As the title says, my first love whom I’ve missed dearly has just contacted me and it’s thrown my world upside down. We met when we were both 14 and spent a little under 4 years together. It was a wildly inappropriate relationship from the start by the standards today, but we both suffered abusive and absent parents, so found each other. We spent all the time we could together, at the cost of our studies, friends, what little family there was and all else. We were absolutely codependent, physically living as adults and were each other’s worlds.
I’m now marred to my wife of 20 years and we have a home together, no children but a successful life by any measure. I love my wife dearly and tell her almost everything, she knows about the contact and encouraged me to start a conversation with my first love. I’ve avoided difficult things in the past, employing avoidance rather than facing things head on, and this is why she encouraged me.
It’s been wonderful to speak to my first love again, and it’s brought up emotions I thought long gone. I’m not sleeping, eating little and completely preoccupied by thoughts of what we once had; I feel love sick, but for a squandered past, not a realistic present. I’m bipolar so this is particularly dangerous for me and for anyone else out there like me, I’m working to try and stay grounded, away from the mania and get some rest, but it’s hard.
I broke off the relationship back then, because I was afraid of what we were committing to and because I was being manipulated by a very toxic group of people who in hindsight, only wanted to sow chaos and take pleasure in my humiliation. I was not diagnosed back then and so was particularly vulnerable when experience the extremes. If I knew now what I knew then, I would not have been so reckless with her emotions, as it caused her immense pain and led her on a path of self destruction for a number of years.
She’s has moved back to near where I live after being on the other side of the country for the past nearly 3 decades. I desperately want to meet her for coffee and look at her eyes again, but I’m also supremely cautious because I don’t want to upset my wife and am also afraid of what I might be feeling.
Any advice gratefully received on how I navigate this. I should also mention that whereas I don’t have children, my first love does and two of them are quite young, one is an adult.
—EDIT—
Thank you all of you for your advice and guidance, and for your kindness in share it with me. I ate some food last night and have slept, which has brought the mania back down to a more manageable level, and with that I’ve taken on board and heard all that you’ve collectively said.
My plan is to talk to my wife this weekend about what I’ve been going through and ask how she would feel about having a coffee with my first love. I really thought through what matters most to me and it’s the present, the future and that is with my wife. She’s a wonderful woman who has helped me through so much and my life now wouldn’t even be recognisable to 18 year old me. Through her I found the strength to recover from addiction, face my mental health demons, go to University and become the successful privacy lawyer I am today. All of this would not have happened without her strength and support.
If you’re reading this you probably wonder why the voice above the edit, and the voice below it, are so different in tone; the answer is my bipolar disorder and it’s sometimes extremely hard for me to see that change happening.
How is “talk to your wife” not the top comment?
All relationships are different. In some partners don’t even want the other looking at someone else (pretty toxic imo) others are polyamorous, and everything between. None of us can know your relationship well enough to give very solid advice. At best we can offer our opinions based on our experience and values.
I’m shocked that someone said the best you can hope for is realizing that you’re different people now. That’s not a best, that’s a minimum. You’ve spent decades apart. But that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t be good friends. Hell, for all we know you’ve got a type and she and your wife would become good friends.
But the first step has to be communication. Going to meet an old flame only for it to be discovered later looks incredibly suspicious even if those are not the circumstances.
For my part I would suggest telling your wife you’ve been thinking about meeting up with her for coffee or whatever because it’s been so long and that maybe you could meet up with your wife after. That gives you the chance to get your footing but obligates you to get them together.
At the heart of it though, I think, is who you don’t trust. You clearly don’t trust yourself with your ex, but which of these two women are you having trouble with? Neither, one, both? Answer that question and I think you’ll have an easier time sorting out your troubles.
Thanks for the advice, you took time on that and I genuinely appreciate it. On the question, I think I don’t trust myself and my first love. I trust my wife without question. I think speaking to her about meeting up was always in my mind to do but I was worried about what might happen at the meeting, or as a result of the meeting. Talking is indeed absolutely the right course of action.