Posted on 12/30/2003 12:09:28 PM PST by carlo3b
New Years Resolution.. FIND TRUE LOVE, AGAIN!Was your First Love, your True Love? Can you go back?
Is your first love your lone love?
There must be something very special about our first love, as clumsy as they were, they have inspired enough love stories written about it, to fill libraries. Well, there must be something real about it, because there are growing numbers including scientist, that believe that your first blushing love, is your only true love, and everything that has followed are sadly, only weak and empty sequels."If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were."Can you get that old feeling BACK?
-Anon.
Maybe it isn't a new phenomenon, but it is finally getting some real highbrow attention, that many lovers are attempting to re-ignite that old flame. Recent findings from the "Lost Love Project", an on-going study at Cal State Univ., suggest that somewhere around 10 percent of the population fall in love again with someone from their past. If this is true, what is it that makes lost love so darn memorable? Why is it that some people are still carrying a torch that still has a flame after so many years?"All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love and feed His sacred flame."Noted Sociologist Dr. Constance Ahrons, author of “The Good Divorce”, firmly believes that people “continue to yearn for someone in the past when the relationship didn’t end the way they wanted it to.” That may be OK for the good doctor, but I believe that Love in youth is sometime discouraged by circumstances and pressures. Too often our youthful romances, as passionate as they were, were abandoned prematurely without an acceptable closure. Trying to return only reinforces our belief that we could have made it work. But can we?
-Samuel Taylor ColeridgeDr. Nancy Kalish, a psychologist and director of the Lost Love Project, agrees. “Lost love is a highly emotional and powerful thing,” she says. Long after a relationship ends, some people still grieve for what happened or what might have been. Some study participants actually describe “physically aching” to be with their lost lover again. Reconnecting with an old flame is a deliberate, assertive way of dealing with that grief and regret.
"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."“Few people reconnect at reunions or by chance,” says Dr. Kalish, who has become a recognized expert on rekindled loves. “These people call or write, - usually when they're feeling good about themselves.” While some lost lovers reconnect out of curiosity, others search to right old wrongs, or to make sense of a past relationship. Most people, however, search in hopes of re-igniting that true-love passion of that long ago romance.
-Comte DeBussy-RabutinYouthful Love, like everything in those highly emotional, hormone driven years, had a reckless abandon to it. We hadn't had years of accumulated suspicion, or learned defensiveness to cloud unabashed passions. We let it all hang out! But with all of that exuberance came risk, and with risk came proper parental caution. That careful balance between lead and learn, too often than balance tipped in both directions, with painful results. Those that ended romances, sometime left unfinished business, and open wounds with broken hearts. For many, we are now discovering, proving really what we have always believed, it was the right person, but sadly, at the wrong time.
"The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence."“Parents tend to dismiss young love, but they need to realize how important first loves can be. A teenage romance should never be belittled as just puppy love,” says Kalish. “Many of the rekindlers expressed anger at their parents for separating them from the young sweethearts they loved.”
-Albert EllisYoung love can be strong and enduring. Over 84 percent of the rekindled lovers were younger than 22 when they began their initial relationships. Of these, two-thirds said it was their very first romance.
"Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind."Not surprisingly, many rekindled romances that bring those lovers back together, have extremely high success rates. The Lost Love Project (LLP) studied over 1000 couples who had reunited after more than five years apart, and found that 72 percent turned into long-term relationships. Two-thirds resulted in marriage or engagement.
-T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"“Returning to a past love is like returning to a former part of ourselves,” says Kalish, who has recorded the project findings in her book “Lost and Found Lovers”. “Often people who share a lost love share a common history, and this gives them a strong foundation together.”
Think about it, our First Love after all, is usually with someone close, a playmate, neighbor, classmate, or sibling of a friend. These relationships create Lovers that share customs, traditions, and memories.
Memories that are shared, are never boring - when retold, or relived.For many, that bond formed so long ago must have been everything we thought it was, because surprisingly, the LLP study found that the divorce rate among reunited couples was a measly 1.5 percent, suggesting that the best place to look for Mr. Right may be in your yearbook, or dusty scrapbook.
-Carlo3b, Falling Leaves from the Diary of a Single dad"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed."But while rekindling a past love can be wonderful, as it appears it often is, however, accept this cautious note, it is not without risk. Too often, it is a married person who first fantasize, then tempts fate when seeking then seeing an old flame, even when it seems harmless. “You just don’t realize the hold that old love may still have over you,” Kalish says. “Almost one-third of the reunited couples in the project were adulterous relationships. Most of these people had been faithful spouses before they looked up their lost love. I've seen marriages completely blown out of the water by innocently reconnecting with an old flame,” warns Kalish.
-J. Krishnamurti"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."Kalish, interviewed a young woman that we shall call Katy Martin, who asked that her real name not be used, because she knows all too well the dangers of meeting up with a past love. When her old boyfriend called out of the blue one day to tell her that a mutual friend had died, Martin, 32, innocently agreed to meet him for coffee after the funeral. Though happily married mother of 2 children, Martin was shocked when sparks began flying between the two of them. The resulting affair destroyed her marriage and her family.
-James BaldwinEven if you're not married, looking up a past love can still have its downfalls. “The memories you hold dear may be destroyed when you're confronted with the present reality,” Ahrons says. “Don’t forget that ten or fifteen years may have passed since you were with that lost lover. You're not the same, and neither is the other person.” “We tend to see the past through rose-colored glasses,” Ahrons adds. Suddenly that boyfriend who was uncommunicative is remembered as quiet and shy.
"Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye."I have to remind you that sometimes the heart is wrong, because memories can be very selective, and often faulty. That hot-tempered and jealous high school girl has developed in your fantasized recollection, to have become an attractively passionate and intense angel. If you forget why the relationship may have ended in the first place, you may be setting yourself up for a repeat of the last breakup. For all of those fond memories, in reality may return like a bad habit. However, it is entirely possible that it may not be a mistake.
-H. Jackson Brown Jr."A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."
-Stendhal
All of that aside, everyone wants and needs love, and maybe over time we have set up too many conditions that prevent anyone from entering our heart, or our lives. The comfort of an old friend re entering our life may be just what the doctor ordered. Those defenses may fall like leaves when old passions return and we find the love of our life was indeed, our first true love.. our one and only flame.. is still burning in our heart.. my hope and love are always with you.. never forget, all FReepers are lovers. If all else fails, for better or worse, you will always have me.. I LOVE YOU . . :)
HAPPY NEW YEAR
I believe the basic signup is free, and it allows you to search schools, check on reunions/coordinators etc.
Yummmmmm. I can smell it now.. Sheeesh now I'm hungry.. Thanks , cut and paste.. :)
You have it all.. Happy New Year.. :)
No the problem is that I've had too many of them.
GASP!.. Behave.. LOLOL . . :)
No! My last love was...
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