Dating an Old Flame

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Visitor's Question:
I am not seeing anybody at the moment and am quite happy with my life. I think it would be nice to have a committed relationship with a compatable person, but do not want to get involved with anybody just to spend time or have fun.

My very first boyfriend, of when I was 22 years old, has always kept in touch with me for years. We spent 3.5 years together and had a good realtionship (relative to that age), but it ended up him cheating on me. He did apologise many times right after the incident, but at the time I was too hurt to forgive him. He wanted to get back many times in the year following the incident and I rejected him all the time. Then we grew older, he moved to another city, I changed jobs and we both started to be with new partners. In the years since I had other lovely relationships which all ended in varios ways and for different reasons. All those years, I always got birthday and new years greetings from the first boyfriend and sometimes a phone call once a year... I changed places and moved to different countries and he did likewise and in the end, for a whole year I did not hear anything from him. For the first time since we broke-up, this year I sent him a new years greeting, very brief and distant, not really knowing why I did that... he replied and asked me to marry him! I thought he should be joking so dismissed the question and kept writing friendly emails. He repeated the question in the following email where I replied that the answer depended on the seriousness of the question and asked him when he was planning to be back in the country (he is living abroad)... he answered that the answer to my question depended on my answer to his question...

...a couple of months passed without communication and when I wrote to say hi, he repeated his wish to see me and invited me over. He also said he would make sure to see me when he is around in my city.

I am not sure if I should take him seriously and spend the effort to know him better, or if I should just leave things as they are, play it along and see what would come out... The bad news is I am curious about his approach and do think about him... I have not seen him for six years... I also wonder why I am interested in him after all these years, could I really be interesed in him?

Our Suggestion:
There's a reason that all those Classmates ads are so popular - it's because people often maintain dreams and fantasies about people they dated when they were younger :) There is a lot to be said for having shared experiences, for having known each other for a while. You aren't going to have to tell each other all the basics again. You already know each others histories. You know each other in 'better and worse' situations. You know what you're like when you're grumpy. You know what makes each other laugh. It makes the whole initial dating process easy.

Yes, he cheated on you back then - but that was MANY years ago. You can allow that he has grown and matured since then. He is now looking for a stable relationship. Apparently so are you. Now of course it's important not to think that life going forward will be all rosy and perfect. It's easy over the years to focus on the good times and completely ignore the bad times.

So I would certainly start back up with him - but go in with open eyes. Simply marrying right away would be silly! But if you start "dating" again, you can see how it goes. If you were that fond of him in the past, it would seem you are generally compatible. Maybe you might be even more fond of him now, now that you both have grown up and matured some.

--Your Friendly Advisors at RomanceClass.com

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