Recently, I heard from a minister and his wife. They understand that I don't promote affairs, and they liked the articles on my website. He and his wife are healing their marriage using the power of their religious beliefs: he had an affair with a lost love, despite his very happy marriage. He was shocked that this could happen to him.

So how could this have happened? What went wrong?

Fact #2: The Internet cut out the middleman (going to old friends or family to get the lost love's telephone number). Now a married adult can find a lost love through search engines, classmate finders and most commonly, social networking sites like Facebook, then contact that person in total secrecy.

Fact #3: Technological reconnections seems safe. Because of the ease and simplicity of email -- email is so seemingly devoid of feelings that we use emoticons to make our intentions clear -- no one thinks it could cause a problem. What could be the harm? As it turns out, plenty.

Fact #4: These simple emails to lost loves are ruining good marriages. Obsessive thinking about the lost love takes over, even for people who had no thought of a romance when they made contact with the lost love. Once a phone call is made or, worse, a face to face meeting occurs, there is no going back to the way it was, even if the marriage can be saved. I have seen good marriages, by the assessment of both spouses, crumbling.

Fact #5: Very commonly, lost love research participants, and others I talk with by phone and email, disclose that one or both of their parents were alcoholics. Many people who want desperately to disengage from destructive lost love affairs admit that they, too, have addictive tendencies, such as smoking, drinking, gambling or other high risk behaviors. The sexual hormonal highs of being in renewed contact with lost loves, plus anxiety/arousal hormones triggered by the secret affairs (including emotional affairs without sex), can lead to a craving for more and more contact, and withdrawal lows when there is no contact. A spousal relationship is more even-tempered; so how does a person addicted to these new highs decide to give up this rush and return to moderation? It's not easy!

Fact #6: Some people are not good at seeing where feelings can lead. Some people are better at projecting ahead than others who just live in "the beautiful moment." As an analogy: no woman starts a romance with an abusive man; at first, he's charming. But little by little, he gets abusive -- so slowly that she might not even notice the incremental changes. Likewise, no happily married person contacts a lost love and next thing you know, it's an affair. It's a gradual "falling" into it, an accidental falling into a pit, before she or he is conscious of and can admit that an emotional affair is taking place.

Fact: #7:  Many people who contacted lost loves reported that they made contact because they had a vivid dream about the person. But these dreams mean nothing. A dream cannot rightly inform a person to abandon a marriage and go to a lost love, but that is what many of my research participants believe happened to them. The dreams may begin obsessive thinking, but that is not an an excuse to have an affair: "The dream made me do it"?

(see also http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sticky-bonds/201112/lost-love-dreams-sign-or-only-dream)

Fact #8: Some lost love rekindlers said they had just been curious, or "wanted closure." There is no closure. Even when the reunions end badly, most people always love the aspects of that old flame, that young love, from years ago. They might be able to accept that the lost love romance will never work for them, but that probably will not close all the old feelings. If someone is married or in a committed relationship, he or she may have to learn to live with those feelings, accept them as part of having a life's history, and dismiss them as "old stuff" each time they come up. Not easy.

(see also http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sticky-bonds/201201/therapist-suggests-getting-closure)

Fact #9: Is there a way to prevent at least some of the problems that reunions cause? Yes. If people are educated to understand that lost love contacts can be emotionally dangerous. If people are wary and guarded, they will not "fall" into love.

Fact #10: It is important to tell the spouse about the contact, right from the beginning. If a married person is contacted by a lost love, the old flame may have written with innocent, although naive, intentions. As long as the married person is guarded and stays sure that he or she is not interested in resuming anything, one or two emails, known to the spouse, of catching up on the years apart probably won't hurt. If the married person does not want to tell the spouse and writes secretly, that is not innocent: it is preserving the right to secrecy and preserving whatever comes of it. That is a recipe for an extramarital affair and all the heartache that will come of it.

Fact #11: My newest survey research indicates that the likelihood that people will leave their marriages to marry their lost loves is about 5%. Everyone in these affairs thinks that he or she will be one of the lucky couples. Along with the teen love, teen thinking strategies, like denial, egocentrism and uniqueness, seem to come back, too: "It can't happen to me. I won't get caught cheating. I am careful." The truth is that if people stay in the affairs, they will be discovered. Happy outcomes for lost love affairs are rare.

Fact #12: Everyone in a lost love reunion has a context, a life's history. Teen idealism is appropriate in adolescence, when the lost love is all yours and yours alone. But during adulthood, there are spouses, (adult) children, friends, careers, community standing, feelings about right and wrong, religious observance, and financial assets -- to name just a few -- to lose, and all that baggage to take on from your lost love, who will have an ex-spouse for you to deal with, new step-children for you, an angry group of friends and family, and usually financial worries.

Sometimes people daydream about what might have been, years ago, if the teen romance had never ended. But make no mistake: there is no do-over. You can never return to adolescence. Even for successfully reunited couples, life has intervened.

Copyright Nancy Kalish, Ph.D.

All rights reserved.