According to the Urban Dictionary, the one that got away is the person we were supposed to end up with "but due to a cause of fate" the two people go their separate ways and are left wondering how things would have been different if life would have allowed them to stay together.

Various definitions all read a similar way: someone who is your soulmate but not your endgame. By this, it means that they were all you wanted and you saw a future with them but in the end, life decided it wasn't meant to be.

Not everyone has that person in their life. My mother was very young when she met my father and stayed with him since.

I, on the other hand, have that one person I always think about in the back of my mind when the phrase appears.

We talked about everything and anything. An open and honest relationship. The future was planned, even the tough parts we knew would follow. Still, we broke up and now only talk to each other now and then like nothing happen. Like the relationship was just a high school memory.

I kept telling myself that next year we'll start up where we left off but it never happened and we both moved on to new people.

I understand that he will always be someone I care about but to give him a title that means a soulmate I didn't end up with feels like a disrespect towards my future partner.

It means I might always compare the two and never fully be satisfied. That "what if" question that will never be answered.

The one that got away is a term, in my view, that is used by those unhappy in current relationships or those like me who at times reminisces about a past that will always stay as a bittersweet memory. Having this realization I strip the term from any real meaning and hope one day it will leave people's vocabulary.