A week before I graduated from college, I found my lost love. Matt was my first real boyfriend. We first met when I was just eleven and he was thirteen. I was begining the 7th grade and was instantly smitten with him. We did not meet at school though. I lived with my dad and my sister and the summer before Jr. High my cousin Chris came to live with us - he was a bit of a rebellious kid. My father was a 911 dispatcher and worked the graveyard shift (10pm-7am) so we were alone all night every night. My cousin started having parties after my dad left for work and all of the kids would sneek out and come to our house. This explains my first hang over at eleven.
Anyway, that is how I met Matt he came to one of our parties. I was so in love. Wow, the emeotions a person feels at such a young age are so overwhelming. But, they are pure. Our song was "Lovesong" by The Cure and he use to play the piano for me and sing over the phone. When Matt was 16 he decided to go live with his mom - 8 hours away. God, I was so crushed, but I delt with it. He still spent hollidays with his dad and always came to see me. We swam in his dads pool, went to the beach to see fireworks on the 4th of July, and just drove around for hours talking. But as time marched on we lost track of each other and for the last nine years I did not even know if he was alive, his family had long since moved out of town. I spent years looking for him online, through mutual friends and I even paid for one of those 1-800-US Search - things. And still nothing.
But I found him! In May when I was filling out graduation invitations I decided to just look one more time and this time he had a listed phone number. As luck would have it, he was single, still loved me and neither of us had ever been married. So here we are fifteen years later and things could not be better. It is just such and awesome ending - i just had to share it. Here are some photos of us over the years:
Jr. High 1989:
High School Years:
Lately:
Yeah and here is my cousin Chris:
Also I found this interesting article about reunited lost loves:
Dr. Nancy Kalish can discuss Puppy Loves, High School Sweethearts, Reunited Lost Lovers
Subject: New Research Shows the Power of First Love
From: Nancy Kalish, Ph.D.
Most of us think of our "first love" from time to time; we may even pine over "the one who got away," or wonder "what might have been." Lost love is a timeless theme, immortalized in fiction through countless songs, plays, movies, and television shows. Nancy Kalish, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at California State University, Sacramento, has been conducting research on this topic, publicized as the Lost Love Project, for 8 years. This is an international landmark study of 1500 people (and growing) who tried a reunion with a lost love 5 or more years after their separation. Dr. Kalish is the author of the only nonfiction book about reunited couples, first loves, and high school sweethearts: Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances (Morrow, 1997). New data are available now. And Kalish is completing a second book. It is one thing to think about a lost lover, but quite another to try a reunion; yet Dr. Kalish has found that it is common for people to attempt to reunite with an old flame. Perhaps her most surprising finding is that these romances are wildly successful. 72% of the Lost Love Project couples reported that they were still together at the time of the survey. If they had been first loves, 78% of them were still together. One man wrote:"Just wanted you to know that I have never been happier in my entire life!! We've been married ten years now, and it still feels like we're on our honeymoon! I have never been more relaxed, more secure, more honest, or more loved." In her research, Dr. Kalish found that most participants, regardless of their current ages, went back to someone they had loved when they were 17 or younger. Two-thirds of the couples had been first loves. One woman described her reunion:"We were two fifty year olds acting like love-starved sixteen year olds...We danced together right there in the airport and thirty-some years melted away."The reasons the young romances had ended were situational -- moved away, too young, went into the military. The second time around, the original roadblocks were gone: "I was twelve and my Lost Lover was fourteen. We shared a first kiss. He was afraid of my parents, who were very strict. He left for the military, but I had a crush on him even after fifty years." The most common reason by far for the break ups was "parents disapproved" and forced them apart. Resentment and bitterness towards their parents often grew over the years, as they regretted the time that they had lost, including the opportunity to have children together. Kalish's research confirms the importance of "puppy love" and should be required reading for parents of teenagers who are dating. Dr. Kalish has noticed changes in her population since she began her work in 1993: most participants are now coming from the Internet, and a high proportion of these rekindled romances are extramarital affairs.