I met this guy a couple of years ago. Great guy. Sweet, intelligent, funny. Everything a woman wants in a man.

First thing, he asked me if I wanted to run away with him to Key West, and I knew, right then, that he was the one.

It's crazy how you just know something's right.

On some level, he felt the same way, and said so.

Therein lay the problem. At the time, I didn't understand it as such, a mutual connection shared with someone who admitted to feeling it, too.

To be honest, he said and did a lot of things that I didn't understand, not because he indulged in a ton of hyperbole or flattery or lies, but because he was so low key about everything. I learned a long time ago to judge people more by their actions than their words. People talk a good game, but what they say and what they do are often at odds.

And, from my perspective, he was no different.

In the end, I had to go with the maxim, "Actions speak louder than words." He couldn't make room for me in his life, though he said he wanted me there.

He said he wanted a lot of things, but what he said and what he did? Two different things, from my perspective.

And that frustrated me to the point that the relationship fizzled out without ever truly taking off. He closed himself off. I did not react well, and I accept the responsibility for my own part in how things ended.

Hindsight being what it is, I often wonder how much of that responsibility each of us shared. Even when I was so angry at him for retreating, for burying himself in work for days on end, for not working as hard at maintaining the relationship as he, in all honesty, should have, I have to wonder if I should've assigned so much weight to his actions.

Here's a guy who, when I emailed him at work to remind him to check his messages so that we could coordinate plans, immediately picked up the phone and called to check on me. While he was at work, at a job to which he often devotes eighty plus hours a week.

And that's why I kept trying. Maybe I should've listened more instead of stepping back and watching what he did, how much room he made for me in his life, what was important to him.

Maybe I should've listened more. Maybe then I would've understood that he did want me in his life, even when he got busy and forgot to text, which I always took as a sign of disinterest. And I let it hurt me, when I should've just let it go.

I should've done a lot of things. Trying to understand him? Yeah, I did that a lot.

Actually communicating with him? Not so much. We were ever at odds, trying to understand each other, and though I know that men express themselves and their affection differently from women, I still couldn't reconcile his words and his actions.

On the one hand, he demonstrated beyond a doubt that I was important enough for him to drop everything, but it's such a subtle thing, such a small act when compared to the whole.

I'd like to end this on a humorous note, perhaps with a play on the whole Men Are from Mars thing. Can't quite bring myself to do it. He and I haven't spoken in a couple of months, and honestly, I don't expect to hear from him ever again.

And that's a shame. I miss him dearly and still talk to him in my mind every morning when I wake up, telling him about all the things going on in my life, asking him about the things going on in his.

How's work, my darlin'? How have you been?

A poor substitute for the conversations we used to have, I know, but the habit's there and it's hard to break.

I still look up when I hear the roar of an airplane crossing the sky, and I still worry if he's eaten, or if he pushed himself through sixteen hours of work with his lunch sitting in a styrofoam box on the edge of his desk.

The life we could've had lingers as a dream in my sleep, haunting me more surely than any ghost ever could. I wake feeling as if I've left something undone, as if something beautiful and wondrous and good had slowly drifted beyond my reach while I watched helplessly, unable to stop it from slipping away.

He's still in my heart. I wonder if I was ever in his.