What Happens When We Put Someone on a Pedestal
That kind of love is built on a lie — and it’s unfair to both partners.
A couple of months ago I got a long and unexpected email from a guy I knew in college. We had a class together early on and had shared a very platonic dinner at a Thai restaurant once before drifting in our own separate directions. I was in a long-distance relationship throughout college — a fact I made clear immediately, just to avoid any confusion — and for me, this classmate’s role in my life can be summed up in a single sentence (see above).
For him, it was a different story, at least according to the novella I received in my inbox. I had been cast as “the one who got away,” and placed on a pedestal in his mind that I neither deserved nor wanted to be on. For nearly two decades, this false narrative had persisted, and now he was seeking some sort of renewed connection or validation or…I’m not even sure.
I’ll be honest that the email made me deeply uncomfortable. It’s unsettling to hear someone else’s version of a “relationship” is wildly different from your own version — that’s certainly part of it. But I also felt a stab of painful recognition: I have been on the other side of this impossible equation. And getting over it hurt more than almost anything I have experienced before or since.
