...this is how it works...

She was writing about unrequited connections this week - the hypothetical scenario was of two people, both lovely/smart/attractive. One is interested, the other is not. Why? The easy answer is chemistry, it wasn't there. I really do believe in chemistry, and am grateful for it. I'm grateful because for me, that is a hard and straight fact for the failure of otherwise well suited individuals to connect. Chemistry is there or it isn't, and that's that.

Earlier this year I met someone who was lovely/smart/attractive, but more than that. From the day we first spoke I knew two things completely:
i) he is More Than That, and
ii) I am not even a shady presence on his radar.

Despite that I know the reasons for it are circumstantial. Or at least I think I know that. I think that circumstances aside, we would have clicked, maybe. (I won't even answer the inevitable question of "how do you know"?. I just do). We already clicked as people, in conversations. It's so so easy to extend that when you don't know otherwise.

There are two definations often cited for "unrequited" in the dictionary. The first is "unreturned"; the second, the one I immediately looked to, is "unanswered". I can do "unreturned", it makes sense, it's undeniable. It's harder to accept "unanswered" because it had potential on some level. There was maybe something that might have been there; fluid and blurred around the edges, as hope is. So different from the hard edges of things that never were.