I Fell for My High School Sweetheart All Over Again

Friends, almost every one of us has that one person: the high school sweetheart, the first big love. Sometimes years later you wonder what you ever saw in him or her, but sometimes the fascination lasts a very long time. That's how it is for Marcel. He's married with two kids, and a year and a half ago he ran into his first big love again and secretly fell for her all over again. Ever since, his heart has been on a rollercoaster…

I fell in love with my high school sweetheart again

Almost 18 months ago, in my early forties, I showed up at a class reunion for the first time since graduating. I had actually made my peace with my school years, and with the people from that time. But age, maturity, and time make a lot of things feel less tight and bitter than they did 20 years ago, so I decided to go.

I found out that I (and my weight) had held up surprisingly well compared to most. That may sound arrogant, but a number of my old classmates had aged a lot worse than I had.

Nina was the exception. A long time ago, back when we were teenagers, we'd been a couple. We hadn't seen each other in 22 years, and I didn't know much about her, other than that she had a family too and was supposed to still live in my hometown.

I wasn't nervous at all, and it hadn't even crossed my mind that seeing her might turn out to be exciting. We only talked briefly that evening, but it wasn't small talk. And of course I noticed how pretty she was.

A few weeks later, someone started a group chat for our class, and suddenly I had her number. Every now and then we'd check in on each other, and one night, after one glass of wine too many, I messaged her directly. We wrote back and forth, and I told her that things were rough at home right now.

For some reason I felt a closeness with her, as if the years had never gone by and it was still 1996. I remembered the feeling I had lying next to her in a tent, the night before the start of the Euro 96 soccer tournament in England.

Over the next few weeks, we wrote back and forth more often. We had the same sense of humor, and I noticed how attentive she is. She seemed to remember everything, and she often asked me about my relationship. It didn't bother me. Quite the opposite. I enjoyed having a woman's perspective and her interest in me. We kept texting, sometimes several times a day, sometimes not at all for days.

Then the next reunion came up. Nina said yes. I noticed that it mattered to me to look good that night. I was on time, one of the first ones there. She was already there.

When we hugged, it happened. She held me a little tighter than I'd expected. And in that moment, something happened inside me, too. I realized what I would never have considered before, or what I'd wanted to ignore: there was something there. I was falling in love with this woman. Or rather, I already had been for a long time. The evening stayed calm, we talked, but nothing more.

Back home, I had to think. Despite my long relationship (or maybe because of it), I'd had a crush on someone else once before. But it was a crush from a distance, and I quickly cut off every way of contacting her to nip it in the bud. That worked well, so I decided to handle Nina the same way.

I pull back

I pulled back and stopped writing first. She kept checking in regularly (not every day) to ask how I was doing. And I have to admit that when I got up in the morning, the first thing I did was look at my phone, hoping for a message from her. By now, we both know that neither of our marriages is especially happy.

A few weeks before Christmas, we met up again in a small group. This time I'd had bigger plans. What exactly? I don't know (and didn't know) myself. It didn't work out either way. We could barely exchange a word that evening. But I caught myself several times just staring at her. Later she texted me that I'd unfortunately been sitting too far away from her. I agreed.

Christmas was lonely for me. On Christmas Day, my wife and the kids left to stay with her family, and they stayed through New Year's. During that time, I could feel how unhappy I was. I wanted more with Nina. She seemed to understand me without my saying a word, and I never had to pretend with her. On top of that came the guilt, because I was supposed to be having these feelings for someone else, and not for a woman who is married (to someone else) and a mom.

I decided to tell Nina everything, which in our case meant writing it. Secretly, I hoped she would make the decision for me and cut off contact right away. She took her time answering, and made it clear to me, firmly but kindly, that she didn't feel the same way. At the same time, she wasn't willing to give up everything either. Our friendship, or whatever it was that was there.

So we kept chatting, sometimes getting a little suggestive, sometimes flirting outright. We joked that we could just happen to run into each other at one particular spot where we used to meet as kids: an old hut in the middle of the woods…

We saw each other three more times after that. The first time, we were even alone in a room together for about 20 minutes. But nothing happened. I could barely look at her, and we were both nervous. At least that's how it felt to me. Still, I liked the intense feeling that spread through me afterward. She knows that, I didn't have to write it to her, though of course I did anyway.

I've never felt anything like this

At our next get-together a few weeks later, we were in a bigger group again. I had to drink a little for courage, but at some point there was the first accidental touch on her arm. A little while later, her shoulder. A kind of harmonious give and take began, short but intense moments in which (for me, anyway) it wasn't only our skin that touched. I had never experienced anything like it before.

At some point, around four in the morning, we were sitting close together, but not too close. Nina kept running her hand through her hair, and it kept brushing against my arm, which was resting on the back of the bench behind her. The next day, for the first time, I was sure that Nina had to feel something more, too. After everything she knew about me and my feelings for her, she couldn't possibly toy with my feelings like that and allow so much.

But over the next few days, she simply went silent on the subject. I wrote to her and tried to coax something out of her, but I couldn't. Nothing had happened, she wrote at some point, when I asked her point-blank what this was between us. A few more weeks went by before we saw each other for the last time. The mood in our chats was strange, shaped by my disappointment and her lightness.

So before we met for the last time, in a very small group one afternoon in April at her best friend's place, I was more than just shaken up. The mood was weird, and Nina seemed pretty tense during the two hours we were there.

When we said goodbye, she pulled me close for a second. It happened so fast that I couldn't even look her in the eye. Those big, dark, beautiful eyes that can see right through me at any time, whether we're sitting together or just on our phones.

The next few months turned into an emotional rollercoaster for me. We still wrote to each other, but she hardly shared anything anymore, and often didn't reply, or only very late. Too bad I couldn't turn off my feelings anyway. I tried a few times to organize a dinner with a group of old friends, as a pretext so we could see each other again, of course. But Nina didn't have time.

I went out to eat anyway, and after one get-together with old friends, out of frustration I eventually got so drunk that I couldn't walk… That had never happened to me before, and I decided to let go of her and focus on my family again.

As a result, I left our class's WhatsApp group by logging out of the app entirely. Suddenly Nina sent me a text with a pretty defiant tone, and I answered in a similarly defiant way. I'm not sure whether she actually cared about me or about our friendship, or just about making sure nobody might get suspicious. She would never admit to either one. She's too proud for that.

I thought again and again about deleting her number, or better yet, every number that connects us. But of course I couldn't do it. And apparently neither could she, because every now and then she'd ask again how I was doing.

I never responded, because I didn't want her to know that I actually think about her constantly, that she's my first thought in the morning and my last at night. That for about a year now, I've regularly questioned my marriage because I long for another woman. A woman so deeply rooted in my childhood and teens that I sometimes imagine what could have happened in those two decades if I hadn't withdrawn from that “old” life after school.

These are strange and somehow tormenting thoughts, because they really shouldn't (and can't) take away from what I have now: a marriage and wonderful kids I'm pretty proud of. But it also feels good to live in the past a little. It's the only thing that still seems to connect me with Nina.

One evening a few weeks ago, in early October, I had another weak moment and wrote to her again, in pretty great detail, about my feelings for her. I typed the message into my phone until late into the night. What did I hope to get out of it? I don't know… Somehow I want her in my life, just not only as a secret text contact. But what do I actually want? Definitely not to destroy my family, and honestly not hers either.

What am I to her?

But I want to matter to Nina, I want to be close to her. Physically, too. Of course, I suspect she isn't ready for that, and secretly a small part of me wished again that she'd be so annoyed with me and my declarations of love that she'd cut off contact for good. Her reaction was, in fact, annoyed. Her answer was clear and direct, almost angry, and she made it plain that nothing had ever been there, that she'd never promised me anything, and that we'd just had a little fun. Nothing more.

I read her message several times, and with each read I understood what I hadn't wanted to see for the past year and a half: I was a toy, a means to an end. So that she could feel good and desired.

It's hard to describe how much that hit me and hurt. But it opened my eyes. I didn't write back. What do you even say in a moment like that? Certainly not the truth… Over the next three weeks, I managed to think about her very little. I felt more balanced, calmer, and content again.

Nina didn't contact me either, and I fully expected it to stay that way. I didn't plan on reaching out, either. I'm strong, I'm really going to stick with it this time, that was my mantra now. But at a moment when I felt completely calm inside, my phone beeped. It was a retro beep, like the ones you remember from old Nokia phones in the late '90s. That sound is assigned to one particular person. Nina wrote that she'd been waiting weeks for an answer from me, even though she hadn't wanted to feel like she was waiting.

I know she must have had too much wine, otherwise she couldn't have been so honest. I answered late, very reserved, in one-word replies. Her response, a few seconds later, made me go hot and cold: “Tuesday at 10 a.m. at our hut…?”