The Men I Knew: A Rear-View Reflection

This is the most painful and raw story I have written to date – across all my blogs, interviews, and essays. Not because it is dramatic, but because it is vulnerable and honest. Some truths, once fully seen, can no longer be avoided.

Never Married

I have never been married.

That sentence used to feel like something I had to explain. Now it simply is.

When I look at the men in my life through the rear-view mirror, I do not see villains or saviors. I see timing. I see grief. I see youth mistaking detachment for strength. I see a girl, then a young woman, who did not yet understand that letting go too easily can sometimes be a way of avoiding the risk of wanting something too much.

I Was Nineteen When I Met Tom

Nineteen is an age that believes love is destiny, not practice.

I fell in love quickly and completely. My mother adored Tom. My father hated him from the very beginning. There was no incident, no explanation, no defining moment – just an immediate, immovable rejection that never softened.

Sometime later, my father finally had his reason.

Tom had a brother who did something that was not terrible – just not right – and it was public knowledge. Everyone read about it in the local newspaper. This gave my father the justification he finally needed, even though his dislike had existed long before. Guilt by proximity. Judgment by association.

One day, Tom showed up at my house unannounced. He had finished college by then, dressed like the professional man he was becoming – composed, deliberate, and clearly there with intention. He wanted to speak to my father. To confront him. To explain himself. To stand his ground.

My Father Refused

Instead, he sent me to the door to tell Tom he could not come in.

At the time, all I saw were two men bracing for impact – authority against youth, pride against pride. I believed I was protecting everyone. I was young and maybe a bit scared.

Now, through the rear-view mirror, I wonder.

I wonder what he would have said.

I wonder what my father might have heard.

I wonder how that single conversation – never allowed to happen – might have altered the trajectory of all our lives.

We broke up.

And like many young loves, we never fully stayed broken.

Our Lives Never Quite Aligned

We found our way back to each other a few times over the years – orbiting, colliding, pulling apart again. Then my mother died suddenly, and grief rearranged everything.

Tom came to the wake. He was gentle. Kind. Present. He even extended warmth to my father – the same man who had once shut the door in his face.

We began seeing each other again. Being with him felt familiar and grounding, like stepping into a room where the furniture had not moved. But grief complicates everything. At the same time, I was seeing someone else.

A married man.

I do not justify it. I do not romanticize it. But I understand it. He was comfort, not future. He absorbed my grief without expectation, and at the time, that felt like survival – and exactly what I needed.

So, I was split – between past and present, love and loss, safety and familiarity. Torn, though I could not have articulated why.

Eventually, Tom told me he needed to make a decision. There was another woman in his life, one he had been seeing before we reunited. When he told me this, he waited for my reaction, eager for me to say something – but I remained stoic. I shrugged my shoulders, got out of the car, and never looked back.

What surprises me still is how easily I let him go.

No protest.

No fight.

No “wait, let’s talk it over.”

I was young, aloof, slightly full of myself. I believed love was abundant. That time was generous. That if something was meant to be, it would come back around. I mistook detachment for confidence.

Another Lover

A few years later, I met a man who pursued me relentlessly – flowers, gifts, constant attention. We worked together. He was successful, established, firmly rooted in a world I was already beginning to feel confined by. This was about two years after my mother’s death – funny how so much of life is divided into before and after her passing.

He was not my type.

Overweight. Balding. Not someone I would have chosen on instinct.

Friends and colleagues urged me to look past it – to see how wonderful he was, how fortunate I was to be wanted. So, I quieted my intuition and leaned into gratitude.

And for a while, it was wonderful. I wanted out of corporate America. And I wanted a baby. That second desire startled me. Losing my mother cracked open a longing to replace what had vanished, to create permanence where there had been sudden erasure.

He fit the mold of what I thought I needed.

We dated. We got engaged.

And then the truth emerged.

He was a narcissist. Control disguised as concern. Rules masquerading as love. He told me what to wear, how much makeup to use, what to say, where to go. He cheated and denied it. Yet somehow, the woman who believed love was transient found herself deeply entangled.

I stayed on and off for ten years.

Ten years I will never get back. Years that quietly consumed my reproductive window and left me emotionally exhausted. I fought him constantly – talked back, pushed against his authority, revolted in countless ways – but I stayed because I believed he could give me what I wanted: financial security, freedom from a career I hated, maybe even a child.

Eventually, I blew up.

The details do not matter. It was ugly. Final. Necessary.

Never Quite Right

After that, men came and went. Some were good. Some were interesting. But something was always missing – not because I was overly picky, but because my instincts had finally learned to speak:

This isn’t right.

This isn’t for you.

You know better now.

I carried with me a story I had heard over the years. A father asked his daughter what she liked about her fiancé. She hesitated, admitting he had good qualities, but he was missing some small, essential things that mattered to her – even though he was a good man and treated her well.

The father told her about a roll-top desk he had once searched for endlessly. When he finally found one, it lacked the tiny nooks and cubbies he had imagined – the little spaces that made it complete. He liked the desk, but all he could ever see was what was missing. It haunted him. He knew he should not have settled. And he told her: neither should she.

That story stayed with me. The things we ignore in the beginning rarely stay quiet. Sometimes guidance arrives late – or in ways we never expect.

My Father’s Guidance

About a year ago, my father came to me in a dream.

He mentioned one name.

Tom.

I had not thought of him in years, except on his birthday – hard to forget, since we are both born on the thirteenth. His in November. Mine in April.

In the dream, my father said something he had never said in life:

He now approved of him.

He told me to find him.

Then my father vanished into the night.

I sat on that dream for six months.

Eventually, curiosity – not longing – won. I was not looking for a romantic reunion, and I was not reaching back for something I believed I had lost. I was simply curious. Curious about him. Curious about why my father, of all people, had chosen that moment to speak from the afterlife.

One Simple Question

When I learned he was married, it did not upset me. It did not close a door because I was not trying to walk through one. I was not pining for the past or hoping for an alternate ending. I was answering a question, not chasing a possibility.

We exchanged messages, and after almost 30 years, we met.

It was lovely. Warm. Easy. Familiar in the way that only shared history can be. Comfortable, without expectation. Two people acknowledging a chapter that once mattered, now viewed through older eyes.

But something surfaced in me. A few weeks later, I blew up at him.

Why? I am not entirely sure. I have always had a habit of poking the bear – a trait I have never been particularly interested in correcting. As a life coach, I understand this: my reaction was not about the present. It was about the past.

It was also about something he said during our first phone call after all those years:

He asked, “Did you ever get married?”

I replied, “No.”

Then he added, “Was it because we never did?”

There was no ego in his comment. No implication. Just a question that carried a lot of weight.

One that stayed with me.

And one I think I can finally answer.

Probably yes.

Probably without realizing it.

Probably more than I ever understood at the time.

Our Choices Take Us Places

I have come to understand that free will is both a gift and a curse. It allows us to make beautiful decisions – and devastating ones. By never fighting for what I wanted, never letting someone know what they meant to me, and letting go too easily, I cost myself dearly. I believed that what mattered would return if it was meant to. The universe had it covered.

I no longer believe that entirely. Some things do not come back – not because they were not meant to be, but because we failed to choose them when we had the chance.

Am I okay?

Of course I am.

In some ways, I am crushed. In many more, I am awake. I carry regret – real regret – and a depth of understanding I never had before. There are things I would do differently. Words I would say. Risks I would take.

Looking at the Rear-view Mirror

The rear-view mirror does not exist to punish us. It exists to teach us. And what I see now is not failure – but clarity.

Sometimes, clarity must be enough.

This is my final piece in the Rear-View Mirror series. I have looked back long enough, learned my lessons, and now I am ready to face the road ahead – armed with the courage to take risks, to speak what is in my heart, and to act fully on what matters most.

Let’s Chat:

Has your love life turned out as you hoped – or is it full of regrets? What dreams came true? What risks did you take? Do you regret any past or present relationships?