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.

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.

These can be purchased online through our authorized retailer, 2CheckOut. This process is not automated. Dr. Kalish does each order manually and will typically reply with the download link within a few hours. If you haven’t received an email within 72 hours, please be sure to check your spam / junk mail folder. The email may have been misidentified as possible spam.

Note:  These presentations were written for different types of audiences and, as such, there is some overlap of information from one report to the next.

PACKAGE 1 (includes downloadable video plus Fact Sheet PDF)
January 2009 – Private Class on Love & Forgiveness
Presented by Dr. Nancy Kalish

Watch this 56-minute video of Dr. Kalish in a live presentation recorded in January, 2009.

• It includes the stories behind several of the featured couples from The Lost Love Chronicles ebook.
• Dr. Kalish takes questions from the audience, giving insightful answers to common questions on the topic.

Video is available in Quicktime (.mov) and Windows Media (.wmv) formats for viewing on your computer or portable media player.

With the video, you will also receive a Love & Forgiveness: Lost Love Reunions & Second Chances Fact Sheet (PDF) to enhance Dr. Kalish’s presentation:

• Myths of Rekindled Romances
• Reasons for Contacting Long Lost Loves
• Who Should Avoid Contacting an old flame?
• Key Things to Remember: Lost Love Tips

NOTE: a broadband internet connection (cable, DSL, etc.) is highly recommended for downloading the video file.

PACKAGE 3
CSUS, 2007 – Adults Who Reunited With Adolescent Sweethearts: A Survey

This article, by Nancy Kalish, Ph.D., was presented at California State University Sacramento, 2007, where Dr. Kalish holds the rank of Professor of Psychology. It was written for a symposium at the university.

Each year, the symposium highlights the work of a different department within the College of Social Sciences & Interdisciplinary Studies. In 2007, the Department of Psychology was featured. Four psychologists, including Dr. Kalish, showcased research on attachment; three of the presentations were overviews of research in the field; Dr. Kalish was the only presenter who discussed her own research.

The attendees were students, staff, and professors from all departments throughout the university, so this presentation was written for a general, educated audience, not for research psychologists.

This article is a good overview of Kalish’s research on lost loves. Some of it may be familiar to you from her other writing, but some of this research is not yet available elsewhere. It includes discussion of her 1993-1996 survey participants from Lost & Found Lovers (William Morrow, 1997), along with newer findings from her 2004-2005 lost love survey of rekindlers. Also included, for comparison, are results from Kalish’s 2005 First Love Survey — a research control group of survey participants who have never tried reunions with lost loves. A brief section of the paper considers some pitfalls of psychotherapy with lost love clients (this is a short summary of Kalish’s WPA paper, offered below).

PACKAGE 4
Lost Lovers in Therapy

This was an Invited Presentation at the 2003 Western Psychological Association Annual Convention. An “invited presentation” is not a submitted paper; it is an invitation to the researcher, from psychologists on the convention committee, to be featured at the conference. This honor is extended to very few psychology researchers, and indicates the high esteem accorded to Dr. Nancy Kalish by her fellow psychologists.

Lost Lovers in Therapy is based on Dr. Kalish’s many years of research on rekindled romances. It was written for an audience of Clinical Psychologists in particular and is a discussion of how rekindled romances are different from ordinary romances. Dr. Kalish elaborates on mistakes commonly made by psychotherapists when dealing with their lost love clients and, in particular, clients in extramarital relationships.