Oh, Oh — Here Come The Former Beaux!

What do you do when the boys from your past show up?

Facebook makes it easy.

So does Google.

So I’m now back in touch with three men I was crazy about in my early 20s, each of whom found me. They all live far away and one is happily married — I’ve been with my sweetie for eleven years.

Much has been made of the midlife nostalgia that prompts us to want to re-connect with the men and women who once made us swoon and indulge — certainly in my case — in some interesting behaviors.

One of the men, now a stolid, solid educator, was a hopelessly romantic redhead when we met, a mass of walking muscle training, he hoped, for the Olympics as a rower. I’d never seen anyone eat so much or so often!

Nor had any man, before or since, sent me a bouquet of flowers so enormous that I couldn’t see the deliveryman’s head. “I’m not dead!” I said, when I saw the mass of red roses. What an astonishing, lovely gesture from a fellow college student. I always wondered what had happened to him and was happy to hear how nicely his life has turned out since then.

Another man is a doctor, never married.

The third is a man I lived with in my 20s, who proposed, (and I refused), then went on to date and marry a woman working for the same company, where we all saw one another every day.  Not fun! I would overhear her in the cafeteria gloating about their upcoming wedding. Even if I didn’t want to marry X, we had still spent several tumultuous years together.

Now, hard to believe but I’m fine with it, we’ve become Facebook friends after he reached out to me. He’s divorced, still good friends with his ex, his kids now adults. We live in different countries, so I have little concern this is a flame being re-lit, more of a mid-life reassurance that we’re not forgotten, that our shared memories still carry some currency.

I have no intention of zipping off into the sunset with them or exchanging steamy, longing emails.

But I am glad to reconnect with men who once loved me and who I loved in return. There weren’t that many!

Here’s an interesting post from my ex True/Slant blogging colleague Marjie Killeen about the dangers of re-connecting via Facebook.

Have you reconnected with a former beau/belle — or several?

Or vice versa?

How’s that working out?