When lost loves who are parents reunite, if the children are very young, the situation is no different from any other parental romance, whether the parents are already divorced when they reunite with lost loves, or in affairs that broke apart the marriages. But for older children, in their teens and older, the reunion can pose unique problems.
Strangers usually react positively to the lost loves because they see only the beautiful story. But the children and friends have known this person over time. Perhaps they have comforted him or her through a long and painful divorce. Or they have seen this person make mistakes by rushing headlong into relationships with near-strangers, who turn out to be less than self-advertised. So to family and friends this lost love reunion seems to be just another ill-advised adventure.
One young woman wrote to me because she was about to embark on a rekindled romance. She added, "Years ago, my mother divorced my father after more than twenty-five years of marriage. Then she married her high school sweetheart. I felt angry at her for leaving my dad. And I was sixteen so this was very embarrassing for me, that she was actually dating someone from high school! Now, I begin to understand."
While the woman quoted above was an embarrassed teenager at the time of her mother's reunion, late-life reunions can be just as problematic for children. Many of my midlife and senior research participants reported that their sons and daughters see the reunion, and their ignited sexual feelings, as uncomfortably "inappropriate for old people."
Some children are angry because one of their parents was displaced by the lost love interloper, and some even feel displaced themselves -- and according to my research, rightly so. But, unfortunately, pushing aside children of the first marriage when the parent remarries is not uncommon in ordinary second marriages as well.
Some adult children reported worrying about their inheritance rights: these romances move so fast, especially when the lost loves are older and don't feel they have much time left in life to enjoy each other, that the adult children are suspicious that the suitor is "just after mom's/dad's money." How fast do the reunions move after the initial contact? One woman wrote, "He arrived at 10:30 p.m. and never left!"
Another woman, now married to her lost love after being apart from him for seven years, wrote, "After visiting me for only two days, he proposed to me. I said yes and we got married two months later. We could not be more happy we found each other again." So it is understandable that the adult children would be wary of these lost love strangers and wonder what their parents have gotten themselves into!
I am referring in this article to reunions where both lost loves are actually available. Speedy romances are not the norm when one or both of the lost loves are already married, and according to my current research, most of the affairs do not end with the lost loves together. One or both of the lost loves do not leave their marriages and eventually forsake their lost loves ... sometimes only after they get caught, which causes a lot of pain to everyone. Children of all ages are almost always furious in situations like this, and they may or may not forgive the parent who transgressed. Many do come around, but it takes a few years.
Some adult children feel protective of a parent who has been alone for awhile. One woman in her late forties wrote, "Here I am, back in a hot relationship that is so intense I feel drugged. My two adult children came for a visit Monday night, and my lost love was willing to face them and answer their concerns. My son is furious with me that I would even talk to this man. My daughter said, "Do what you want, but when you get hurt again, don't come to me."
Complicating these family relationships is the fact that the parents knew and loved their old flames before they met their children's mother or father. When a parent tells a child (never do this!), "This is the person I should have married" -- and unfortunately many of the participants in my research study actually said this to their children -- the children question what that means: does it mean that the parent thinks they should never have been born?
One young woman commented to me about her widowed mother's marriage to her high school sweetheart: "I must say that as a child of one of these people, sometimes it's a little weird looking at the photographs displayed in the house. There are old pictures of them together in high school sweaters, and at the beach when they were in college. Then there are the recent photos of them in their various adventures. It gives one the feeling that they've always been together-as if the lives they lived with my father and my step-siblings' mother never happened. A strange angle!"
It is helpful when reactions of the children are considered prior to announcing a lost love reunion. This is just one of the factors, other than love for the old flame, that influence couples who reunite. Other factors will be discussed in later posts.
Nancy Kalish, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
