Lifestyle

Sparks fly when you meet your old flame

LOVE: Memories of first love are more addictive than any drug and many adults find themselves powerless to resist when the sparks fly and they fall once again for childhood sweethearts.

First loves are indelibly etched into our minds, scientists say, but they warn that rekindling that old flame could have lasting, irreversible consequences, tearing apart marriages and leaving a trail of devastation.

"It's not your average affair," said Nancy Kalish, a California State University-Sacramento psychologist, who has studied such relationships for 14 years. "It goes from the phone to the hotel. It's that quick."

Jeannie T. knows the feeling. "It was like lightning struck when we saw each other," she said, after bumping into sweetheart Ben at a 40th school reunion in Joplin, Missouri some months ago.

They hadn't seen each other since Ben waved goodbye on a train platform in 1965 as he shipped off to Vietnam, but as soon as they saw each other again, the sparks flew. "He knelt down at my side and told me that leaving me was the hardest thing he had ever done," said Jeannie, now a Florida real estate agent.

Panic set

A kind of panic set in, said 60-year-old Jeannie. "I needed to tell him what he meant to me."

However, she missed her chance at the reunion, when Ben's wife of 37 years strolled in on their confession. That's where the Internet came in.

Mike T., Jeannie's husband of 13 years, says as soon as his wife returned from the reunion, she and Ben were burning up the Internet, first by email and then via text messaging.

Researchers say their experiences are typical of adolescent sweethearts who fall head-over-heels in love again decades later.

Adolescent hormones carve those first loves into our brains, said Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of the book "Why We Love". The lost love's voice or touch triggers wanting, needing, craving in the same spots in the brain as those affected by cocaine.

Sound like addiction?

"It is more powerful than addiction," said Fisher.

Adolescent romance

Donna Hanover knows the feeling. After being dumped by her husband Rudolph Giuliani, now running for president, she found another love, rekindling an adolescent romance after 30 years. She says she felt "an immediate chemistry between us, just as there had been when we were kids".

She has published her story with 49 others, including clothing designer Nicole Miller, actors Carol Channing and Suzanne Pleshette in "My Boyfriend's Back".

However, reunion romances can quickly turn sour if both partners are in other relationships, Kalish said, warning that often it is the spouses who suffer the fallout. And the Internet is adding to the already heady mix.

A study by Kalish in 1997, "Lost Found Lovers," revealed that widows and divorcees usually reunited with their Prince Charmings through some chance meeting.

Then came the Web. Now "a flood of extra-marital affairs" aided by an era of cheap air travel and abetted by Internet search engines are wreaking havoc on many marriages.

All you need do is click - innocently or not - on a sweetheart's listing on classmates.com, reunion.com, or other websites.

"He writes, then she writes - and you've got a problem," Kalish said.

First love

In a study she carried out in 2004-2005 of 1,600 couples who had found their first love again, she discovered that 62 percent were married to other people - up from just 30 percent in the pre-Internet years.

Jeannie's husband, Mike, also turned to the Web when he learned of his wife's affair, and realized he's not alone out there.

"The lost-love people seem to have a tremendous sense of entitlement to do what they want and screw everyone else," said Mike, 58, a media professional.

Mike and Jeannie agree that a year ago, they had a good marriage and are in counselling to save it, but Jeannie confesses to still being torn between the two men.

The only insurance against these emotional train wrecks is to avoid that first email. "It's like having that first potato chip," Kalish counsels.

As for high school reunions, Jeannie's advice to spouses is: "Go with them."

AFP

Furore over a kiss

MORALS: Two women politicians of Pakistan and Afghanistan recently got themselves into hot water by their conduct deemed unIslamic by the rulers and clerics of these strict Islamic nations.

The Pakistan politician had raised the hackles of some Ulemas by submitting herself to a kiss by a parachutist instructor after a successful jump by the duo in a fund raising 'stunt' for the country's earthquake victims while her Afghan counterpart ruffled more than a few feathers by calling her male colleagues animals.

Both quit their Ministerial posts in the wake of the stir their actions kicked up among their hardline minions.

It was only the other day that Hindi actress Shilpa Shetty raised a furore among conservative Hindus by allowing herself to be passionately kissed by Hollywood star Richard Gere during an AIDS fundraiser in Bombay.

Both episodes only went on to demonstrate, that the Kiss has no soft spot yet among the Hindu and Muslim zealots although both countries have absorbed many imperialist legacies with gusto.

There is no indication of the political antecedents of the Pakistani woman parachutist Minister whether she rose through the ranks to become the first woman Tourism Minister of Pakistan or if she was parachuted to the post from nowhere. If it was the latter it certainly is a huge come down tantamount to being crash landed which the kiss of the instructor would not have made any sweeter.

The parachute episode would certainly have sent its own reverberations here in sunny in Sri Lanka. It would have been viewed with some trepidation by the many political parachutists over here -especially those who have been catapulted to power via the National list.

It is bound to be treated as a bad omen especially among those who adorn top Ministerial posts. There could even be offerings made to the deities to spare them falling with a thud from their pedestals- or being ejected, like the woman parachutist.

They certainly would not want to meet with the same fate of their Pakistani counterpart -kiss or no kiss. In this, however they can take heart from the fact that there is no tradition of stepping down from office here like in Pakistan.

There would be no resigning until one day they resign themselves to their fate when they land themselves on their belly. If at all the parachute episode may force them to cling on to their posts with more vigour. Who would want to let go the grip on power.

They would however make common cause with their Afghan counterpart who called her fellow colleagues animals given the bovine remarks made by Lankan politicians and the frequency with which the names of the inhabitants of the wild are invoked during Parliament debates.

Why, some of our MPs bear the nom-degurre of many varieties of the four legged with one them likened to an iguana. The ex Afghan woman MP surely would be the toast of our own politcos.

Rambler