Rekindling old flames: can you go back?
Rekindling old flames: can you go back?
IT has happened to you. It has happened to me--that chance meeting, that sometimes eerie encounter with a former love. It happened to a friend recently and it left her breathless.
"You can't imagine who I just ran into!" Leala screeched, obviously excited. Before I could imagine anything, she said: "It was Hank! You know, the man I almost married back in college."
She went on to tell me how she had run into Hank at a technology conference in Cleveland; he is now a successful businessman and recently divorced the woman for whom he dumped Leala 15 years ago. Still Leala was trying to fall in love again. I was speechless.
I've read stories about high school and college sweethearts who marry other people and then reconnect 20 or 30 years later; sometimes they marry and live happily ever after. I hope that's what will happen with Leala and Hank. She doesn't deserve to get jilted by the same man twice. Seems that she has forgotten how much drama and trauma Hank put her through. I will try to mind my own business and only remind her if she brings it up.
Her giddiness at this reunion reminded me of how I once ran into an old flame. He was happy to make me aware that he is now single and available; I gladly made him aware that I am still committed and unavailable. But I did think about him a lot over the succeeding days and wondered what my life would be like with him. I decided it wasn't worth the potential trouble.
Many couples have broken up only to get back together again. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of couples who divorced, then years later remarried each other. I've even met and written stories about couples who married each other for the third or fourth time. Miracles do happen. So do repeated mistakes.
This matter of rekindling old flames so intrigued me that I wanted to get a common-sense, professional opinion. "The writer Thomas Wolfe said you can't go home again. That applies to relationships as well," says clinical psychologist Joyce Hamilton Berry, Ph.D., who has counseled thousands of men and women in the Washington, D.C., area. "Once you've been through it and you have had the bad times and the good times, going back is not likely to work. But there are exceptions."
Maybe Leala will be one.
There are women who seem to spend their entire lives being yoyo-ed around by their "one true love." It didn't work out the first time; they go their separate ways, but get back together again and again--between (and sometimes during) other marriages and other relationships.
Is such behavior spurred by true love or by foolish minds and hearts that can't accept the truth? You didn't get along or he didn't treat you well the first time, and it is unlikely that things will be better the second or third time.
Another woman I know used to lament that her father didn't let her marry her high school sweetheart. She felt that she would have been happier and her life so much better if she had been allowed to fulfill that dream. I just shook my head and told her to get a grip and move on. Instead, she reunited with the loser at a class reunion and started dating him again. The new relationship was short lived.
Some people actually can move forward by reaching back and reuniting with past loves. Some actually live happily ever after. But others are just fooling themselves and depriving themselves of true happiness because they can't let go of failed past relationships.
I'm not a cynic when it comes to love. In fact, I am a romantic optimist who is forever hopeful. But I'll take my chances moving forward. In my heart of hearts, I just feel that some old flames should just be doused with cold water.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group
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