Danger of Rekindling Old Relationships

- INTERNET MAKES BEING NAUGHTY SO......
January 22, 2006

> No one is even estimating how many marriages have ended due to online
> nostalgia, just as there are no figures on how chat-room dalliances
> affect marriages.

SAN FRANCISCO: The Internet turns match-fixer with long lost lovers hooking up, once again.

Last spring, when 43-year-old Karen C was cheesed off with the daily grind of raising two kids, caring for her husband and placating her boss at her advertising office, she decided to take herself back to more carefree days and try to track down some long-lost friends from college.

Using the website classmates.com, she soon found dozens of old buddies - including her ex-boyfriend Mark, now a successful lawyer in New York.

She shot him a polite e-mail and he replied instantly. The next week they talked and the memories and feelings came flooding back.

"Just hearing his voice made my hair stand on end," recalls Karen, who asked that her last name be withheld. "It was like falling in love all over again."

The only problem was that both Karen and Mark were married. Despite, or more accurately, because of their strong feelings for each other, Karen decided to sever contact.

..."It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I couldn't stop thinking about him, but I knew that if we met it would destroy our lives and our families,"
she said.

Not everyone takes such responsible decisions, says Nancy Kalish, a psychology professor at California State University who studies the phenomenon known as "rekindling" and wrote the book Lost and Found Lovers:
Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances .

She has studied thousands of couples who get together after decades of separation. And though many enjoy long-lasting and satisfying relationships, these often come with a heavy price attached.

Kalish estimates about eight in 10 people who contact a former lover are married.

Few of these people actually intend to cheat. It's just that the Internet has made being naughty so easy, Kalish explains.

"People are just surfing the Internet on a whim. They may see some lost love and they say, 'What the heck' and send an e-mail," Kalish says.

..."They have no idea what they are getting into. It starts with e-mails, it goes to IMs (instant messages), and the hotel room follows pretty soon afterward."

The most popular sites for hooking up with old friends are classmates.com and reunion.com, which boast registers of 60 million and 34 million people respectively.

Kalish and other academics who have studied rekindled relationships believe that the strength of the renewed bonds may be caused by the brain "hard-wiring" the emotions associated with the first youthful bloom of love.

But the attraction of hooking up with old flames also has more prosaic causes.

"Major life events all can play a role in this kind of longing," says psychologist Kate Wachs. "Divorce, death of a spouse, and, perhaps most of all, children leaving home - all these things can make you feel like you need to get pieces of your past back."

Another factor driving the trend is the feeling of instant trust, especially if one partner is divorced, or in an unhappy marriage.

..."People want new partners, but would rather take up with someone they know than a stranger," says Andrea Baker, associate professor of sociology at Ohio University. The need to reconnect can hit the famous as well as the anonymous.

Donna Hanover, 54, the ex-wife of former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, is now happily married to her high-school sweetheart and has written a book chronicling the joys of second-chance love.

Others for whom old flames never die include Prince Charles and Camilla and rapper Eminem, about remarry Kim Mathers, the childhood sweetheart he divorced in 2001.

No one is even estimating how many marriages have ended due to online nostalgia, just as there are no figures on how chat-room dalliances affect marriages.

But Kalish, whose website Lostlovers.com collects stories and offers advice about "lost and found love", has no doubt. "Now it's too easy," she says of the online sites. "They are breaking up marriages right and left."

Psychologist David Greenfield warns that there is often no reward at the end of all the turmoil. When the flush of the rekindled love is over, the parties usually rediscover why they split, he says.

"Most of the time, if we were meant to be in each other's lives, we would be," he points out. "In most cases, these relationships are over for a good."

A good question is why resurrect what wasnt supposed to be? Leave it alone.

(Taken from Smart Marriages.com).