You never forget your first love, they say. And for some people, that may actually be true.

Psychologist Dr. Nancy Kalish stumbled on an interesting phenomenon when she embarked on her research on ``rekindlers'' in 1993.

Kalish's specialty was developmental psychology. Then a psychology professor at the University of California, she was casting about for a subject for a sabbatical project, and decided to find reunited couples and ask them about their experiences.

She did interviews with newspapers, radio and television stations, trying to find 65 reunited lovers. When word got out, she eventually attracted information from 1,001 rekindled couples from all over the world. She published a book, Lost & Found Lovers, in 1997.

``Readers said: `Thank you. We thought we were crazy,''' says Kalish, who still maintains a website for lost and found lovers. ``I was the happy topic of the day on Valentine's Day.''

The conclusions she drew from her research would make Cupid smile. In some cases, the ``lost love'' happened even before puberty, a couple who remembered playing happily on a beach as children, for example. In other cases, the rekindled loves were friends during adolescence, not sweethearts.

``That is not raging teenage hormones. That's comfort,'' says Kalish.

Most often, the young lovers were separated because of distance, or because their parents disapproved. Even though some of the rekindlers had been apart for decades, they were thrilled with their reunions.

Two-thirds reunited with lost loves from when they were 17 or younger. Of these, 78 per cent had a successful reunion. Overall, the success rate of reunions was 72 per cent. Of those who broke up, only a handful split over the same issues that caused the original rift.

What Kalish found next was not so happy. She embarked on a second study of reunited lovers in 2005 to 2006, eventually surveying 1,600 reunited couples.

These reunions were often disastrous. Many of these rekindlers were married and still plagued by memories of what might have been. ``There are loose ends, what psychologists call `ambiguous loss,''' she says.

``People who are married agonize over whether to leave their happy marriage to return to the lost love. They just can't let go of this lost love again.''

The infidelities, both emotional and physical, were devastating to spouses and families, says Kalish.

It wasn't any better for the rekindlers themselves. Only five per cent of the second group of rekindlers married. About half the people who had affairs said they had happy marriages before their reunions with lost loves. One was a clergyman who gave up his family and his calling for the lost love.

What was the difference between the two sets of rekindlers? When Kalish first started her work in the early 1990s, it sometimes took considerable effort for rekindlers to find each other. Often, those who were hunting for a first love had to go through a ``gatekeeper,'' such as a parent, before they could get contact information. It meant that few of those seeking a reunion were susceptible to having an affair. They were single, divorced or widowed, and free to reunite.

``If you're going to her elder dad for her phone number, you had better be single. He was the gatekeeper,'' says Kalish.

It's different now, with the Internet and Facebook. Even married people can search out photos and information in private. Newspaper articles, Facebook pages, blogs, they're all online and can be accessed secretly. Many saw no harm in succumbing to the temptation of reconnecting with the old flame.

But that is playing with fire, says Kalish. The lure of a lost love is a very powerful thing.

``If you are happy in your marriage, and don't want to lose it, don't even try,'' she warns. ``You get torn by two people.''

Neither does it offer closure to see that the lost lover has become fat, bald and boring. ``They fall in love all over again. They see the person they were. The 80-year-old man sees his 16-year-old girlfriend when he looks at his lost love.''

Rekindlers who make contact with an old flame sometimes buy cellphones for the sole purpose of connecting with loves, and discard them if things fizzle or they get close to being discovered.

They even have their own lingo. NC, for example, stands for ``no contact.'' It's a promise between the two former loves that they won't seek to contact each other for a cooling-off period. And it's a bad idea, warns Kalish, because it just keeps the flame of obsession burning.

Her advice? For married people who think often about a lost love, the healing has to come from within, and not from meeting the lost love. It might even require consulting a psychologist.

Betrayed spouses need to know that it's also not their fault, says Kalish. The betrayed often believe that the person having the affair will come to his senses. Most often, the men having an affair with their lost loves will remain with their wives. As a psychologist, Kalish says it's because men have different brains, and are able to compartmentalize their emotions. ``When push comes to shove, they tend to stay in their marriages.''

Kalish doesn't blame Facebook. ``Facebook doesn't book hotel rooms,'' she says.

As for single, married or divorced people searching for their lost loves, as long as both are free, why not?

``It's a wonderful thing if you're available. If you're not, it's a disaster, '' says Kalish.

She believes there is such a thing as true love.

``Of course, there is true love,'' says Kalish, who is divorced, ``because I saw it in my own family.''

Her own parents were married at 19 and 21. Her father, who had heart problems, was not supposed to live past 45. But he outlived three cardiologists, survived two heart attacks, a stroke and a kidney transplant and died at 85.

``He didn't want to leave my mother,'' says Kalish.

Ottawa Citizen

SIDEBAR

5 things you should know about lost love

1. Not everyone has a lost love. Dr. Nancy Kalish surveyed 1,600 random people who had no idea she was a reunion researcher. The vast majority had never tried and didn't even want to contemplate a reunion with their first loves. In fact, three-quarters said they were not interested. Some even wrote comments like, ``Hell, no! Who would want to do that?'' in the margins of the survey.

What was the difference between those who carried a torch for decades and those who said they wouldn't dream of getting back together? Many who rekindled their relationships later in life had broken up because of parental disapproval, because they were too young to get married, or because they had moved away. In the control group, the explanation for the first breakup were ``other'' reasons, such as abuse or infidelity. In these cases, the first love served as a model of the kind of person not to marry.

2. Men take longer to get over lost love. Kalish's surveys asked both men and women how long it took them to get over their lost loves. Her responses suggested that men took much longer. Some of the men were not even satisfied with the survey choices, which included ``over 10 years.'' Only men crossed out all the choices and wrote, ``I never got over my lost love!''

Many men also reported crying for weeks after they broke up with a high- school sweetheart. While more women post comments on her website, www. lostlovers.com, Kalish has more male subscribers.

3. People carry memories of lost young love into their golden years. More than half of Kalish's rekindlers reported reuniting with people they knew when they were under 17 years old. More than a quarter of the remaining rekindlers had reconnected with people they knew when they were 18 to 22. Some even reported reuniting with childhood friends.

When they reunited, 37 per cent were in their 40s and 50s, 10 per cent were in their 60s and 70s and four per cent were 80 or older. In one case, lost loves who had been separated for 75 years were remarried on the woman's 95th birthday.

By 2005, when Kalish was in the second part of her research, she noted that two-thirds of her participants were having extramarital affairs - even the seniors. Often, these relationships started with people who were divorced or widowed, who then contacted old flames who were still married. But Kalish also found that seniors were more likely to feel guilty or shameful about seeking out an old love.

4. There is no biological explanation for the ``stickiness'' of first love. There is no neurological or chemical chain of events that means there will always be a link between first loves, says Kalish. Neither is first love like ``imprinting'' ducklings, who become attached to their mother, or whatever moving objects happens to be closest to them in their first two days of life. If that were true, everyone's high-school sweethearts would be considered lost loves, and her surveys show that most people wouldn't even consider approaching their first romantic partners. There are a lot of teen couples who get married and then divorce, she points out.

Kalish has a simpler explanation. Reunions are most often successful if the couple was together during their formative years, if they dated a year or more, and had shared experiences, such as school or a circle or friends. Some of her rekindlers had reunions with old friends, not former sweethearts.

5. ``Puppy love'' can be real love.

Kalish advises parents against belittling teen love as ``puppy love.'' Many of her rekindlers broke up in the first place because their parents simply did not like the sweethearts.

``They were not in unhealthy relationships. Their parents had an unhealthy confusion of love and sex, worried that their teens' love had to be sexual,'' says Kalish.

Parents also tend to believe in the myth that teens should play the field, she says. But people don't learn intimacy by walking away and finding a ``better'' partner. ``That way, no one satisfies them, ultimately.''

Her advice: Unless the teen's sweetheart is abusive or dealing drugs, leave him or her alone.

``Young teens should be able to go out in a mixed group without parents getting upset, and a preteen who says she is `going with' someone may just mean they hold hands in the hallway and walk to class together.''

- Joanne Laucius