that I will in the future.