Ok- here goes.

Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to something that quite frankly I have put out of my mind for about 20 years and That is the mission I served for the LDS church from 1994-1996 in the Iowa does moines mission. Aside from the fact that it was a supreme suckfest of the highest order, one experience sticks in my mind to this day. I never really have forgotten about it.

In the spring (around April)of 1995 I was sent to an area called Boone Iowa. It was your typical cornpone Iowa small town, people were decent, members ranged from nice to out right weird, and no one wanted a wet behind the ears, naive, smartass 19 year old kid telling them their religious business. All that aside, what was memorable was one members daughter I met shortly after getting there. For the sake of privacy I’ll only use her first name Tera.

Tera was wonderful, almost angelic in my opinion. Big brown eyes, long flowing almost coal black hair, complexion like cream. She had an inherant, disarming sweetness and kindness about her, with just that right amount of sarcastic “hot sauce” that enchanted and relaxed my uptight, hell bent on being mr. Obiedeince self almost immediately. We talked easily, laughed easier, and I found myself dropping my exterior veneer around her which proved to be wonderfully relaxing. In short, she was a safe haven of compassion and human warmth in a world dominated by cold unfeeling and unyielding pressure. We never crossed any serious lines, and we never came right out and said to each other’s faces (although in a later letter she sent to me after I transferred she did more or less express strong feelings for me) but I loved her and did everything in my power to restrain from “going too far” to show her that.

The night before I transferred, me and the comp went to her and her roomies apt and just ate ice cream, talked, and laughed until it was time for our carriage to turn into a pumpkin. As we were leaving, she gave me a hug (the comp was at the bottom of the stairs and didn’t see much) and I’ve never had someone hold me so tight nor had I held someone so tight in return. It took everything we had not to embrace in a passionate kiss (god I was such a brainwashed fool) although I think we both wanted to more than anything. We said our goodbyes and as I walked away I could hear her crying in the staircase of her apt- and nothing tore my guts out like that sound. Like the good little robot I was at the time I hopped on the bus to Davenport the next morning and went almost a whole state away.

My next area was hell, and to make a long story short, I had a companion that was a bigger dick than what swings on a bull elephant. He read one of my letters from her (without my permission of course) and the MP, AP’s, stazi, and I think the Iowa national guard got involved, and needless to say I took 40 lashes over the deal. I was forbidden to even communicate with her while in the mission field under the penalty of expulsion and social death. I lost track of her and after two more letters, I have never heard from her again.

That was 23 years ago this month.

I still think about her often and coming across some pictures of us together back in 1995 while cleaning out some old things in the storage cubby just poured acid right into that wound all over again. I know I’ll probably never see her again, this side or the other, but god I wish I could go back knowing what I know now, and go to her and tell the morg to go straight to hell with all it’s threats and coercion.

Am I the only fool who paid the he price for failing to “lock his heart” and open it up to a sweet, wonderful girl who I turned my back on because I feared man more than my own convictions?

Sorry but I had to get this out there.

It's a bittersweet love story.

Is it possible for you to try and contact her again? If only to see how she's doing?

You were both very young. Who knows what might have been? Sad for the both of you.

That’s what burns the most.

I wonder many times (when I think about that place and time) if we’d have gotten together, how different life would have turned out. I’m 43 now and never have been married, and I wonder if she would’ve been it.

In all honesty she was the one good thing in that whole godawful, shitty mess that was the mission.

Honestly, I believe you should tell her that, if at all possible. Find her address, drop her a note. Tell her how much her friendship meant to you then. And that you've wondered all these years about her.

At the very least she'll be flattered. And who knows? Maybe there's still something there.

:)

It's always the things you didn't do that you regret the most. I was accused of being too close to a sister missionary when I was a new DL. Our district would have lunch together at the church building after weekly district meeting, and we would try to meet as a district twice a week to tract a common area. I don't remember having any special feelings for her, but I got the 3rd degree at my next presidental interview. I transferred out at the next scheduled transfer. I can't remember a happier time than that on my mission. I did get a really nice letter from both sisters and they saw me off at the train station (everyone in the whole district was there). The letter thanked me for including them and for making the tracting "fun".
I got along with everyone there so well, I couldn't guess who ratted me out.
I didn't get a hug or anything.

I walked away from a great relationship because of religion. A girl I knew while at Utah State. I was a non-RM LDS guy from the east coast, so I did not exactly have Utah girls lining up to date me. But I still felt at the time I had to get married in the temple and be a proper Mormon despite having left the MTC three years earlier. Anyway in one of my classes I met a very nice non-Mormon girl from northern California. We really hit it off and ended up spending much of the next two years together. Never "officially" dating, but we were basically inseparable for almost two years. I loved her, tremendously. But she was not LDS, and not in a rush to get married. But I saw all of my LDS friends getting married and having children and felt like I needed to be married as well. So I took a break from USU, left the girl behind, and went back east to marry an LDS girl I had known since we were kids. Although we had wonderful children together, our 12 year marriage was a disaster. After we divorced, I looked up the girl I knew from USU on Facebook and it turned out she was still single. She was a few years removed from a long term relationship, which resulted in a child, and had moved back to live near her parents in NorCal. I was living on the east coast at the time, but we started talking back and forth and began to make some plans for me to come out and visit her. But then she broke the news that devastated me again, she had met a guy and they had decided to be exclusive. I missed my chance again...

She ended up marrying her new guy, and they have been married almost ten years now. I did find love again and have been happily married for seven years now. But in the back of my mind, she will always be the girl that got away, and she got away because of my being stuck in Mormonism at the time.

If she's still alive, whether married or not - you won't know unless you contact her.

It's also the "what ifs?" or the "if only."

You love. Love spans space and time.

Don't be hard on yourself for something you had no control over. If you could change the past you would, in hindsight.

Time may change us, but love survives.

True love doesn't die.

Oh, you must contact her, if you can find her!

I had a similar situation. I'm a female, and the love of my life was 6 years older, and my brother's best friend. His mother died when he was 5, and he was in kindergarten with my brother, his house was only a block away, and he practically lived at our house. My mother was like a mother to him. We invited him along on many trips to the beach and to the mountains. I have a photo of him holding me, when I was only a few days old. I never knew life without him. We shared the same life, and the same interests. The problem was, that he was an atheist, like his father. He was very handsome and athletic, intelligent, funny, gentlemanly, kind, and everything I thought a man should be. I had a bad crush on him, like on a movie star, and kept it a secret, because he was unattainable. None of the other boys I knew or dated ever measured up. On the day I graduated from high school, he asked me on a date to the City, to see a live musical and dine at a world-famous restaurant. I had my first glass of wine, and was still every inexperienced. He wasI thought for a moment that he wanted to kiss me, but then shook it off--I must have been imagining things. We went out a few more times, and then my parents whisked me off to BYU to meet and date Mormon guys. The problem was, I didn't like Mormon guys, for the obvious reasons of polygamy, women's rights, lack of respect for others, racism, hate, etc. They were fun to date, though, and while I was dating, my Atheist love met and married someone else. I stayed at BYU, then transferred to the U of Utah, and never returned to California, except to visit.

This wonderful man had been a huge part of my life, growing up. He was one of a kind. I never loved anyone as much, ever. I got together in grad school with a boy I had dated in high school, but he left Mormonism, and decided he didn't want children, so I broke up with him to marry a BYU RM, to please my parents. He beat me, beginning right after the temple ceremony, and told me that I was his possession, now, and that he could do whatever he wanted to do to me. He quoted D & C 132, and threatened to "destroy" me, like Joseph threatened Emma. He beat me very often, and I struggled to make it work, for many months, until he almost killed me. I ran away from him, and got divorced, but I was never eligible to get married in the temple again. I married another BYU Mormon, and his parents were against me, because no temple marriage, and when my second husband left the cult, they blamed me. We had children, and the marriage lasted 14 years. Life was fine, and my children were amazing. My husband moved us from California to SLC, and abandoned us there, telling me with a phone call that he didn't want a family anymore, and that he would not pay any child support or alimony. It was after the divorce, that I discovered all the facts, that my second husband had been cheating on me since the first month of our marriage. He has not been in our life, at all.

I'm telling you this for a reason, Elderheasterretired, for a reason. I was homeless, money-less, with no job, in a new city, with children to support. The TBM in-laws called to tell me that we should not expect any support from them, and they disowned my little children, too, because they weren't "sealed" to them, like their other grandchildren. These other grandchildren turned out very bad, and were on drugs, and two of them committed suicide. My own parents were old and ill, and lived far away, but they loved us, and helped us as much as they could.

Can you imagine how low I felt? We had been dumped-off like we were nothing. My ex and his family did not care what happened to us. I would never get married again, never risk loving anyone again. I was depressed, and suffering from the PTSD of my battered-wife experience.

During a visit home, with my children, when I was 50, my Atheist friend wanted to come over and see me. We had written letters and Christmas cards, over the years, but I put off seeing him, and one time, I even ran out the back door and drove away. I was very low, and shabby, and ashamed of my disastrous life. I could not face his pity.

He came back, as I was packing to get on the plane. He wanted to tell me that he loved me, and still loved me! He was going to propose to me, the summer I graduated, and that he had been thinking about it for years. He told me all the details, and all his plans. He said he wasn't happy with his wife and that he regretted marrying her. He wanted to tell me how sorry he was, that he had made such a huge mistake, and had ruined both our lives. I told him that he was not to blame, that I held the blame, because of my stupid Mormon cult, and my Mormon parents. I told him that we could only be long-distance friends, because I would NEVER break up his family, like my husband broke up my family. I loved him too much to do that to him and his family.

This was heart-wrentching for us! Especially for me, as I left with my children, to return to SLC, and a precarious life of trying to make a living and supporting my children, alone, and rejected, and twice-divorced. I cried on the plane, all the way back.

But, this encounter changed my life! Something came back, inside my heart, and grew a new hope. I had been truly loved! I had known my soulmate, and had shared those many wonderful years together. The greatest man of them all loved me!

That day was a turning point for me, and I jumped into my new life, with new energy. The kids and I resigned from Mormonism, which got rid of my depression and the blame for being divorced. I stumbled onto a great career, with a great company, and got even more education, and promotions, and success. My children got jobs, when they were old enough, and helped put themselves through college, eventually. We had a lot of fun, along the way! They are happily married, with great little babies, and they own houses in the same neighborhood.

Love is like a magic potion! Love doesn't have to be married love, to be significant. The love you give out to others is far more important than the love you receive.

Sorry about all the detail, but you don't know how you might bring joy and new hope to your lost love! What is she going through? What has she been through? I believe that most love is reciprocated, and that's what makes it so strong. I'm sure she felt the same way you did! Everyone needs love. Everyone needs appreciation. She might be ill, or tired, and you could give her something to think about, in those long, dark, lonely nights.

Please contact her! Stop blaming yourself! I blamed myself for years, and it did no good. Tell her!

Hugs {{{exminion}}}

Wow!

I too had a 'near miss' on my mish, exchanged kisses once but not with 'Miss Ideal'...


Miss Ideal was in a suburb of Detroit, pretty sure her name was Pam.

Irony is, she had a friend from Seattle who I visited once after (my mish was 67 -69, YES I'm OLD!)

Sorry to say, friend just wasn't attractive to me, I was a bit disillusioned about mish stuff at the time; I only went to temple < 6 times after my return, even tho sealed in Provo temple w wife & our first about '72...

maybe these 'lost romances' will be renewed in 'the hereafter', ha ha

(anyone laughing?)

My advice is to attempt to contact her. Obviously she is still in your head and eating away at you a bit. Even if you were to find her and discover that she has a great and satisfying life, I think that would help you to move on. Or…things might not be so great on her end. Either way, from what you have described, I bet she has wondered about you over the years as well.

I was a couple of years younger than you when I was contacted by a past love. We met at BYU, and dated off and on in a long distance relationship for a couple years afterwards. She was way more TBM than I, and although we dated after I walked out of the MTC and off of my mission, I felt that if I were to get real serious with her I would end up with a broken heart because I was not an RM. We also dated others, and when she gave me an ultimatum of being exclusive with her or cutting her loose, I cut her loose. I was young and dumb at the time, all full of myself…and I broke her heart.

Fast forward 20 years. I had no contact with her. My mother had (told me that she was “the daughter in law she never had)”, and would occasionally update me on her life. Both of us had married others in the temple. She had married someone super-TBM, totally opposite of me. I was in a HORRIBLE marriage to a convert who told me eight months in that she had made a mistake. I should have divorced her then, but was “counseled” to stay and work on the marriage. It never got better and my plan was to stay in it “for the kids” and then eject after they were gone. That is no way to live one’s life.

One day out of the blue I got an email from my BYU gal. She wanted to know how my life was and if I was happy. She shared with me that her marriage had been a nightmare, capped off by the fact that her TBM Bishopric member hubby would beat her and her kids, and sexually abused their daughters. After being “counseled” to keep the family together, she could take no more and was divorcing him.

We emailed back and forth for a couple months, sharing our lives with each other and growing closer. We seemed to pick up easily where we had left off 20 years before. She told me that she wanted to “close some open doors” in her life and asked me if I ever had feelings for her or if I was just “playing” her years ago. I told her that I had feelings for her that I had never had for anyone else. I was too young at the time to understand what those feelings were but I understood now that they were a different type of love than I had ever had. She thanked me for being so candid and commented that it was too bad that our timing always seemed to be off.

That comment about “timing” stuck with me and kept me up all night. I realized that my marriage was a sham and that I would never find someone who would love and adore me as much as she would. So the next day I told her I was through with my marriage and asked if she would consider getting back together with me. She told me that back in the day I was her “Prince Charming”, and that although she had thought about me EVERY DAY since then, she couldn’t allow herself to pursue anything with me. When I asked why, she told me that she had hurt so much years ago when I broke up with her that she couldn’t risk that happening again. I told her how much I had changed and I fought for her heart. It wasn’t easy, but eventually I won her over.

We got together and it was the stuff fairy tales were made of. I can’t explain the pure joy we found in each other. It was amazing. There were times she would just break out in tears of happiness. Being with her made me want to be a better man and her love for me reached past my heart and touched my soul. After a couple years we planned on getting married after I sold my business and was financially secure.

Then one day she got sick. Six months later she was worse. Then…she was gone. Cancer is a bitch. After only four years together I felt robbed. Fortunately time is a GREAT healer. It has been 16 years now but at times seems like yesterday. I have moved on and the sharp pain in my heart is now just a dull ache…a reminder. I would gladly give up years of my life for just ONE MORE DAY with her. Not because of things I didn’t do or say when she was alive…but to feel that joy one more time. Miss ya babe.


Go find your gal elderheasterretired. Close your open doors…or fling them open for the greatest opportunity of your life.

Best of luck to you.

Stunning, heartbreaking and sublime. Thank you for this :)

We never completely get over the first love. Heartache is almost debilitating.
I had a "summer romance" years ago in Utah of all places.
Trouble is it went deep and serious before we had to part ways.
She was BIC and had a true blue and very nice family and I was an eastern kid having fun with friends that Summer. Well off we went to school. Her to California and me to a small school in Iowa. For years I thought about her at some point everyday. Forty years later I still think about her and wonder what life would have been like together.
All I know is that she married and lives near San Diego. That's all I care to know.

Young/first love is indeed powerful, and almost everybody has very profound questions, wonderings, and regrets over that which was never to be. First love relationships and memories are powerful emotionally, spiritually, and yes, neurologically.

Many marriages and adult situations have been harmed by people who used social media to look up old sweethearts later in life. I am not being overly dramatic in saying that this is risky. Some parts of our pasts need to remain buried. How much do you want to tease yourself? The risk of psychological harm far exceed the prospects of emotional gratification.

You may also do harm to her emotional well-being and present circumstances (e.g. her marriage) by resurrecting memories in her. Your pursuit of her may be selfish.

There is a reason Shakespeare killed Romeo and Juliet: young love is intensely attractive and sweet, and very rarely does it survive intact into marriage and adulthood. For those of you familiar with the Romance genre, you probably notice that the story ends when the hero and heroine's love is established (sometimes with, sometimes without, marriage). Consider what might have happened had you finished your mission and looked her up, the differences you would have had to overcome, the conflicts over religion, and all that.

"Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener."

My first loves may be my last.

Both were "deja vu" romances. Very strong impressions we'd known each other in a previous lifetime.

The first such romance wasn't meant to last a lifetime. The second was.

I dreamt of the second person the night before we met in real life that we were on our 'third honeymoon.' The next night I saw him for real, introducing the guest speaker at Eastern Idaho Volunteers in Corrections. He was on the board of volunteers. It was my first meeting ever as a Big Sister. I was gobsmacked.

The physical description was exactly the same as the man in my dream. Height, hair, facial features. And voice. He had a distinctive, deep voice that had spoken to me in the dream announcing it was our third honeymoon. (We were standing on the tarmac at an airport for our plane to take us to our destination.) So when I heard him announcing the guest speaker, you can imagine the sense of deja vu that washed over me that following evening.

We socialized with each other over the next couple of years before he died. He was 29. I was 22. I dreamt of his death before it happened. Then after he died but before I knew of it, I dreamt he and I were married in heaven as husband and wife.

I've seen his spirit since he died, while married to my first husband. He was asking me why I was in a marriage that was all wrong for me? He sent me messages when my children were infants, from beyond the grave.

Somehow I just know he is my significant other. I'd prayed to God before we met in real life for a sign to guide me to my soul mate. And then I got them.

Life is not necessarily the 'happy ending/s' we'd like or hope it to be. But that is looking at it in a vacuum. If we are eternal beings, and love is our guiding light ... I believe we will meet again in another lifetime. I hope it will last longer than this go around.

And the dream we were on our third honeymoon? I hadn't considered reincarnation much before then. But I do now. It signifies a third beginning for this lifetime. So we've known each other before. And we'll meet again.

Because that is how love works between soul mates. God brought us together for a reason. Out of all the people in the world, we were destined to meet. So although I don't understand a scintilla of the science or the mystery, I do understand that there is something much greater than the here and now we can only begin to comprehend.

I gave him up 41 years ago because he wasn't mormon. He did ask me to marry him. I thought that God had someone picked out specially for me.

My marriage was a problem (if you look around on this site, you can see why). By the time I even married my husband, I knew I had made a huge mistake by not marrying the guy. But I probably would have ruined it by pressuring him to become mormon or something, though he said he would, but didn't believe.

So I knew his good friend and every now and then, I'd ask his friend how he was. We all worked together at one time. And his friend would tell me.

The way we finally ended up together is that I was looking him up on white pages or something. Dexonline. That was it. I had his phone number, address, etc., but I left him alone. I had a few spare moments waiting for a phone call and looked him up and he wasn't listed any longer. Thought he must have moved. BUT I looked him up by phone number and he was listed alone (and his first name was spelled wrong). Then I found his wife with a new phone number. AND I called our old mormon boss, who always thought I was stupid not to marry him, asked him to call my boyfriend, and the rest is history.

Oh, I'm glad you were able to weigh in.

You've been there, done that. :)

"Once thou hast them by the stones of their loins, will not their
hearts and minds then follow?"
--Fallopians 8:13

This right here!

I 'fell in love' twice on my mission.

I sincerely believe that much of the impetus to do so comes naturally, as mentioned below, in Baura's reference to the city of Fallopia and the situations in which they often found themselves.

The first was with a sister missionary (called Lady Missionaries back in the day). She wrote to me after she went home, a year ahead of me. We exchanged a number of letters and then she slowed down, and finally a letter of mine received no response.

I reconnected with her after my BYU bride and I divorced. She invited me to visit her in SLC, where she was teaching school. She had not married! She said she had a surprise for me, when I got there. Yeah, big surprise!! She'd come out of the closet...

A few years later she visited me in LA and took me to a Lesbian bar and a huge gay dance, where I was a wallflower.

The other time I 'fell in love' was in Leon, Guanajuato. A non-member who we tracted out, in a ritzy part of town. Her family was rich and she found Elder Bear and I to be very amusing. She practiced her English on us and took us lots of places. I began to develop a sense of longing for her. I never said anything... But when I got transferred, I went to see her to say goodbye and got a nice kiss when Elder Bear wasn't looking. I wrote to her but never got a response. I tried to feel betrayed, but I couldn't work up much emotion. The fact that I was on my last transfer probably helped. I was one trunky sumbich...

I kind of tend to side with Caffeind, in that the mind of a lonely human will make up scenarios involving a new, cute, acquaintance. I think it's called projection...

In the case of someone you knew in the past, with whom you made a genuine connection, and then had similar 'sufferings', I can see that a future connection could be established. But the temporary, out of synch (the mission, the armed services, a job) connections, I don't think the odds are in a dreamer's favor.

Now, my first love, Las Vegas mormon royalty... Saucie was curious and so we tracked her down on FriendFace. She's living in Mission Viejo, appears to be totally TBM, with a nice TBM family. So obviously, she and I would never have made it. Not that her parents would ever have allowed it... Freakin' racists...

I don't think that "things" just work themselves out. I think you have to put some real effort into making a love affair work and endure.

I was in Boone in the early 70's. Central States and then Kansas-Missouri.

Mission Romances (within the bounds the Lord has prescribed).

Sister missionaries are told to be on the lookout for their eternal companions while serving their missions - but they have to play by the mission rules.

The rules have changed greatly. I encountered sister missionaries swimming with the elders at an outing in Norway last year!

Elders were sent home for visiting the beach when I was there many years ago.

Ah yes ... forbidden love yet again.

The Germans have a word to describe what you are feeling: "sehnsucht." Wikipedia describes it as "thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences."

When life isn't going well you yearn for something that really never was. You were "in love" and embraced a nice girl you were attracted to. That is all that happened. You were left with a bittersweet memory of "the one who got away" to haunt you whenever things are not going well, and you think of the wonderful life you could have had if you had married the girl. It is fantasy, not reality. "Your thoughts are not reality." I read that somewhere and it has really helped me in life.

I worked as a desk clerk in a hotel in San Francisco one summer and met a very handsome man who asked me out. We toured San Francisco and went to a jazz club in Berkeley. We had a lot of fun together and I thought I was in love. I wouldn't let him do anything more than kiss me because I was super TBM. He traveled back to his country and I didn't think I'd ever see him again. Oh how I yearned for him! He wrote to me but I didn't write back because I didn't think I would ever see him again. Several months later he came back to San Francisco on a business trip and wanted to see me. I was crazy with excitement. I fantasized about our future happy life together.

When he picked me up for our date the love I had for him evaporated. I don't know what happened. He totally turned me off. I went from pining for him to being turned off in less than an hour. That is how fickle "love" is.

The internet makes it so easy to track people down. Without too much effort I'll bet you could find her. But maybe it's best to keep your memory of her alive as a warm embrace from a beautiful girl that you can cary with you till the end. If you find her, and you feel that you no longer have feelings for her, that wonderful memory will disappear.

That's very true. I had the same experience with someone I met and longed for but never pursued it since I was married at the time. When I was later single I dated him a couple of times and all my years of pining for him was quickly cured.

Our minds can create total fantasies about someone that definitely are not true -- just like our minds created a total fantasy for those of us who were once True Believers in the church.

I also like to say that falling for a religion is like falling in love - it feels great but is NOT based on reality.