Memory is treacherous and more when it comes to love matters. The survival instinct makes us tend to remember only the best of our

Memory is treacherous and more when it comes to love matters. The survival instinct makes us tend to remember only the best of our relationships and put aside what led us to leave someone or someone to leave us. Except for traumatic ruptures or relationships in which for a matter of business or children in common or simple affinity, they have continued to have contact with the ex, studies and experts affirm that in this matter of love the second parts are good.

That in those cases memory does not usually play tricks on us and that if in a low moment or after a complicated breakup or when things with our current partner are regular, one tends to think about that love from college or that relationship from the first maturity is not by chance. Sometimes, experience, time and life changes make a couple who did not work 15 years ago can become the love of our life, the real ones.

A California State University study, led by Dr. Nancy Kalish, has shown that couples who get back together five years after separating have a 76% chance of staying together, compared to a 40% survival rate a marriage between people who have not been together before. And, as derived from the study, the mythical “first love” business seems to work because 55% had sought out the partners they had had at 17 or earlier , while 29% had been inclined to seek their partner. better half from when they were around 20 years old.

Indeed, there are a number of hugely successful websites dedicated to finding friends from the past and, obviously, also loves from adolescence or youth. This can be done on Facebook or Twitter, but there are others more specific and accurate such as Reunion , Classmates  or Friendster .

The sentimental consequences of reunions

Mara González , 47, married for two to her first boyfriend, admits that she found him thanks to the internet. In his case, the medium was Facebook. “I had just separated and the truth is that at 44 I was beginning to realize that I did not have many options to find a partner again,” he explains. “On the other hand, my self-esteem was on the ground, my ex had left with someone else and the last stage of the relationship had been hell.

Suddenly I started to remember Jaime Ortega, who had been a classmate with whom I had been dating from the first year of BUP until I went to Granada to study and he stayed in Malaga. I asked some classmates from the institute with whom I still had contact and in the end I located him on Facebook.

The first thing I looked at was if he was married and didn’t put anything on his status, so I wrote to him. Like ‘hello how are you, I happened to find you’ (I had spent almost a month looking for him, but I wasn’t going to tell him). We saw each other and after two months we were living together. Suddenly it was as if no time had passed, we got on well together. And the truth is, the break was due to the distance, because of nonsense, we didn’t even remember why we had really broken up. We have been married for two years and I have never been so happy. “Couples who get back together five years after separating have a 76% chance of staying together

The psychoanalyst Martín Alonso ensures that this type of reunion ends up working due to factors that of course have to do with the conscious, but also with the unconscious. “Normally we create a pattern of attraction towards someone”, he explains, “which does have to do with what we have learned, with qualities or defects that we see in our parents… but what usually remains forever is that of the first or first loves . People evolve, they have other partners, but surely if we think of the first person we date or with whom we fell in love (because here we must also include unfinished stories, where one fell in love but was not reciprocated) there are a series of traits that are repeated. Physical and / or psychological ”, he explains.

It is not so strange, therefore, that when you begin to review your life, you think of that first person you loved. “In my office,” Alonso continues, “many clients come – in the case of women, when they are around 40, and in the case of men, 10 years later – who when it comes to finding a love they name the one first .

Not everyone has the courage to look for it or if they are looking for it maybe they are happily married or gay, this has happened to me on more than one occasion … but I can say that when everything is favorable, it is very rare that this reunion does not end in a relationship . Idealization is important to establish bases that are later more realistic. But there is a feeling of having found your better half ”.

Constant source of jealousy

Indeed, these reunions are not always with people with whom they have been a couple, sometimes it is a platonic love. Such is the case of Emilio Álamo , 57, who six years ago conquered that teenager, a friend of his sister, with whom he was in love when he was in college. “I was 20 years old and Elisa She must have been around 16. She was a friend of my little sister and she came home a lot.

Elisa has always been very mature for her age. I read, I was clear that I was going to be a writer and I was studying journalism and the truth is that among girls my age I did not find too many with her concerns. I was madly in love with her, and when we met again, she confessed that she was too, but since she was so shy it never occurred to her to show it.

We talked for years, even when I went to do a master’s degree in London, we wrote to each other, but she started dating a boy, then she got married, I got married too and since I went to live outside of Madrid we totally lost contact. At my sister’s wedding we met again,We both went with our respective couples, but it was seeing each other and feeling something very special . A year later we had separated and we started living together. I could not explain it, but the truth is that during all those years it had not been out of my head. And apparently neither do I. ”

Dr. Alonso brings an interesting point of view on this matter. “One piece of information that I think is relevant to understand this matter,” he says, “is that many of the jealousy problems that exist in couples have to do with those first loves. It is something that the person recognizes is irrational.

Most of the time they occur without the couple having contacted that person, but there is something that makes us be on our guard. Among other things, we ourselves know how we feel about the one who gave us the first kiss. Sometimes even with that jealousy, we make the other remember that person more and that is what leads him to look for it. The love of youth is always present, so in the life of a couple it is no exception ”.

Ody Team

Ody Team is a qualified social media expert at Coding The Line, London. He had graduated from the University of Cambridge