My parents divorced for 10 years due to him having an affair with his secretary. He married the secretary, she almost married someone else, he divorced the secretary, they started seeing each other on the sly for some bizarre reason, and then remarried. The second time around has been going on for over 20 years now and appears to be working well, but since I never see them it may all be an illusion! 
These friends of mine got together when we were 13. The first summer after that was hellish because of all the petty people trying to get them to have a fight: “I saw Johnny with another girl!”
Next summer, when those people came by, the response would be “so?”
“SO? What do you mean, so? He was with another girl?”
“OK, and?”
“He’s your bf!”
“No, he’s not, we broke up.” go back to doing what she was doing with a guy most definitely not-Johnny
“…”
Come September, they got back together; eventually, they got married. As he once put it, “I like knowing that she’s with me because she wants me specifically and not because it’s what other people expect.”
Other people in the area started doing the same. I have heard it’s common in other places, break up amicably over the summer so you can check out whether other grass is really greener or not; if it wasn’t, get back together.
I also know several cases of amicable separations where they eventually moved in together again (the two I’m thinking of right now, once the kids had moved out… Daddy moved back in, and when the kids are in town they stay at what used to be Dad’s digs).
For each couple succeeding on their first chance, there are tens or dozens or scores of others that fail. By your logic, no relationship is worth trying.
Do you want to risk missing out on a lifetime of marital happiness because of an accident of employment? A really good match is rare. If you find one, I think it’s worth risking something to see where it goes.
I’d agree that forming more casual relationships is probably a bad idea. And it’s best not to be a psycho drama type, nor get involved with one. But for boring stable people who are looking for form boring stable relationships, culling most of the people you know from the list of “potentials” seems silly.
As Dan Savage likes to say, every relationship will fail - until one doesn’t.
Put one more hash mark on the ‘yes, it works’ side of the line.
My wife and I dated intensely, broke up, then she married someone else, and after a few years divorced. We’d never gotten over each other and have now been married 14 years.
It takes major problems for me to consider a break up in the first place, so I can’t even imagine trying to be with that person again. Then again, I’ve only seriously dated 3 people in my life. One for a year, one for 4 years and currently for a bit over 10 years.
She: Hi.
**
He:** Hi.
**
She:** So…
He: Oh for Christ’s sake, do you have to bring that up EVERY FUCKING TIME?
She: <begins weeping>
CURTAIN FALLS.
My neighbors have been married for over 20 years, though she still speaks rather bitterly about the time he broke up with her and he dated other women.
It’s worked out well for her; not so sure it’s worked out well for him. He seems discontented lately.
well, here’s your test case, fellow dopers. after several years apart, the divemaster and i are starting to see one another again.
i’ll keep you posted. this will be interesting, to say the least.
Well, you two do have your little love child Widget to take care of…
Short answer: No.
(you can stop reading now if you don’t need the drama)
We lived in different time zones and she says we met in 9th grade, where she developed a hugh crush on me. I don’t remember it at all. We didn’t see each other again until six years later when her cousin got married. We had a whirlwind romance for the entire long weekend. Then we started the long distance thing and it was okay. The next year, I took a bus cross country during Xmas break to spend it with her. Oh, that was a fun month. The next year, I was stationed TDY near her and we spent 2 months together. She was totally into me. She decided to move cross country to live with her cousin while I was in college in the same city as her cousin. She ended up moving into my dorm room. That’s when we started having problems. It was just a matter of proximity, I guess. I had all the stress with school, military obligations and family. She became a part-time cashier at a plant nursery and didn’t like her cousin’s wife (although nobody did). She spent a lot of time in my room.
I had motivation and her best interest in mind, but nobody believed me then and I’m sure nobody will believe me now. I had to be a real jerk to convince her that she needed to leave me and move back home with her family. Years later once I got back and moved to her side of the country, I gave her a call. My intent was to find out whether or not she wanted to say “hey glad to hear from you” or “F**k off and die”. Unfortunately, it was a very long version of the latter. I wished her well and decided she didn’t want me in her life. I went on with my life knowing that even though we succeeded being happy while 2000 miles apart, we couldn’t do anything being just 30 miles away. It was tough for me. But I didn’t bug her. This rift also caused her 2 cousins (my best friends during high school) to drop contact with me. So that managed to sever all ties from back home.
Fast forward five years and out of the blue she sends me an email (I never gave it to her, but I don’t know how she found me). She wanted to see if I was interested in getting back together. After three or four emails later, we agreed that it wasn’t in her best interest, based upon where I was at that point in my life. So once again, we parted ways.
I heard through the grapevine that she got married about 6 years later and is now happy.
I haven’t had a successful relationship ever since. (I had several relationships after that, but none of them worked out.)
Star crossed lovers, indeed.
I wish her all the best. Even though she’s still close in distance, I know I will never see her again.
So, to answer the OP, there were 2 attempts (albeit brief ones) at making a second try. One from each of us. It didn’t work.
Thanks for listening to my rant. I’ll go back to the lighthearted threads now.
Depends how you define ‘works’. Seems to me that people often end up together after spending significant time apart.