Should I contact him?

[LucyLampLady]

OK - so here I am, happily married for 19 years, 3 lovely kids, and having a long overdue clearout. I come across a few pictures of my first love - everyone has one - and it sets me wondering what he's up to now. I know he isn't on Friends Reunited as I've already checked out all my friends on there - who hasn't? - and therefore assumed he wasn't interested in hearing from former schoolfriends. But something prompts me to Google him ... and there he is, grinning out at me from his company website, having found great success on the other side of the Atlantic! However, the only information provided is professional - I've no idea if MFL is married or has kids. There is a work e-mail address provided, but something stops me from sending the "hi, how are you" message - after all, I haven't seen him since 23 years ago when we arranged to meet for a brief chat in London. Even that was about four years after the relationship ended (amicably but with some wistfulness on my part), we had kept in touch until then and planned to continue to do so. However after that last meeting my life changed completely, I met my husband later that year and I don't know where the time has gone since. I wouldn't want MFL to think I was trying to "start" something up, I simply want to catch up with his news. However, we are both different people now and I don't know how he would take such an approach after all these years.
I call upon your wisdom, ladies. Any ideas?

Leave him where he belongs - the past.

OMG that was quick, Hunkermunker! You're probably right - I just want to know! There is something about curiosity that just eats away at you...

Agreed, don't pick scabs so to speak, just live with whistful memories

Tears. It would only result in them.

Don't. Even. Think. About. It.

Fairly unanimous so far, then!

Tch. Email him. He's probably a smug no-mark. Or someone who might become a nice friend. Or he and his current parnter might become nice couple friends with you and your parnter. If your'e happy where youare then it's not going to make any difference. Now while i don't do monogamy or couplehood, my parenst recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a lot of their old teenage-days friends (ok the ones who were still alive) and all of them were quite amiable about the fact that some of them had previously gone out with some of each other's present-day husbands and wives. Nobody was notamiable about it, certainly. Having been madly in love with someone in the past is a bit like having been mad about Take That or the Bay City rollers - you might have fond memories but you have other stuff going on in your life that matters more.

Leave this where this belongs - in the past.

Your gut feelings are right here - don't send any message.

email him. i did a similar thing and didnt get a response but I dint want to be sitting in an old peoples home one day wishing I had made contact with mfl to see what he was up to. You only have one life, if you want to contact him than do it in my opinion

i think you should leave it.

LLL,sorry to stick my bib in again here. I know what you are feeling. I've been happily in the same relationship for 16 years (12 married) but I got very close to a work collegue about 6 years ago, fell AOT for him. Should have known better cos it ended messily and he left the area as an indirect result.

I still think about him and, though I hate to admit it, probably still carry a torch for the idiot. I could contact him quite easily through the company he works for but...It would only cause upset and hurt for me and as a knock on, DH.

I said my goodbyes with dignity when he moved away at Christmas. I feel, despite emotional tuggings, it is better to draw a fond line under it all and leave it to the past and pleasant memories.

OK - definitely seven to two against so far! Thanks for all your advice and ideas. However, grouchyoscar, the situation is not quite the same as yours. After all, I knew this guy years before I even met DH, have never looked at anyone else since then and am certainly not contemplating starting something up now. And even if I were, there is the small matter of several thousand miles or so which would make things a bit difficult! As regards Sitting Bull's comments, I became very good friends with an old flame of DH who lived abroad - we stayed with her and her husband several times and kept in touch until sadly she died of cancer a few years ago. Both DH and I were naturally very upset by that and have kept in touch with the widower, who is now fortunately settled with someone else. Anyway, to the case in point, DH has always been open about previous relationships before me, but for some reason never asks me about mine and I certainly don't feel inclined to volunteer the information. Perhaps I should follow your suggestion and see what he says !

At the moment I am still veering towards Lupo's and Madamez's thinking. Though he certainly isn't (or wasn't!) a "smug no-mark". If it was any of the other men I'd been out with I would probably turn completely cold at the thought of contacting them, but this guy always respected me and was very kind and thoughtful - just extremely practical about breaking things up when the time came for university etc. After all we didn't have text messages, MSN etc. in those days! He always ended his letters with the words "stay in touch" so I can't think why I didn't, other than that I was too busy. I just look at how successful he is now and remember how I was there right at the start when he was being rejected by uni after uni and eventually getting in on "clearing". I suppose what I really want to say is "glad it worked out for you".

Anyway, I won't do anything yet. I'll think about it for a bit longer. I've also managed to track down a mutual friend from those days (who may or may not still be in touch with MFL) - perhaps that might be a better way of finding out more?

I think you very clearly do want to e-mail him and you can tell me I'm wrong but it's my view that people who are 100% happy in the present relationship can't really be bothered trying to make contact with an ex who they havent seen for the best past of a quarter century. I believe you are after a little nostalgia trip as opposed to catching up with his news to date to be honest. Not saying you want anything to happen with him but if he contacted you out of the blue this way what would your thoughts be?

By the way, I'm not criticising, I personally would probably e-mail him. I am married and everything but still miss the jolt that a bit of excitement such as this can give. I was contacted by my first boyfriend 3 years ago - he put a note through my mums door - asking me to phone so we could 'catch up'. That led to a year long frisson that was wonderfully stomach-fluttering to start and excruciatingly painful at the end.

I should have left well alone. As much as we felt like teenagers again together, I had a husband and child and was basically a different person. He was single, having never got over me (HE SAID - typical BS-ing bloke!!).

In my experience I would say only contact him if you TRULY don't have a emotional interest in him.

It depends... if you care for him as a good friend he was email him. If you have the slightest hint of idealisation for him or you may be wondering if he is still as _ he was then (fill the blank with the characteristic you loved more of him) LET IT REST

Don't bring ghosts back into your life, no need, no benefit. And who knows, perhaps you don't care but then you ruin his life because he is not yet over you and have a hyper jealous wife?

It is not worth it.

Please don't do it!

Crystalpony, you are right to say this is some kind of nostalgia trip. Even though I think early forties is possibly a bit soon for a mid-life crisis, it does come as a shock when you realise that things you always thought of as happening just "a few years back" are actually half a lifetime away! I think, perhaps, that what is attractive is the prospect of talking to someone who knew me long before I embarked on the years and years of domesticity - running around ferrying children from A to B, washing, cooking, cleaning, etc. etc. OK - so perhaps I should get out more. Not that I would have my life turn out any differently, but sometimes its nice to escape into other times when - perhaps - I didn't feel under such constant pressure. (The rose-tinted glasses of memory conveniently fade the stress caused by exams, rows with parents, etc.) I guess John Lennon hit the nail on the head when he wrote "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

I thought about Crystalpony's question as to how I would feel if MFL contacted me the same way. Well, if he googled my maiden name (the only name he knows me by), he would get a shock as that exact name is shared by a successful - how can I put this delicately - "glamour" model. I would need to get quite a bit of work done to look like that !!! However there is no chance of us actually meeting in the way you did with your ex - I can't even make it as far as the shops without needing to explain my absence, let alone the other side of the Atlantic!

Chandra, yes - I do care for him as the friend he once was. I think that perhaps you get better at spotting the good qualities in people as you grow older, and with the benefit of hindsight it's easy to regret losing touch with people who meant a lot to you in your youth and perhaps helped to shape the person you became. I suppose that's why site such as Friends Reunited are so successful...! (That and natural curiosity, of course !)

I promise not to do anything rash. Thanks for sharing all your thoughts, warnings and experiences. After nearly a quarter of a century, I think I can resist this impulse for a while longer and will let you know what I decide soon.

LLL

"I can't even make it as far as the shops without needing to explain my absence, let alone the other side of the Atlantic!".

Can you explain further?

Attila, there was nothing sinister in my comment. It's just that, with so many people depending on you, you can't just disappear off somewhere for a few hours without a)having to arrange a babysitter, b)taking the kids along or c)asking DH (assuming he's home from work) if he wants anything picked up from the shops while I'm out... I'm sure I'll have more freedom in the future when the kids are older, but it's a long time since I've been able to simply come and go as I please... (Same applies to DH to some extent, but he works long hours and is away quite a lot so probably wouldn't really understand IYSWIM)

What would your dh say if you got in touch with him - would you be planning to tell him and let him know the response you get?

If you feel you can do this openly without rocking the boat in your current relationship (assuming its a good one), then if you feel its important to you do it. If you can't tell dh, I wouldn't do it.

For what its worth, I had wondered about what my first love was doing (although for dh's sake would never have contacted him) and then completely out of the blue I met him in a petrol station many miles from where we both lived. He wanted to hug me and chat about what we were both doing - I found that I felt he was someone from the past that I did not want intruding in my current life and left as quickly as possible! So if you do get in touch, be prepared for no response.

It was definately a nostalgia thing for me - that's why I responded to his note - and for him as well I suppose. Like I said, the time we spent together, we felt like teenagers again, it was as if the years in between had never happened...but it wasn't real life..my real life was waiting at home for me.

Yes, it was exciting and wonderful to feel something so familiar with another person but ultimately it was a bit hollow and pretend if you see what I'm saying.

I totally get where you're coming from as you can see.

Goosey, the honest answer is that I don't know what DH would say. As I said earlier, we've never really discussed what went on in my life before I met him, except when it related to our first few years together (e.g. deciding which friends to invite to the wedding, write to at Christmas, etc.) By bringing it up now, it might sound as though I'm trying to make it more significant than it is, iyswim. However, in the interests of honesty and no secrets, I might find a way of tactfully sounding him out. I don't think "Did you have a good day? Oh, by the way, I want to get in touch with someone I went out with five years before meeting you" is quite the right approach - however I'm not sure what is!

Crystal - yes, I think you really can see where I am coming from. I think the problem is that it's simply too EASY nowadays just to click a few buttons and possibly unleash havoc! The correspondence stopped simply because we lost touch and I either never had the time or considered it worth the effort to find out where he had gone. Yet what required dozens of phone calls and letters back then, can be done now simply by entering a name on Google. And then to see that person there - with a way of getting in touch that doesn't even demand the effort of going to the post office or picking up the phone...Having said that, if it had turned out that he lived in the next town, or even simply in the same country, I think I would feel completely differently.

Im another in the dont do it camp. Its interesting that you wouldnt do it if he lived near you and there was a chance you could actually meet, is this because you wouldnt feel comfortable meeting him? And if not why not if it is as innocent as you say?

Would you mind if your dh contacted his FL?

Maybe I am just more suspicious than some, or would always think there was more to it than pure innocent nostalgia but I wouldnt like it. It would make me feel dh wasnt happy with me and was looking for something else.

Or maybe its just that I would rather stick pins in my eyes than meet any of my exes again

Sorry for the hijack, but can I ask, how do you google someone, I have typed names in and never seem to find anyone I know, is there a special way to do it?

Kezza, if you put it like that, I don't think I would mind if it was innocent. Trouble is, DH isn't the sort to get in touch with any old friends of either gender. I don't know whether it's a "man" thing! The only girl he did get in touch with was the one I mentioned earlier, and since they never actually lost touch and were still friends when I met him, it hardly seemed fair to veto that relationship - especially as she became my friend as well and would probably still be if her life had not been so tragically cut short.

Deegward - it helps if the person you are googling has a slightly unusual name (as in the case of MFL) and doesn't share their name with someone in the public eye or famous for some other reason, as in the case of my maiden name (see my earlier post!), or is a character in a book or film. If that is the case, you get millions of hits and have to narrow them down somehow - perhaps by using any other clues about the person and including these words in the search line with the name. For example if you are looking for someone called Michael Jackson and you know he studied medicine and lives in Cheshire, you could search for ...Michael Jackson doctor Cheshire... - of course this approach only works sometimes.