I do not know if my own story will be any relief for you or any other one here but I am in an unlucky love story for about 1 1/2 years now and I thought several times, it is now over and I am over it ... but no, it is not and I doubt if it will ever be.
I told parts of it in one of my threads here and it is still at the same time the funniest, nicest and coldest emotional "hell" I have ever experienced in my life and I am sometimes wondering if there is someone existing in another dimension who is playing tricks on me.
Maybe, you remember the comedy "Harvey", in which there is a scene with an encyclopedic book which itself suddenly seems to know the reader "Mr. Wilson", who just wanted to know what a "Pooka" is. I think, I will soon start believing in "Pookas".
It is very hard to believe - I know - but I had a similar experience. I fell in love with a much younger woman because of her extreme friendliness towards me and after almost one year working together with her at a hotel's reception, I told her about that. She was more shocked than I could imagine because she seemed to have seen in me the friendly "father substitute" in this hotel. She told me that she wants to stay with her boy-friend only four years older than she but she also would like to stay friends with me.
Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the work's situation in this hotel worsened and we both had things to do we did not like. I quit this job and we separated as friends who would probably never meet again because she said in the final moment of our meeting: "Maybe, it's better for my relationship when we never meet again!" I played the cool old and lonesome wolf and said only OK.
I was surprised that only two months later, she quit her job, too, although she almost became "the right hand" of the manageress.
And now the coincidences which are driving me crazy:
After I tried to forget her and this unfortunate love story of mine for the first time, I took an almost forgotten book from my dustiest shelf because I once wanted to write a book about strange coincidences in history, e.g. Churchill and Hitler were during WW II for two weeks or so at the same frontline near Ypern in Belgium. Or: The young Lenin was supported very much by the director of his Russian "high-school". This director was also the father of the Russian prime minister Kerensky, whose government was overthrown by Lenin about 30 years later etc.
Believe it or not:
In this German translation of the original English book, I browsed only a few pages and found a story about an older German-Jewish writer (48) who fell in love at first sight with a young woman around 20 whom he saw in a Berliner Café before WW II. I turned the page around and jumped up from my seat, saying loud that this is impossible. On the following page, I read this: This writer fell in love with her because he invented an identical looking girl for his latest novel and her invented name was the correct and full real name of the real person, the young woman I fell in love with.
So imagine this: I own an almost forgotten book for more than 10 or 15 years with a short story inside that represents my actual state of emotions with the same problems of age difference and the same name of the loved person and I find this book again and read this story inside which exists only in the German version, not in the English one, at the very same time, when I have the same problem.
The next problem is that the persons in this story met only once (he is 48, she is 20) and then 20 years later after WW II on another continent, are falling in love then - and only then - and marry in spite of the age difference (then he is 68, she is 40).
Moreover and to be sure, I bought the British original book about coincidences in order to write the story from this book to someone who is a native English speaker in order to ask him for his advice because I am a rather lazy person and I thought, I could scan this story before I write it on my own a second time and I could use the scans of other stories for my own book project in English.
The next "coincidental" shock for me was that this story about the German writer does not exist in the English original!
The German publisher expanded the ca. 250 stories in the English original for about 40 stories from the German language area without making any remarks about it in the German version.
The next coincidence: I got a friend in the city where I am living and told him this story on the telephone some months ago. We met a few days ago for an evening meal at a restaurant and as usual, we talked about women and these coincidences. I told him, I would like so much to meet this girl again, but I do not even know where she lives in this city and what she is working. He said with an evil smile: "She lives in the ...street with that house number and she is working now as a secretary in the company ... at the reception!"
I was completely stunned for some seconds. I did not know if I should jump up from my chair or if I could fall down from it.
- "No, you MUST be joking! You cannot know that! How can you know that? This is impossible!"
- "Remember that I am computer administrator at this city's government! You told me your story and I am a curious man and you are my friend! These dates are correct but I will deny anything about my last sentences and I have never told you what I just told you! Do with these informations what you want. I know you are a friendly person. You will never be a stalker because you are almost shy and reserved concerning women and she is really a friendly and beautiful person. I even met her once in a colleague's bureau!"
- "No! You cannot do this to me or to us!"
- "Yes, I can! I am evil enough wanting to know how this story with you and this young girl will go on and you just said you do not know her address but you seemed to like to know it. Now you know it!"
Now it is still really me who is shocked. I really did not want to get so much informations about her but is this destiny or fate or karma? The informations are coming to me about her really without me searching for them.
Now: Taking all these things into account: my and her age, these coincidences, my feelings for her and her own relationship etc., I have the uncertainty-feeling that really everything I could do in the near future ... could also be the greatest mistake of my life. I will not be responsible for a tragedy in her life. But I am really still dreaming of her at least once every month and these dreams are usually the final meetings of my high-school-class - probably because we had the same age then in which she is now. During the dreams, she is approaching to me and I remark in the dream that she is not in my class, I remember that I know her from a hotel and her age does not fit to my dream and I wake up - every month at least once. I have never had such dreams before.
I thought to be a realistic, rather cold-blooded, rational-thinking man with 57 / 58 years, but being single and having such an experience of life does not really help me in any way.
What will I do? I really do not know right now - I only know that she will make a big part in the book which I am right now writing about my life during the last 5 years in different German hotels and this story will probably kill me in some way or another ...
