Thank you for this.
After I plucked up the courage to google him, most of my anxiety disappeared. I do care about him, but you are right. Generally if guys are interested in someone, they will contact them or approach them.
I have made a life changing decision today to not contact him. If he contacts me in the future, that will be great, but I'm going to say if we are meant to be together then it will happen naturally. If we are not, then hopefully I will find someone who will remove my feelings for him sooner rather than later.
I'm hurt and miss him terribly, but you can't force someone to love you. I'm just glad he is happy and healthy and doing what he loves which is working very hard at his career. I don't know if he is single although he doesn't appear married, but he may also be very private.
If we do cross paths, I won't stare at him or look sad or angry. This is a life changing moment as I have been coming to this forum since 2011 and asking horary questions about him.
He didn't do anything wrong and is a very nice person. He did email me 10 years ago and said when you're back in London, lets have drinks, although that was before I sent him 3 emails in one year to tell him I have feelings for him. Gosh I wish I had a time machine to stop myself from doing that. I feel like such an idiot and I don't like myself for it. So basically, I ruined any chance to contact him.
We've had 3 encounters in 10 years and each time we glare at each other in shock of seeing one another, but because of those emails, he appears scared. He was very shy at the time in our teens when he confessed to having feelings for me. I scared him away and ruined our friendship.
I give up and hope that these feelings will disappear otherwise I may just end up an old maid thinking about him for the rest of my life. I don't want that.