That’s probably because there were few affairs. People back then had to write personal letters or make phone calls to contact their lost loves, and those who reconnected did so purposefully, usually to spark a romance, and they were single, divorced or widowed. They met for a reunion, and they continued or ended it. There were no times out or No Contact.

But this NC pattern (as my website members have labeled it) has become common for people who post on my member forums. The members’ reunions are usually affairs.

No Contact is not my term or idea. I know it doesn’t work. Agree to a 1 month time out and that may last about 2 weeks. An open-ended NC may end even sooner. I have some thoughts for you about the negative impact of “going NC.”

NC is a middle ground. No one has decided to leave the romance, but there’s a feeling that it isn’t working, because there are marriages involved. It’s meant to be a brief time out to catch one’s breath and get one’s life back.

I have spoken in the forums about lost love reunions having an addictive quality. They certainly are obsessive. Part of what causes this state of emotions is “going NC.” This interim, time out period sets up an insecure attachment, a withdrawal from the love partner. Anxiety builds up, wondering if the bond has been really severed by the lack of contact.

As the anxiety builds, it becomes intolerable. Then in haste, in fear and panic, the lost love is contacted. Reassurances are given, the voice is comforting, and the anxiety immediately goes away. Ending NC ends the anxiety that it caused in the first place, so the insecure, addictive lost love romance is reinforced.

But the joy is not consistent or secure, because the lost loves will pull the plug on the romance every now and then, without warning, to try to figure out what to do with the marriages or take time “to think” (or to go to couples therapy with their spouses). 

If you go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City and play slot machines, the machine doesn’t pay off every time. It pays off approximately every 35th time. If it paid off every 35th time exactly, no one would want to play – everyone would want to be only the 35th player. The payoff at approximately every 35th time keeps people playing.

If you don’t win this time, well, maybe next time; and the more you lose, the more you have to keep playing, because your time to win must be coming right up. This is intermittent reinforcement. It is the most powerful motivator there is. That’s why there are gambling addictions. Just keep playing long enough and you have to win, right? Meanwhile, before the payoff, you are losing, big time.

Setting up “NC” is a recipe for misery. It doesn’t allow the romance to move forward, so it stops whatever happiness was going on. Instead, it substitutes a very painful insecurity and anxiety, too painful to continue. Two weeks of misery during a self-imposed NC, and then a few moments of feeling happy. Just like the gambler — losing more than winning, but waiting for and needing the hit.

Breaking the silence and reconnecting momentarily eases the fear of losing the romance, but it sets up an insecure attachment that makes people more clingy and more addicted. It is harder to leave a lost love affair after going back and forth from Contact to NC to Contact to NC… The relief every time a NC ends sets up the belief that “this is it,” now it will work. But it doesn’t, because the same issues that caused the lost loves to go NC are still there – they are married.

And it certainly doesn’t help the marriage in any way. If one knows that the NC is time-limited, then the affair is still there. An affair without sex at the moment is still an affair. No one in NC can work on the marriage, decide what to do about the marriage, go into therapy to see if he/she can save the marriage. And a person is just as likely to get caught by the spouse in the NC period as when they were seeing each other: the person is acting so weird that the spouse gets suspicious that something is wrong, perhaps cheating. 

So testing a marriage vs, a lost love affair, to see which is more important, by setting up a withdrawal from the affair partner (which increases longing) will skew towards the affair every time, and this has nothing to do with whether the marriage or lost love relationship is “better.” Ask a cocaine addict to choose between his/her family or the drug, and the addict will pick the cocaine every time. Does this mean the cocaine is better for him/her than the family? Of course not.

When someone decides to (or has to) give up a lost love, if the reunited couple had had a series of NC times, leaving will be much harder than if the romance just progressed until it ended. Returning to the lost love has been strongly reinforced — because the return always took away the unbearable anxiety. NC/C became a cycle of familiarity; trying to break the cycle and really stop the romance is excruciating. So back we go: the romance doesn’t end, the anxiety briefly clears, and it is reinforced again… and strengthened each time the lost loves try to leave but “slip.”

Cold Turkey, one day at a time. That works. But the person has to make a very firm decision that this is truly the end and then grieve the permanent loss. 

As the researcher of rekindled romances – couples who loved each other years ago, parted, then reunited years later – I have been asked repeatedly about Facebook; it appears that marriages are breaking apart because lost loves find each other on social networking sites, cheat on their spouses, and suddenly take off with their rediscovered high school sweethearts. If only we didn’t have Facebook, we would have safe marriages!

Is that true? Can an inanimate medium cause someone to betray their husband or wife? Does Facebook guide your fingers to click until you find your ex-boyfriend or ex- girlfriend, without your knowledge or permission?  What blame does technology bear for bringing people back together who shouldn’t be back together?

I have been working with reunited couples for 16 years. Yes, the population seems to have changed. According to my research participants in several phases of my study, there are more extramarital affairs in this population now than in the 1990’s, before the Web, search engines, classmates sites, and now social networking were invented. In the 1990’s, people who looked up lost loves did so very purposefully.

People were easy to find – it is a myth that only the Internet has brought long lost loves back together – but to contact that old flame, it was necessary to make human contact: perhaps asking a friend or relative of the lost love for his/her phone number and then calling the lost love at home. It was a rare married man who had the audacity to go to an elder parent to ask for the daughter’s phone number, and then call his lost love at home, not knowing if an irritated spouse would answer the phone. And the act of making that inquiry or phone call was clearly a romantic overture, and the searcher knew it. No rationalizations there.

So what has changed with the Internet is how casual, even accidental, it can be nowadays to see a photo of lost love, or even a name, and have all the memories come flooding back. The old flame is right there, ready for contact, and what could be the harm? People who are happily married, especially, do not realize the risk they are taking, the Pandora’s box they are opening, just to say hello. But this began long before Facebook. A lost love could be found through Google, web sites like Classmates.com, or people finder sites like Zabasearch.com. Facebook is simply the newest medium to blame.

Facebook is not the cause of marriages breaking apart. Facebook does not book hotel rooms. What I have noticed, however, is that extramarital Facebook reunions have begun by younger people. The older websites like Classmates.com had, well, older members. Facebook began with a younger membership; they are no more apt to cheat than people who find lost loves on other websites, but because they were younger on Facebook, young families have often been involved instead of empty nesters.

No doubt about it, though: cheating is enabled with “new and improved” technology in general. No need to write letters anymore. Remember how long they used to take to arrive? It was hard to stay obsessive during those long intervals. And you had to make sure to beat your spouse to the mailbox. A computer takes care of all that: fast replies and secret email accounts so the spouse never sees the mail. Much cheaper than a secret post office box, too, and the affair partners can communicate at any hour, right from home.

Smart phones can be used for dumb purposes; a married person who wants to contact a lost love can send email or text messages on the go. Or send digital photos from the last rendezvous… then delete them. The evidence is gone.

Cheap cell phones can be purchased that spouses never know about. Only the affair partner has the number. Instant Messaging! Chat rooms! Enough said.

Internet shopping allows for sending gifts from your computer right to the affair partner’s business address. Use a secret credit card or Paypal account and a spouse will never know.

Want to end the affair? Send an email to say it’s over, then delete your email account and throw away the cheap secret phone. Done!

This is the cavalier way I hear technology discussed by people in lost love affairs. They are thrilled that secrecy is so easy. But you know what? Most people get caught. Men and women who had been in a kind of teenage denial suddenly lose their marriages and then wonder what hit them. If the marriage partner is very forgiving, the marriage may stay together. But so much harm has been done.

Technology cannot cause affairs. But the razzle dazzle of new technology can obscure the old fashioned devastation that occurs to the lost loves, to their spouses, to their children, to their extended families and friends, to their business contacts, and to their community support systems. Lost love reunions between single, divorced, or widowed men and women can be very happy; but if people are not truly free to reunite, everybody loses. Seeing the wake of these affairs, over and over, makes this objective researcher sad.

Some individuals reported “returning” to people they considered lost loves from when they were 8, 9, or 10 years old. Participants older than 65, especially, reunited with these “puppy loves.” These reunions had the same high success rate as reunions of lost loves from high school or college.

The reunited couple grew up in the same community during their formative years, went to school together, shared a peer group, and were often close to their first love’s family. Descriptions of the rekindled romances invariably included “comfortable” and “familiar.” Lack of sexual involvement when these couples were teens neither increased nor diminished the adult couples’ success in the reunion.

Successful senior reunions
Thirty-seven percent of the participants were in their 40s and 50s when they reunited with their lost loves, 10 percent reconnected between the ages of sixty to seventy, and 4 percent were in their 80s or 90s. Longevity, of course, is a factor in the decreasing percentages with age.

Although the number of reunions decreased with age, the success of these reunions increased. In their written comments on the questionnaire, seniors attributed their success to their maturity: improved communication skills, a new-found ability not to “sweat the small stuff,” and knowing exactly how they wanted to spend their later years. They also commented that they lacked tolerance for arguments, so they avoided arguing. These factors have also been reported in research on relationships of seniors with their spouses and their old friends.

The couples’ love had endured through their many years apart and, in the case of widows and widowers, often through very happy intervening marriages. These older reunited couples were more spiritually inclined than the younger participants in the study. They often believed they were soul mates and that a Higher Power brought them back together. One man in his 70s wrote: Where we end up after death, only God knows. But we will surely be together.

Risks & stumbling blocks
The high success rate for rekindled romances suggests that older adults who are lonely or reluctant to date strangers should consider pursuing an old flame. However, seniors should be warned that there are risks and stumbling blocks.

By 2005, two-thirds of my new survey participants were in extramarital affairs. Seniors were no exception. Most of the extramarital affairs started with innocent email exchanges; usually the adults who initiated the correspondence were divorced or widowed but found that their lost loves were married. Neither of them planned to become involved in an affair, but the correspondence escalated quickly: email led to phone calls, and the vocal reconnection led to a face to face meeting, which usually began an affair.

Because they were brought up in an era when premarital and extramarital sex was especially stigmatized, members of the World War II generation who were involved in affairs expressed shame and guilt to a greater extent than younger participants.

Affair or not, their adult children often disapproved. When parents were widowed, their children saw the old flames as interlopers. This is true in many second marriages, but rekindled romances bring special concerns: the old flame preceded the other parent. Even middle-aged children felt uncomfortable with that, as if the parent were telling them, “This is the person I should have married.” In fact, some parents said this directly to their children, leaving them to wonder, “So then, I shouldn’t have been born?”

In addition, the middle-aged children were often protective. Many believed that the lost loves came back to their parents just to take their money. And they worried that their parents could not know this person anymore: after all, 50 years may have passed. Some adult children expressed being worried that a reunion was an indicator that their parents were senile, or at the very least, chasing a fantasy.

To make matters worse, these romances proceeded very rapidly. Elder lost loves feel they have wasted too many years without each other, that they have little time left in life, and they do not want to wait. They married within months — or days — of reuniting. No wonder their middle-aged children were worried.

Rekindled romances have a different history and a different pace, they follow different rules and have better outcomes, than average romances. These are loves that were interrupted. For my oldest couple, the interruption lasted 75 years, and the happy marriage began on her 95th birthday.

Like their friends and family, their psychologists insisted that rekindled romances were mere “fantasies” and recommended that they “move on.” If the lost love reunion involves infidelity, the client was often advised to “find what is wrong in your marriage, because that is what you imagined having with your lost love.” This advice is not helpful to lost love clients, who do not want their reality denied or their feelings belittled. Very few of these men and women challenged their therapists, however; they simply never returned.

The advisability and outcomes of the extramarital affairs aside, my research indicates that love for old flames, even those who were separated for decades, is very real, and reunions can be long-lasting. For the last few years, I have focused on how best to educate psychotherapists about this different kind of romance, and I have sought to understand why ordinary people and so many mental health experts doubt the veracity and strength of lost love bonds.

One reason for this doubt, indicated in results from my “First Love” survey, is that many adults had terrible first love experiences; they have no desire to reunite with these people from the past, and cannot understand why anyone would want to do such a thing.

Another reason for skepticism might be if popular culture images of love reunions  stereotype people who try reunions are just chasing rainbows. Could films in particular influence how people evaluate the wisdom of looking up lost loves? What I discovered was intriguing: Hollywood scripts are more pessimistic in outcome than real-life rekindled romances.

My website Member Forums members (Lostlovers.com) and I compiled a list of 120 films with lost love reunions in their plots. The oldest was released in 1939 and the newest came out in 2006. I found that a statistically significant number of these reunion movies ended with the lost loves still together: 102 of 120. But what fascinated me was that most of these reunion films involved unusual characters or situations that could not possibly occur in real life: they were fantasies, science fiction, thrillers, or musicals.

Of the 102 films with reunion happy endings, 43 were comedies, light-hearted movies, and “chick flicks.” These movies had contrived plots and characters with distinctive personalities, like Bridget Jones’s Diary and For the Boys. These were not ordinary rekindled romance couples. The remaining 59 films with lost love reunions ending happily were science fiction movies, such as Solaris and Somewhere in Time; fantasies such as Family Man, Forrest Gump, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Illusionist; and light-hearted musicals such as Gigi and A Little Night Music.

So these 102 films with successful rekindled romances, out of the 120 reunion films I looked at, were improbable lost love fantasies — just as therapists had stereotyped their clients’ reunions.

The 18 movies that concluded with reunion breakups included Splendor in the Grass, Casablanca, The Way We Were, and Miss Saigon. With the exception of Cast Away, the films that end with the couples separating again are primarily serious dramas; their plots are complicated and more plausible than the happy-ending reunion movies, and they include lots of heartbreak. Surely there are movies we missed, but those we remembered and included were clearly biased.

Lost lovers question their own hearts and sanity as everyone around them scoffs at their reunions. They seem like lost love film characters who separate at the conclusion of the movie — men and women struggling with lost love issues, obsessed, and conflicted. No wonder therapists might think that real-life reunions as a whole are toxic to adults and inevitably end badly.

Real rekindled romances (provided the lost loves are single, widowed or divorced) have happier outcomes for the couples than reel endings. And even for those who separate again, their love was real, not fantasy.

July 13, 2010

Hi to all,

I hope you are having a great summer.

I am thinking back to the wonderful memories I have of my trip to Australia, last summer, to be on 60 Minutes. You can watch the segment at Lostlovers.com under the Media section.

Today there is a very short interview with me, about rekindled romances, posted at cosmopolitan.com.za. The editor requested that I write 150 words to sum up the entire topic!

http://www.cosmopolitan.co.za/Relationships/LovenRelationships/the-love-gurus-pg1 This is the South Africa edition of the online magazine.

The topic of lost and found love is popular across the globe, holding a universal appeal.

Enjoy these summer days. Stay cool. More from me another time.

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June 30, 2010

Greetings!

Lost love is always a hot topic in the media, and it’s especially hot in June! I was just interviewed for a news article on reunions, and this may be a good opportunity for you, too. The journalist would like to include an interview with a couple who recently reunited on Facebook: she seeks happy endings only, and no affairs/broken marriages in the path of the reunion.

And a journalism graduate student in New York has set out a difficult task for herself this summer. She is writing her thesis on couples who were married and divorced, then years later remarried each other again. She would like to interview a divorced/remarried couple in the Northeast.

If either of these interviews is right for you, or if you know someone who might be interested, please contact me for more details. As always with the media, deadlines are pressing.

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May 25, 2010

Hi Friends,

It’s been a difficult year for California and for the state university. Because of draconian budget reductions, we all taught extra classes, had no staff support, no paper or ink to copy our exams (so we paid for our own). Students were angry about tuition increases and faculty felt demoralized by “furloughs”/salary cuts. So I am glad the semester is behind me, and for the first time, I will not be teaching summer school. A real vacation!

But it’s not a vacation from Lostlovers.com. I hope to catch up on my lost love research and complete what I need to do to submit it to a journal. And I will have extra time to devote to the member forums and to phone consultations.

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February 11, 2010

I was interviewed recently by a popular Polish website, Wirtualna Polska, and the article was posted today. The interview was conducted in English by email, then translated into Polish. If you would like to read the article, enter this url into Google Translator and it will show you the English.

http://wiadomosci.wp.pl/kat,1342,title,32-latka-zostawilam-meza-dla-pierwszej-milosci,wid,11958102,wiadomosc.html

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January 29, 2010

Happy New Year!

I was interviewed today by Chip Rowe, host of The Playboy Advisor Show, on Sirius/XM radio. This was the second time I have been on Playboy radio, and my survey findings have appeared twice in the magazine, too. I have been pleased with how my romance research has been presented by Playboy, and I have received good feedback from readers and listeners: men who are usually uncomfortable talking about their romantic feelings wrote to tell me about their lost loves and how much these women meant to them.

Over the last generation, it became widely accepted that women are as interested in sex as men are. But there still seems to be a bias that men don’t — or shouldn’t — have the same romantic feelings as women. People differ in how important romance or sex is to them, but it’s not based on their gender. Both men and women have the same needs; gender roles only keep us from expressing our full natures.

Fortunately, expectations of what it means to be masculine or feminine are less restrictive now than years ago. But there are still stereotypes: you might think that Playboy would focus on sex, but that topic never came up in my interviews. We spoke about attachments, about love and loss — universal concerns for us all.

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December 16, 2009

Not much new here in Lost Love Land.

Around the holidays, many people with lost love concerns are more anxious, confused, or sad than usual, and a community of like-minded men and women can be helpful; new members have been joining the Member Forums, so there are numerous high spirited, enthusiastic (okay, obsessive) threads and posts for you to read.

Most activity is centered in the private forums and, try as I might to convince members to post in the open, they usually don’t. There is great benefit from reading how others handled their lost love issues, so even if you don’t intend to post messages yourself, why not join the website and read the conversations?

In addition, I am available for phone consultations, as always, and I will have added time to talk with clients after my classes end, on Friday.

Even finding the right gift can be challenging. Lost & Found Lovers, the audiobook CD of The Lost Love Chronicles, and the music of Gary Charles on Journal Entry all make thoughtful gifts for a lost love.

The holiday period is joyous, too, of course. To those of you who are currently celebrating Chanukah, as I am, and to those who will be celebrating Christmas and New Year’s very soon, I wish you all a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous 2010!

Dr Nancy Kalish

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October 22, 2009

A very short segment about lost love reunions appeared today on CNN and on CNN.com. I was filmed at California State University, Sacramento, but CNN was unable to provide a local camera crew. I was asked to do the interview using Skype.

Our Public Affairs Office set up lights (their own) and a computer, no external camera. As a result, my appearance came out sort of blurry with some image distortion (and much of what I had to say didn’t air). But the producer tells me that she thinks it looks fine and it was the most popular posted video at CNN.com.

The story’s message is good, and if you want to see what I really look like, there are more flattering pictures of me online.

A short comment on Kurt’s story: it’s tragic that his lost love died so young. But I don’t think he truly understands how a reunion with her might have affected his good marriage.

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September 21, 2009

Tomorrow morning, Tuesday, I will appear in a lost love segment on Good Morning America, 8 am PT/ET.

Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to go to NYC; the segment was taped at California State University, Sacramento. Just as well; I have classes to teach. So, by the magic of television, I can be in two places at once.

For those of you who are already at work at 8 am (and for those of you who, like me, usually sleep through the morning shows), the segment will be posted at the Good Morning America website and also here at Lostlovers.com.

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September 6, 2009

I interviewed for a story on lost loves for the Mercury News in San Jose, CA, and it ran on August 28, 2009.

Someone emailed me tonight and told me a story about my work was featured today in The Reading Eagle in Reading, PA. I was not contacted by a reporter from this newspaper, so my guess is that they reran a lost love article from another newspaper, possibly The Mercury News.

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September 1, 2009

Okay, so a guy goes into a bar…

No, this is not a joke.

So in June, my Sacramento friends’ son goes into a bar with some friends, in Papua New Guinea. He is an anthropology professor, completing some research there. And the TV in the bar is on. So an anchor on the TV show starts talking about lost loves.

“I know someone who does research on that,” Alex says to his friends.

And then, there I am, in Papua New Guinea! They were seeing the lost love segment I taped for 60 Minutes in Australia. I would never have known it was shown in Papua New Guinea except for Alex’s chance viewing.

I never know where my interviews will pop up. But I can see the countries of viewers of this website. The majority of viewers come from the US, Canada, and Australia. No surprise there, perhaps. But since this redesigned website was launched in June, there have also been many viewers from Russian Federation, India, Belgium, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, followed by France, Japan, China, Israel, Kenya, Egypt, Turkey, and 40 other countries. Who knew?

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June 23, 2009
G’day, Mates,

I just returned from Sydney, Australia! I was invited to be the expert for a segment about lost loves on 60 Minutes (AU TV Channel 9). Everyone involved in this project was wonderful to me, and the production was flawlessly professional. Hugh Nailon was the producer, and I was interviewed by media celebrity Liz Hayes.

I spent one and a half days being interviewed, then did a bit of sightseeing for 2 days before I had to return home. The sleepy koala (pictured) lives in the Sydney Wildlife habitat, next door to a wonderful aquarium, featuring the unusual animals and insects of Australia. I took in Sydney Harbor, with the famous Opera House, and then went by ferry to the beach at Manly. My last day there, I went to

the New South Wales Library to see a Darwin exhibit. I heard rekindled romance stories from several people I met along the way.

The lost love segment was broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, June 21, 2009, in Australia and New Zealand.

Right after it aired, I appeared as their WebGuest (from California, at 3:30-4:30 am!) in a live chat about reunited lost loves. Viewers wrote questions, then I answered them by phone, talking to someone from 60 Minutes who posted my answers. The viewers asked really good questions.  Click here to view the chat session transcript.

Other countries might air the segment at a later date, but not the US. Meanwhile,you may view it here or just click the play button on the Featured Video on the right side of this page.

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June 5, 2009
Greetings to Visitors and Faithful Members:

If you have visited here before, you will notice that LostLovers.com has been completely remodeled. The change in style reflects a more modern look, as well as the changes in the lost love topic itself over the years.

Popular features from the old version of this site – the Member Forums, Photo Gallery, Famous Couples – remain. Please visit the Homepage and enjoy the new articles.

I hope you like the new design!

2Checkout.com is the authorized retailer for goods and services provided by Kalish Books (CA, USA).

Once received, Dr. Kalish will be email you directly, to the address you provide, with further details, including payment instructions.

[click to email]

About “Restless Longing” by Gary Charles:

• The first song on your first CD is always a special one. This song was inspired by reading the book, Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances, by Nancy Kalish, Ph.D.
• You always have one love in your life. The love that you just can’t forget, the memory you refuse to erase. While reading the book, I began to think of lost lover and the song seemed to write itself.