“I used to love that girl in primary school. We fell in love so naturally and by accident. At first, she was so mean to me, but later on she decided to chat with me a couple times. Most of the time I ignored her because I was too shy and not confident. Now we’ve grown up so much, but I still feel like she’s loving me, and I always loved her too. After many years I followed her on social media. I feel like I should meet her in real life. My main question now is what should I do?” John
Thank you for your question John. There has been research by Dr Nancy Kalish which has examined rekindling romance with lost lovers. For a more comprehensive overview of this research I recommend you read her book Lost and Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances.
Dr Kalish’s first research was completed in 1996 and looked at 1001 people aged between 18 and 89 years who had rekindled a romance with a lost love. This research found a positive experience generally from people who had rekindled a previous romance. In this study she found that 78% of people stayed together after they reunited and that reunions between lost lovers were actually common.
Dr Kalish’s second phase of research was completed in 2005 to 2006 after the creation of the World Wide Web and was based on participants who found each other again online. In this sample she found that the majority of the participants were in fact already married and they were participating in extramarital affairs with their old flames. These types of reunions she found were not successful with only 5% of these rekindled couples marrying each other and many ended the affair after a couple of years. After this research Dr Kalish discouraged people from having contact with their lost loves at all. It may be useful to read this research before you make a decision as to whether to contact your childhood love. We will write a more detailed blog post about this research as it is an important and interesting dilemma that affects many people.
