the "trap" of going through your mental rolladex of "men from my past"

[Svina]

Hello.

I have been separated from my partner of 10 years for 6 month (and 6 months trial separation before that).

I have recently started to be interested in having a love life again. Although the idea of being intimate with anyone other than my ex is still wierd.

Every now and then I recall someone lovely from my past and wonder if they would be a suitable person to date now. Now that we are all 10 years older, etc.

Can you remind me of the pitfalls of this strategy in dating?

Thanks

Aside from the crunching disappointment of tracking one of them down and finding they are paunchier, balder and more boring you mean?

how about asking why the person you married 10 years ago and thought was the one is not the one now?

In my case i married 14 years years ago and separated 18th months ago. In my case my ex said she had fallen out of love.

So what did i want in a new partner.

In no particular order,

I wanted:
someone who had similar (or better level of intelligence)
someone i found attractive
someone who made me laugh
someone open and honest. ie not be afraid to tell me when i was being an idiot

As i'm 6 foot four i thought i wanted a taller woman (ie 5 foot 8 or higher) but girlfriend of last 11 months is 5 feet four that turned out not to be a deal breaker.

I thought a woman with maximum of two kids (again girl friend has three kids) and its not been a an issue

Someone who realized that as i had two children fifty per cent of the time to respect my wishes that they would not meet kids for approx 3 to 6 months. And that i could not meet up four or five nights a week.

Someone who was not looking to be "kept" by me.

Someone who had not ended previous relationship due being caught having an affair.

Similar age (plus or minus five years)

Did not want kids

The person i am with now we joke about that if we had met twenty years previously we would have ignored each other (we happened to be at same university but never met or had friends in common). She said back then she was interested in the cool guys and i would have been too "geeky".

No matter what the above "wish list" may have started out as it boils down to "someone i look forward to seeing/getting a text from/speaking to) . If the person is right for you you'll know it.

Its like asking what kind of house i would like to live in. I may answer Nice Victorian house with cellar, garden, original features, four bedrooms, garage. But can i be as happy in small three bedroomed cottage with a smaller garden, no garage. With the right person
yes. :-)

Yes, cogito!, I'm sure there are other reasons too!

My ex was not for me because we don't have enough interests or attitudes in common.

I'll go away and think about what I am looking for....

It depends what '10 years ago' represents in terms of where you were in your life. If 10 years ago made you a teenager/twenty-something, for example, and things were very carefree then your old flames from that time may symbolise nostalgic ideas of lost youth or unfinished business rather than being appealing themselves per se. I was only semi-joking about the paunches and loss of hair. My (very enthusiastic) old flame hook-up also turned out to have a wedding ring and a brood of kids. LOL!

Another pitfall is that you're probably not the same person you were 10 years ago either. You probably want different things.

not long after seperating from my DH, I was perusing the work internal directory online to find a colleague's number.......whoa! There was my first love from 20 years ago....had started working at the same uni as me. Being a mischievous imp, remembering he hadn't covered himself in glory exactley, and also confidant that i have worn well if not better over the years, i "accidentally" bumped into him one day. Oh the satisfaction....kept it very short and sweet, "oh hello? Good lord, what are you doing here?? Hope all's well etc etc, must dash, got a meeting to go too, nice to see you!" (no offer from me of coffee or any sort of social reunion) His face was a picture. Shocked, said I looked great, i returned the compliment...whislt actually thinking "jeez you don't, you look like you face is melting off.....)......i think the lesson i learnt was "never go back"

I have been single for a couple of years now, and I still do this with exes. It took me ages to get over the split with my ex, I am still building up my self esteem, and I feel that I cannot be arsed with all the getting to know you stuff, and having to jump in at the deep end and trust someone new with no previous credentials whatsoever seems very scary.

I know that eventually I am going to have to take the plunge and put my trust in someone I barely know again if I don't want to spend the rest of my life having just the occasional shallow fling, but for now, I find myself dreaming at night of lovely men from my past. I have tried to examine why I do this, and I think it is because they provide a safe space for me to indulge fantasies of what it would be like to be in a relationship again. I don't have to prove myself to them, they already know my character flaws and how fabulous I really am underneath it all and accept me, and my wobbly bits, fully with no exception.

I also view it as part of my moving on process - one day I will be able to graduate on to real, available men in the hear and now hopefully.

When I started dating after a very traumatic split I decided I had only a few criteria:

• muct make me laugh
• must be solvent
• must not be minging

You wouldn't believe how hard it is just to find those three things in a man!!

Thank you all so much for your replies....

Veronica I thought it was only me! I think you are right about the safeness of exes.... I have 2 children and do not wish to introduce men to them at all who I don't completely trust, and people you have known for a long time certainly feel safer....

Cogito.. Yes. I think there may be an element of nostalgia .... but also I think it might be helpful that I have moved on, grown up (and they have too) one guy I am thinking of was significantly older than me, so didn't take me seriously as a love prospect (quite sensibly) that is a dynamic that will have changed now ( although he is still a lot older than me of course!)

That is just an example... I kind of think well it didn't happen when we were 20, but we're different people now, sooooo?

Wallaby, that's a funny story! It's good to be the one in control of the situation, isn't it!

Bit out of practise.... So are you saying don't knock these men from the past? They all fit those 3 criteria, and a fourth one.... I might still fancy them!

Pitfalls? Read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby if you haven't already, that should sort you out.

Ok, I'll look for it in the library. Is it funny?