Dating an Ex: Does the Relationship Have a Chance?

Finding a former lover through social networks today is not difficult. However, these few clicks on the keyboard, dictated, as it seems to us, by no more than curiosity, can often seriously affect our lives.

The Lost Love Project is the name given to a project by UCLA professor Nancy Kalish, which she began in 1993 and has continued for more than twenty years. Her first study of couples who decided years later to rekindle romantic relationships involved 1001 people from all 50 US states, as well as people from other countries. The proposal to participate in the project appeared on radio stations, television shows, magazines and newspapers.

The participants were between 18 and 89 years old. The results of this work became for Kalish the basis of her book Lost and Found Beloved. The Truth and Myths of Reunion” (“Lost and Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances”, which is still the only publication built on scientific research on this topic. Dr. Kalish proved that happy re-relationships with former lovers were possible in any age group.

Two-thirds of the participants were reunited with their first love, whom they met at the age of 17 or younger. It was these couples that turned out to be the most stable — 78% of them did not break up. In total, 72% of couples who resumed relationships managed to build a new, happy union. Since she published this book, stories of newfound love have continued to come to the author from all over the world in letters, emails, faxes, and even phone calls. Kalisz says she met many couples personally.

Her second study (2005-2006) relied on participants who found each other through one of the most popular ways of the 62 decade, the Internet. These people differed in many ways from the previous ones: most of them (5%) were married. The romantic reunion in this group was no longer so successful — only XNUMX% of those who met remained together and later got married. At the same time, all the “lucky ones” were free at the time of their acquaintance.

“Most of those who already had a family decided to keep the new relationship a secret until they figured out whether they should destroy the old one and create a new one,” says Nancy Kalish. “However, in more than half of the cases, infidelity was revealed, and this caused great trauma to both spouses, children, and the found lovers themselves. And even if a love affair was not discovered, people themselves ended this relationship after a couple of years at the most.

In the latest study, Kalisz relied on psychotherapist clients. The participants were 1300 people who had never tried to find their lost love (this was the control group). The psychologist compared them with the participants in her first experiment, where people not only found each other, but also built a new alliance.

Kalish notes that these groups were distinguished by the reason why the relationship of two people who once loved each other ended. The happily united group mostly cited parental disapproval, being too young, or moving to a new location as the reason for the breakup. In the control group, this often happened because the couple did not find a common language, because of infidelity, emotional or physical abuse.

“Because they had such painful memories, these people not only showed no interest in finding their former lovers, but did not even understand this desire in others.” Kalish notes that the reason for the breakup is in many ways the key to whether it is possible to restore a full-fledged relationship.

Is it all about a chemical reaction?

What makes the possibility of finding an ex-lover so compelling? We often romanticize the past. Encountering what has become part of our experience—the places we have been, the people we have loved—affects neurochemical mechanisms. And years later, a random photo or conversation with someone who knew our former lover has the potential to rekindle our romantic desires. When meeting with a person, they can develop into a true passion.

Researchers attribute this to an increase in the production of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that causes attraction or an acute desire to possess a person. Pleasant memories can also trigger a surge in serotonin, another neurotransmitter that triggers obsessive thoughts about our new object of desire. In the end, this also leads to an increase in the level of oxytocin, a hormone that is also responsible for our attachment to a person and largely contributes to the positive coloring of memories of a past romance.

Even after many years, strong feelings do not always disappear after a breakup.

“A meeting on a social network stimulates memories, and this, in turn, leads to an increase in the production of appropriate chemicals that affect our emotions and behavior,” says psychologist Cheryl Kirshenbaum. — And if, as it seems at first, «light and frivolous» feelings are driven by both former lovers who met by chance online, then in the future this leads to the temptation to continue the previous relationship.

The voice of a loved one, and even the smell of their skin, can evoke vivid, vital memories that have been stored in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. Thus, even if before the meeting we assume the exclusively platonic nature of the relationship, they become more intimate.

This, of course, does not mean that people are unable to control their actions when strong emotions come into play. “However, trying to find an ex-lover through the Internet can affect our lives much more than we think,” says Kalisz.

Accused… Facebook? (an extremist organization banned in Russia)

Why, then, were those who searched for their lost love before social media actively entered our lives, were more successful in creating new alliances?

If a person wanted to find someone in the era before the Internet, then this required some effort. I had to look for addresses and phone numbers through city services, interview relatives or acquaintances who could have a connecting thread.

“Only those who were free from matrimonial obligations took such significant steps,” says Kalisz. “And if the other side was also unmarried, then it was these couples who created the most successful and lasting unions.” Now our romantic past is easily and effortlessly alive online. It doesn’t cost us anything to find a person through the Web and immediately start chatting with him. And the fact that we are not free, as a rule, does not stop us. However, an innocent desire only to find out how the «old friend» is doing there, very soon runs the risk of developing into something more.

“Most of those who have encountered their lost love by chance, via the Internet, admit that they lived in happy marriages. And before they met former lovers, they never cheated on their spouses, ”says Kalisz. The study showed that the restoration of relations against the background of an existing marriage rarely led to the construction of a new union.

“As a rule, people suffered from the fact that they found themselves in a dual position, when both parties — both the former lover and the real spouse — became equally dear to them. In addition, they understood that they were affecting the feelings of their spouses and children, which is why some marriages later broke up. What at first seemed like a game, threatened the existence of families that the vast majority of study participants, according to them, cherished, ”Kalisz emphasizes.

At the same time, the author notes that the social network, as a rule, makes it possible to find out the matrimonial status of a former cordial friend. And if both partners at the time of meeting are free and they do not have traumatic memories, but, on the contrary, have a joint joyful experience, then this new union has a great chance of becoming successful and lasting.