Talking to Tenth Grade Crush Ten-Years Later

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I was recently in Barnes and Noble and saw this woman who reminded me of someone I knew from high school, a person I haven’t thought of in several years. In early 2006 I was in 10th grade and she was in 12th. I was 16 and she was 18 and 19. We had a couple of classes together and some days we would sit next to each other and talk. She was always very nice and sweet to me and would sometimes try to make me laugh, but we were both really shy so our short conversations never really went anywhere beyond that. I remember one day the teacher showed an old black and white movie, and it was just fun laughing and discussing it together. This girl has average looks and works a minimum wage job, so even though I have Aspergers I don’t think she’s too far out of my league. I tried sending her a friends request on Facebook and a brief message, which read “Hi, how are you doing? I remember you from class in high school. Would you like to be friends on Facebook” But according to Facebook, she ignored the friends request. She didn’t delete it, it’s still active a week later, she just didn’t accept it, and she never read the message. Either because she didn’t get it, I know when some people have sent me messages who weren’t on my friends list I never received them because they don’t go into my main messages folder or she did get the message and just didn’t want to read it to make me think she never got it?


I realize it’s been 10-years since we’ve spoken, so she may have forgotten me, even though I still remember almost everybody and I’m still friends with many people on facebook who I haven’t seen or talked to since high school. My friend says she may have saw my posts about my Aspergers and special interests (history and politics) and ignored me because of that or thought I was trying to come onto her and date her out of the blue, but there was nothing romantic about the message I sent her. I realize that some people don’t know what Aspergers is so they automatically group you into a negative judgemental box. I’ll never know the real reason she ignored me because several years ago she moved about an hour away, so I’ll never see her again. I kind of wish I would have just left old memories alone, but this story is a lesson for us all, you can’t live off the past, nor can you go back in time and change how life turned out. If someone is no longer in your life, it just wasn’t meant to be. You have to live your life for the future, but at least now I don’t have to ask myself what if? I know that people change and move-on. I’m not anywhere near the same person I was back then, so just because a friendship worked when you were teenagers doesn’t mean it will at 26 and 29. If you ever like someone you should ask them out at the time, if not, it’s too late.

Sad but true.

Ah man. OP is right.

Your age difference is not significant now.

Why don't you pursue this person?

You could actually look her up in the phonebook or something, or perhaps you know where she works from her fb profile and you can run into her there. As-in, you can go there on purpose and be friendly and whatnot, try to get her into being friends IRL instead of just online.

Since you -know- that she might just not check that part of facebook I see this as no reason to believe that she does not want you in her life.

Chances are she hasn't used Facebook in a while. Sometimes I go for weeks without touching it.

I too let friend requests just sit there. I have some that are like 8 years old still sitting there.

Thanks for the advice, but if she doesn't want to be Facebook friends she obviously doesn't want to talk on the phone or in real-life either. Most likely for one or more of the reasons mentioned at the beginning of the second paragraph in my original post. There's at least a small chance she doesn't know about the message since Facebook still has it marked as being unread, but I know for sure that she saw the friends request since she accepted someone else right around the same time and has made several public posts afterwards, so I know she's been on there. It would be different if we still lived in the same town and I already shopped there and just happened to talk to her occasionally while seeing her at the store, but it would just be really weird and awkward to go over an hour out of my way to the same retail chain-store that we have a branch of here just to say hello to someone who may no longer remember me. After all, a decade is a really long time. I realize that being casual friends and classmates for half a year isn't very significant in the grand scheme of anyone's life. We went to the same school together for a couple of years, but I didn't really know her before the last six-months.

I'm the type of person who only messages a woman once. I never want to become a nuisance to anyone. I find it creepy when someone continues to message another person several more times after being ignored for whatever reason the first time. I realize that ignoring men is just some women's attempt at trying to be nice and polite. They perceive that you may be about to ask them out, so they ignore you rather than potentially having to turn you down, which may hurt your feelings. That also could be why she merely ignored my friends request rather than flat-out deleting it. I'm not saying these are her reasons for ignoring me, but it's certainly a possibility. It also could be that when People who don't know any better come across the word "Aspergers" they no longer want to get to know you any better because they don't want to deal with any perceived extra baggage that you may have in comparison to the average neurotypical. They're unwilling to learn and understand about your condition. Also, my views and opinions on the world have changed so drastically since I evolved into adulthood, so this too makes it extra difficult to try and resume old friendships since we no longer agree on anywhere near as many subjects. Usually when you stop staying in contact with a person after only knowing them for a short while, it means that the ship has sailed on any sort of potential long-term friendship you may could have had if you would have chosen to keep in touch.

I agree with your assessment of those suggestions. As I stated, I would find such behavior to be really weird and awkward. It's downright creepy really. I wouldn't want someone from the past looking up my phone number and suddenly calling me out of nowhere or going out of their way to see me some place I wasn't expecting. Facebook is more the accepted place for contacting and keeping up with old friends. It would be different if you already regularly visited a person's place of employment and was used to having friendly conversations with them during your shopping trip, but not to go out of your way just to hope to meet up with them randomly while they're busy trying to do their job.