L.A. Affairs: We lived apart but traveled the world together. Could we make it in L.A.?

We met online. Not Match or Bumble or Hinge. It was via Home Exchange. Julie and George were guests in my home, visiting their son in my college town near Sacramento. Over a key handoff, we enjoyed a patio dinner, and I made two new friends.

Weeks later, Julie asked me if I was single and wanted to meet her Angeleno friend Jeanne. Sure, I said, not expecting much.

Jeanne’s home was Julie and George’s favorite Airbnb in L.A., and I was their favorite stay in Davis. Surely Jeanne and I would get along famously! I was in the midst of winding down my full-time career and looking forward to seeing the world, and Jeanne was at a similar place of wanting to explore. We could be travel buddies.

Our first meeting was inauspicious. Jeanne was traveling to Sacramento, and we agreed to meet for lunch. She arrived at the appointed hour. I received a WhatsApp message from her: “Hi, I’m at Magpie. It’s closed today 🙁 We can go next door?” I quickly called her, but I was an hour away and had a full afternoon ahead of me. I goofed. I had written the lunch meeting on my calendar a full month out.

From this sputtering start, we struck up a conversation via text messages that graduated to video calls. From there, I planned to visit her in L.A. a month after our failed start.

The trip to Los Angeles sealed it for me. Not only was Jeanne outstandingly good company and a kindred spirit, but there was Los Angeles too!

I had lived in L.A. nearly 40 years prior for an eventful five months, taking advantage of seemingly every cultural offering the city provided, all while living in a charming Los Feliz home dedicated to principles of ecological living (that’s a separate L.A. story). But my work then led me to the East Coast, then to the Bay Area and finally to Sacramento and my wonderful college town.

I wasn’t Los Angeles-averse, I just never reconnected with the city in all those years.

Now I had the prospect of both a budding romance with a woman who had the spirit of adventure and the chance to experience an L.A. life I might only have dreamed of all those years ago. For me, it would be an adult’s L.A., with all the wonderful cultural offerings but also a comfortable home in a livable neighborhood just 10 minutes from downtown L.A. I loved walking residential streets and hearing owls and coyotes at night and crowing roosters at dawn. (I’m a country boy at heart.)

Things progressed in our relationship. I fell hard for Jeanne as we spent time together in those initial months all over the state — Los Angeles, the High Sierra, the Mendocino coast. Our fourth date was a monthlong trip to walk the Camino Portuguese and travel through northern Spain. I invited myself along to Mexico for her extended family gathering over Christmas and New Year‘s Day.

Her son made her promise that she wouldn’t get married anytime soon. Jeanne joked that she would give our relationship an initial three months and might renew a lease after that time.

Apparently she meant that one. During the trip to Mexico, something changed. In the lead-up to the new year, a serious family matter coincided with a conversation about a dream I had relayed to her, touching on a part of my past that was troubling to her.

Talking extensively and openly over a meal at an outdoor Ixtapa restaurant, I was proud of how I explained this closed chapter in my past, sharing at a level that had been a great challenge for me in past relationships. I also believed I had conveyed to her my strong intentions to continue building and deepening our relationship. I thought Jeanne and I had worked through an impasse. We hadn’t.

I last saw Jeanne on a rainy New Year’s night in Phoenix, changing planes after a flight together from Zihautanejo. She was boarding a flight to Burbank, and I was off to Sacramento. I knew the family matter was weighing on her but thought we were OK with our relationship. As we prepared to depart for the airport, I wrote her a heartfelt note that I slipped into her purse, telling her what I appreciated about her. We embraced with great tenderness in Phoenix, me not knowing it was for the last time.

The note went unremarked. Give it time, I thought. After several more weeks, she told me that I had trespassed on her boundaries. In another week, we had a cordial conversation that concluded with her telling me that she was breaking it off.

She later wrote, “I know we both had the best of intentions and that we care for each other. Sometimes it is just not the right fit.” It sure had felt like the right fit to me.

I am heartbroken about the end of a promising relationship, a hurt that took me back to my first breakup. But there was something else at play: the possibility of rekindling my relationship with Los Angeles. I don’t truly know what either meant, because the 400 miles that separated our homes was a challenge that we hadn’t fully grappled with. I did believe, and was pleased by the thought, that I would be in L.A. more — perhaps a lot more.

Now I mourn the promise of what could have been, both with Jeanne and this burgeoning relationship with Los Angeles. L.A.’s a big place, surely large enough to provide space to navigate and avoid painful memories — memories that will certainly fade over time.

So if you’re an Angeleno with a home in a quiet, residential, near-to-the-action neighborhood and are looking for a cozy two-bedroom home in quiet, residential North Davis (near a greenbelt), hit me up.

The author is a Davis-based writer looking to explore the world and perhaps stay in your home. His home is on Home Exchange, and he’s on Instagram: @eav1964

L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $300 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.