First Love: Ever wonder what happened to the love you left behind?

First Love: Ever wonder what happened to the love you left behind? - You never forget your first love, they say. And for some people, that may actually be true.

Psychologist Dr. Nancy Kalish stumbled on an interesting phenomenon when she embarked on her research on ``rekindlers'' in 1993.

Kalish's specialty was developmental psychology. Then a psychology professor at the University of California, she was casting about for a subject for a sabbatical project, and decided to find reunited couples and ask them about their experiences.

Two-thirds reunited with lost loves from when they were 17 or younger. Of these, 78 per cent had a successful reunion.

She did interviews with newspapers, radio and television stations, trying to find 65 reunited lovers. When word got out, she eventually attracted information from 1,001 rekindled couples from all over the world. She published a book, Lost & Found Lovers, in 1997.

``Readers said: `Thank you. We thought we were crazy,''' says Kalish, who still maintains a website for lost and found lovers. ``I was the happy topic of the day on Valentine's Day.''

The conclusions she drew from her research would make Cupid smile. In some cases, the ``lost love'' happened even before puberty, a couple who remembered playing happily on a beach as children, for example. In other cases, the rekindled loves were friends during adolescence, not sweethearts.

``That is not raging teenage hormones. That's comfort,'' says Kalish.

Most often, the young lovers were separated because of distance, or because their parents disapproved. Even though some of the rekindlers had been apart for decades, they were thrilled with their reunions.

Two-thirds reunited with lost loves from when they were 17 or younger. Of these, 78 per cent had a successful reunion. Overall, the success rate of reunions was 72 per cent. Of those who broke up, only a handful split over the same issues that caused the original rift.

What Kalish found next was not so happy. She embarked on a second study of reunited lovers in 2005 to 2006, eventually surveying 1,600 reunited couples.

These reunions were often disastrous. Many of these rekindlers were married and still plagued by memories of what might have been. ``There are loose ends, what psychologists call `ambiguous loss,''' she says.

``People who are married agonize over whether to leave their happy marriage to return to the lost love. They just can't let go of this lost love again.''

The infidelities, both emotional and physical, were devastating to spouses and families, says Kalish.

It wasn't any better for the rekindlers themselves. Only five per cent of the second group of rekindlers married. About half the people who had affairs said they had happy marriages before their reunions with lost loves. One was a clergyman who gave up his family and his calling for the lost love.

What was the difference between the two sets of rekindlers? When Kalish first started her work in the early 1990s, it sometimes took considerable effort for rekindlers to find each other. Often, those who were hunting for a first love had to go through a ``gatekeeper,'' such as a parent, before they could get contact information. It meant that few of those seeking a reunion were susceptible to having an affair. They were single, divorced or widowed, and free to reunite.

``If you're going to her elder dad for her phone number, you had better be single. He was the gatekeeper,'' says Kalish.

It's different now, with the Internet and Facebook. Even married people can search out photos and information in private. Newspaper articles, Facebook pages, blogs, they're all online and can be accessed secretly. Many saw no harm in succumbing to the temptation of reconnecting with the old flame.

But that is playing with fire, says Kalish. The lure of a lost love is a very powerful thing.

``If you are happy in your marriage, and don't want to lose it, don't even try,'' she warns. ``You get torn by two people.''

Neither does it offer closure to see that the lost lover has become fat, bald and boring. ``They fall in love all over again. They see the person they were. The 80-year-old man sees his 16-year-old girlfriend when he looks at his lost love.''

Rekindlers who make contact with an old flame sometimes buy cellphones for the sole purpose of connecting with loves, and discard them if things fizzle or they get close to being discovered.

They even have their own lingo. NC, for example, stands for ``no contact.'' It's a promise between the two former loves that they won't seek to contact each other for a cooling-off period. And it's a bad idea, warns Kalish, because it just keeps the flame of obsession burning.

Her advice? For married people who think often about a lost love, the healing has to come from within, and not from meeting the lost love. It might even require consulting a psychologist.

Betrayed spouses need to know that it's also not their fault, says Kalish. The betrayed often believe that the person having the affair will come to his senses. Most often, the men having an affair with their lost loves will remain with their wives. As a psychologist, Kalish says it's because men have different brains, and are able to compartmentalize their emotions. ``When push comes to shove, they tend to stay in their marriages.''

Kalish doesn't blame Facebook. ``Facebook doesn't book hotel rooms,'' she says.

As for single, married or divorced people searching for their lost loves, as long as both are free, why not?

``It's a wonderful thing if you're available. If you're not, it's a disaster, '' says Kalish.

She believes there is such a thing as true love.

``Of course, there is true love,'' says Kalish, who is divorced, ``because I saw it in my own family.''

Her own parents were married at 19 and 21. Her father, who had heart problems, was not supposed to live past 45. But he outlived three cardiologists, survived two heart attacks, a stroke and a kidney transplant and died at 85.

``He didn't want to leave my mother,'' says Kalish. ( Ottawa Citizen )