Rekindling a lost love as a senior

The high success rate for rekindled romances suggests that older adults who are lonely or reluctant to date strangers should consider pursuing an old flame. However, seniors should be warned that there are risks and stumbling blocks.

By 2005, two-thirds of my new survey participants were in extramarital affairs. Seniors were no exception. Most of the extramarital affairs started with innocent email exchanges; usually the adults who initiated the correspondence were divorced or widowed but found that their lost loves were married. Neither of them planned to become involved in an affair, but the correspondence escalated quickly: email led to phone calls, and the vocal reconnection led to a face to face meeting, which usually began an affair.

Because they were brought up in an era when premarital and extramarital sex was especially stigmatized, members of the World War II generation who were involved in affairs expressed shame and guilt to a greater extent than younger participants.

Affair or not, their adult children often disapproved. When parents were widowed, their children saw the old flames as interlopers. This is true in many second marriages, but rekindled romances bring special concerns: the old flame preceded the other parent. Even middle-aged children felt uncomfortable with that, as if the parent were telling them, “This is the person I should have married.”

In fact, some parents said this directly to their children, leaving them to wonder, “So then, I shouldn’t have been born?”

In addition, the middle-aged children were often protective. Many believed that the lost loves came back to their parents just to take their money. And they worried that their parents could not know this person anymore: after all, 50 years may have passed. Some adult children expressed being worried that a reunion was an indicator that their parents were senile, or at the very least, chasing a fantasy.

To make matters worse, these romances proceeded very rapidly. Elder lost loves feel they have wasted too many years without each other, that they have little time left in life, and they do not want to wait.

They married within months — or days — of reuniting. No wonder their middle-aged children were worried.

Rekindled romances have a different history and a different pace, they follow different rules and have better outcomes, than average romances. These are loves that were interrupted. For my oldest couple, the interruption lasted 75 years, and the happy marriage began on her 95th birthday.

By Prof Wamba www.lostlovespell.co.za