When I was in university, in my first week of classes, I met a few people who would go on to become good friends of mine, one of which was K. She was my lab partner in my first practical, and we got along really well.
The first thing that struck me was her beautiful smile. This was always the one of the things that could instantly attract me to a person. She was also very friendly, and had a great sense of humour. Always joking around and having fun. We got to know each other over the next month, but at this point I was absolutely smitten with her.
We had a few study sessions together, and we did actually study. Haha. I learned more things about her. She was from a very big family (more than 10 siblings) and was very religious. This was problematic for me. I am not at all religious, and it was a huge part of her life. For this reason, I thought to myself, she’s a lovely person, and if the situation was a bit different, I would absolutely pursue her, but I didn’t want to deal with any potential complications, like someone having to compromise their belief system.
But there was a bit of a twist. She opened up to me and told me she’d never had a relationship before, but she had genuine feelings for me. I didn’t want to lie, I told her that I felt the same way, but that I had reservations. We discussed them and decided we would just be friends.
This of course didn’t last. Now that we both knew how the other felt, it was hard to ignore. There was constant playful flirting. She told me she didn’t care how things ended up, that this was the first time that she’d felt this way about someone, and at the very least, she wanted me to be her first kiss.
I couldn’t help it, I wanted it too. So we kissed and it was fantastic. It went on for an extended period, and in the end, we decided that we had to consider talking to her parents about if/how this might work.
Unfortunately, after speaking to her dad, given that I was not a part of their sect and did not intend to change my belief system, or even fake it, he did not approve of me dating his daughter. I didn’t want to get in the way or her and her family, so we amicably parted ways.
That wasn’t necessarily easy. We still studied together, but there were slip ups, some more intense than others. Ultimately we knew it wasn’t going to happen, so we distanced ourselves a bit. It was hard to date for a while, I just wasn’t attracted to anyone as much as I was to her. Once we graduated, we loosely kept in touch but haven’t seen each other.
I never got the chance to do anything sexual with her, it would have taken her family’s blessing and a very serious commitment in order for that to happen. I would have loved to have been more intimate with her. To this day, she’s someone that I still fantasise about.