When I wrote to advise not contacting a lost love to get "closure," I was focusing on all the married people who contact me, who think about their lost loves but do not have any intent to leave their marriages. Contact opens up more than it closes.
But what if someone is single and knows the lost love is single?
Several of my research participants (men) confided to me that the night before their wedding, they were in a hotel room with their lost loves, having sex, crying and "saying goodbye." And next day, they got married to an unsuspecting new spouse! Others (women) said they walked down the aisle thinking about their long lost loves and wishing they were marrying them.
What happens? A few years later, they contact their lost loves and begin affairs. They have very young children by this time. They wonder if they should divorce, and thrust toddlers into commuting between two different families? Or should they painfully end the romance with the lost love once again? Part 1 on closure: don't contact the lost love if you are married and want to stay married.
But, all this heartache probably could have been avoided. While still single — even if engaged to others, even if wedding invitations are in the mail, before the hotel, before walking down that aisle —people should seek resolution.
Break off the engagement, ask for a time out, tell the fiance/fiancee you have unresolved feelings and you need to contact the lost love and see where it goes. Yes, you might lose the fiance/fiancee; but you have respectfully given your new love all the information. And if you don't do this, if you marry and the feelings return, you are in trouble and probably in an affair. You are doing a disservice to your spouse-to-be by loving someone else and not telling them ahead of time, and it won't do you any good if the lost love comes back in a few years, either.
So, while two lost loves are still single, instead of trying to repress this love, see if it's possible to rekindle the romance. If it's not, then you have your answer on "what might have been," and you can work through the loss and marry a new love. If you can rekindle, you've saved collateral damage to spouses you might have had and children you might have had with that spouse, and you will have the marriage partner you truly love.
Life can be more complicated than this, but why not try the least detrimental alternative first?
Copyright Nancy Kalish, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
