Well, the Orlando shootings had just happened the night before and I was getting on a plane to Florida. And I may have been observed checking my phone, reading a text, and bursting into tears. But I take your point. :o
My experience is with yours. I’ve sobbed my way through an airport without attracting anyone’s attention.
In my case it was because I hadn’t slept in forty hours and didn’t want to go to Russia by myself, but you know. As a stone-cold German-American of the dour Lutheran sort, I found it comforting that nobody intruded on the dignity of my misery.
So, the next time (if ever) I see someone sobbing in an airport, should I ask if they’re okay? Hmmm…
I could have used a hug right then myself, but from the wrong person or handled in the wrong way, that would have come off as super creepy.
I am rather surprised at all of these stories here (+ the ones linked as well) where the two principals just pick things up right where they left it off, decades ago.
[Caveat: I am well aware of something akin to the File Drawer effect here, where the stories are self-selected and we may not hear much from those whose attempts utterly failed…]
When you consider all of the intervening events, all of the changes that both must have gone through, to come back again after such a long time and have all of those feelings instantly return like nothing at all had happened in the interim…in the end it’s rather astonishing that they can reconnect at all (and I’m not just saying that because my own attempt went completely tits-up). You would basically have to posit that some portion of each of their brains would have to have remained hermetically sealed against the intervening forces of chaos and change, and when the moment comes, back out all of that comes, effortlessly, completely unchanged.
Such a reconnection should thus be the very rare exception. That it can happen with the relative regularity that this thread would seem to indicate is pretty amazing.
I don’t think it’s all that amazing. I think the core essence of a person does not change. Your personality is pretty much what it’s always going to be by the time you’re about three years old. What can and does change (usually) are things that don’t necessarily make up who you are: Your needs, tastes, preferences, habits, interests – all those things can change. I submit that, in the cases where there was no reconnection, it may have been because the relationship was based on those changeable things. My needs at 19 are wildly different from my needs at 47. Many of my preferences and habits are very very different. Dudes I dated or didn’t date in my 20s, I would view completely differently now. But who I am at the core of me has been immutable. I think the cases where there was a reconnection is because people fell in love with who the other person IS, not for things they liked to do or for whatever need was served by being with that person, or common interests.
When I was having that conversation with my Long Lost Love®, there were things he did and said that were the Essence of who he is. Things like a gesture or a way of saying something. And apparently, that is what I fell in love with. What he likes and dislikes and what he needs and what kind of person serves those needs may be very different now – which is why I suggested to him at the time and to you all in this thread that, just because we still love each other, that doesn’t mean we’d be right for each other today as partners.
And it’s one thing to reconnect, but it would be a whole other animal if we’d decided to blow up our lives and give it another shot. For me, that falls into the category of “you can’t go backward in life”. I don’t believe we get do-overs. And we would both have to blow up our lives and start over anew and that would feel really weird and would be problematic. That, to me, is where all the changes and chaos would strongly affect the relationship and either make or break it. To have one conversation, agree that there’s still love there, and go your separate ways does not require confronting all the changes that occurred in those intervening years. Blowing up your life to move in and start the relationship over again, I think most definitely would. How we resolve conflict and how we solve problems changes over the years, doesn’t it? And that is a huge component to successful relationships.
Another idea: As I was processing my grief and loss all over again (ugh), I googled “Long lost loves” and found some study – how scientific it was or the accuracy of the results I did not dig into much – that suggested the most interesting idea to me. This study said that people who had fallen in love in their late teens or early 20s tended to have an 80% success rate at getting back together and the researchers thought this might be because of hormones. You’re still at the tail end of puberty at that age range and the hormones are still wild at that point. They (the researchers) seemed to think that the oxytocin bond at that age is very similar to the parent-child bond, precisely because the hormonal cocktail is still so strong at that point in development. I’m not going to link to it because I think it might be bullshit; it was just something I needed to read to heal from having to let go of him all over again. Because I have several platonic friends whom I might not see for years and years and when we do finally manage to get together, same thing. We pick right up where we left off as if there hadn’t been years of separation. This is not a phenomenon that is exclusive to intimate relationships. I just think that sometimes, we connect with people at a visceral level and sometimes the connection is superficial and destructible.
Well, of all my thousands of relatives, we only know that it’s happened once! That makes it pretty rare. Among other things, I suspect a lot of my relatives’ more normal love stories began by not having idiot mothers.
And in the case of my great-grandparents, the part that didn’t change was their basic personalities. I’ve got another pair of relatives who would probably not have gotten married if they’d made any kind of attempt at a relationship when they first got introduced (and didn’t so much as have a conversation): at that point, she was still sort of fluttery and he was still too impatient; thirty years later when they actually got to talking, they did happen to find each other on the same page. How usual is that? Even less than my great-grandparents’ story, starting with both of the principals in this second one being unmarried in their mid-50s.
In my (unscientific, non-representative sample) IMHO, women were quicker to get over an ended relationship or move on from a crush, or not allow a crush to affect them too much, whereas men were likely to continue pining long after it was clear that no relationship was possible or dwell on “The one that got away/could have been”. A number of reasons were put forth by some people on the Internet; such as women having more of an emotional support network or that women have to be choosier than men due to a number of reasons.
But yes, YMMV.
It may be more beneficial to ask people why they did or didn’t stay in love after a long separation. There may be circumstances or personality traits that tend to favor one result or the other, and how closely your characters align with those may guide you to if they get back together or not.
I’ve never heard the stereotype that it was harder for men to move on, until this thread. I’m with the majority in this thread, believing that there’s no real difference between the sexes on this, but in my experience, the cliche is that women find it more difficult to let go and move on.
Not in the least. And don’t see why it would remind me of it.
Yeah. He should try writing stuff for a living or something! 
I don’t have anything to add here. No long lost loves in my family history, certainly not in my personal life.
I mean, in a sense, isn’t that what wartime couples were all expected to do? I can’t imagine how hard that must have been, but plenty of relationships endured years of separation during wartime.
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Well, there ya go. All evening I kept looking for all of those little things which years ago used to drive me crazy, and I looked in utter vain (such as her sense of humor). I have no idea whether that was because of the effects of her disability, or something else. I sincerely believe that we did indeed connect on a level beyond hormones, bringing something out of each other that no other person could (in that other song I mentioned above, she said that my smile chased away her sadness).
I then did some things in the midst of my Dark Times which may very well have turned her off, for good. I even tried to tell her that she already knows the new me, since she indeed brought him out years ago (like I said). But her latest memories were of the false me, so that may have been what informed her reaction to my reconnection attempt.
May very well be a simple case of my being able to deal with my demons in a proactive way (and consign them to oblivion), while she was unable to do so on her end. That email was as off as her mannerisms etc. were off that night, light years removed from the warm sentiments expressed in the song(s). What can you do…
I’m very sorry. That sounds painful for you. You have my sympathies.
I think it depends on too many factors…Things like did she have other suitors during that period of separation. Did she have to deal with too many other distractions like fighting for survival etc.
Don’t think one can just put a number on it. It will really depend on what set of events you are showcasing after they separate.