I only intentionally looked up two old buddies from HS. One turned out to be an odd duck, and after a few lunches we went our separate ways. The other owns a winery in Walla Walla, and he’s pretty much like the guy I remember. I’ve visited a few times, but he’s very busy with the place and I get the impression he’s not looking for any renewal of old friendships. I’m not surprised: life changes you dramatically after 40-50 years. An old girlfriend from 1968 managed to find me and sent an email a few years back. She was a lunatic back then and is most likely still a lunatic. I didn’t respond.
Ouch. That is rough. I’m sorry to hear what happened to her. That is just so not right.
My ex-wife contacted me after thirty years. We corresponded by email, but didn’t get together. However, it did help me deal with some unresolved issues about my breakup and understand her behavior at the time.
A few years ago one of my friends from high school reached out to me over Facebook, and on my latest trip to Austin we had dinner. It was really weird and wonderful- even though we’d both really changed over the last 30 years, we immediately reconnected. It honestly felt like the intervening years hadn’t happened at all.
I went to my high school reunion, though, and it was actually fairly depressing how many of my other classmates had turned out. Most of them still lived in the town we grew up in, and quite a few of them still lived in the same house. And most are now rabidly anti-liberal, so I’ve had to defriend many of them on Facebook.
Well then, what a bummer.
That sounds almost exactly like my story! My high school girlfriend was quite a beautiful girl. Unfortunately, over time, I noticed increasingly odd behavior, so I broke up with her. Thereafter, she became a crazy-eyed stalker for months until I move out of town.
30 years later, she finds me on Facebook and after a few perfectly sane email exchanges, she makes contact by phone.
The conversation went surprisingly well with no hint of her previous oddness. So, I think to myself, what the heck, maybe her adolescent odd behavior was due to some girlish hormonal something-or-other…maybe, after all these years she’s a changed girl. So, we made plans to meet…and lo and behold, she was indeed a changed girl! She changed into a very ugly woman. Turns out the crazy-eyed stalker part didn’t change, however. Lucky me. Lucky I have a strong dead bolt lock on my door. Sometimes you can relive the past. Yay.
Had this happen with no ill consequences except we’ve cut off communication again. We’d been very close friends for about ten years, then she married and I married. And ten years went by with no communication. Then she got in touch via Facebook and the friendship was renewed. We both had families and we did some family get togethers, play dates with the kids, etc. It was quite nice for a few years, but there were some fundamental incompatibilities that showed up more clearly after all those years. After a couple of heated disagreements, she stopped talking to me. And that was more than a year ago.
But the rekindled friendship was pretty good while it lasted and it did not threaten either of our marriages. Our families got along well and there were no major issues.