What Happens in the Brain When You Reconnect with an Old Flame
After 15 years, a visit with my ex brought back fireworks, but not the type you might expect.
When I arrived at the swanky wine bar, there was only one open table — dimly lit and intimate. The booze, sexy music and candlelight felt like a callback to our first kiss 15 years before, almost to the day.
There was no sign of him, so I ordered a Chardonnay, two small plates and tried to focus on the novel I brought with me, ironically titled “What She Knew.” Instead I flashed back to our last meeting nearly a decade before.
We had just returned from a trip to Napa to scout wedding venues. After a heated kiss, I drove to my apartment 95 miles away.
Days later, I learned he had been cheating on me and ended our 6-year relationship, the best of my life up to that point, with a two-line email. He fired back with a litany of messages, which began with profanity and culminated in pleas.
“PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME … YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING,” he screamed through the screen.
He sent texts, letters, roses, and initiated countless hang up calls.
I never responded. I never told him a mutual friend confirmed my suspicions. I never considered reconciling.
Over the years we corresponded intermittently, but not about anything deep — and never to revisit our history. But when work took me to his hometown of Santa Barbara, I reached out and asked if he’d like to meet.
I’m happily married with kids. He’s engaged. What’s the harm? I thought.
Apparently my urge to reconnect with an ex makes sense. “The brain develops pathways based on learned patterns. So, if you laid down a powerful pattern that this person was your life partner, your brain retains traces of that circuitry, even after you’ve bonded with someone new,” says Love Researcher Helen Fisher, Ph.D., senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University.
Nevertheless, I struggled to understand why, even though it’s certainly not the case for everyone — especially those who have had toxic relationships — I felt so comfortable sitting across the table from someone who pulled the rug out from under me. Determined to get answers, I set out to uncover what happens in our brains when we reconnet with an old flame.
Laying Down a Template
I met Ben (not his real name) when we were both 26. We had a sweet, albeit star-crossed romance. He was an irrepressible free spirit, a dreamer, a romantic. I was an ambitious type A who played it safe. Like peanut butter and jelly, we complemented each other.
He was the first to make me dinner, teach me to surf in ice-cold waters and unlock the seemingly impenetrable fortress of my body. Together, we formed our identities and defined what love meant. In the process, he ingrained himself into my psyche.
Experts say the neurological attachment that happens between young lovers is not unlike the attachment a baby forms with its mother. Bonding hormones including vasopressin and oxytocin play a starring role in both scenarios.
If that person was your first, best or most intimate, the mark is even more indelible. Such preferential encoding is one reason why stories of people reconnecting with a high school or college flame are commonplace.
Experts say the person you have your first orgasm with, especially if that person cuddles with you afterward (which releases a flood of oxytocin), lays down a template for what you find attractive.
It goes something like this: According to a 2010 study published in The Journal of Neurophysiology, feelings of romantic love trigger the brain’s dopamine system, which drives us to repeat pleasurable experiences. The brain’s natural opiates help encode the experience, and oxytocin acts as the glue that helps forge those feelings of closeness.
“Oxytocin unleashes a network of brain activity that amplifies visual cues, odors and sounds,” explains Larry Young, a psychiatry professor at Emory University in Atlanta. That, plus the effects from your brain’s natural opiates and dopamine, and your romantic partner’s traits — strong jaw, piercing blue eyes, musky scent — leave a sort of neural fingerprint. Those preferences become soft-wired into your reward system, just like an addiction.
Even creatures prone to promiscuity, like rats, are often primed to revisit their first pleasure-inducing partner, according to a 2015 study. And it seems humans may follow a similar pattern.
Drawn to the Past
When Ben walked into the bar, I stood up, navigated my way toward him and gave him a big hug, standing on my tiptoes to reach his neck. My first thought: He bulked up! I felt like a doll enveloped in his 6’1” frame.
“Congratulations,” I whispered. “You look great!”
He puffed up with the compliment, that familiar sparkle gleaming in his eyes.
It was comfortable. Easy. Seeing Ben instantly reactivated the networks my mind encoded a decade before. Add a bear hug to the mix — and the accompanying flood of oxytocin — and my brain circuitry lit up like fireworks. Justin Garcia, the associate director for research and education at the Kinsey Institute, says that’s no surprise. Just like a recovering alcoholic craving a drink after decades of sobriety, we can still be drawn to an old lover.
“It doesn’t mean you still want to be with that person,” he says. “It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It means there’s a complex physiology associated with romantic attachments that probably stays with us for most of our lives — and that’s not something to be afraid of, particularly if you had a great run.”
Rose-Colored Memories
High school sweethearts typically meet, fall in love and dissolve before they hit 25, so their brains are still developing. I met Ben just as my brain’s frontal lobes were reaching maturity. In fact, once I began operating with a full mental deck, we were entering our final act.
By the time we split, my 32-year-old brain was viewing life in high definition. I wanted a family. He wanted freedom. We reached an impasse.
Today, our lives couldn’t be more disparate. He’d been living in a loop since I left — upscale dinners, regular happy hours, exotic vacations — and before his engagement, a different woman by his side every few years. I married, bore three children and spent most days with a toddler attached at the hip — or more often the knee because both hands are full.
But I don’t regret our relationship. Not when we broke up. Not even years later. Instead, I treasure the time we spent together. And that’s in line with how many people look back on their old, positive relationships. The human mind not only becomes more sentimental with age, it’s also adept at rewriting our early romantic history.
“After we resolve a romantic relationship, we have this remarkable ability to forget the bad parts and focus on the good ones,” says Fisher. So while I could easily recall the time Ben scattered hundreds of rose petals throughout my apartment, I conveniently forgot (or chose to ignore) the time he took off on a guys’ ski trip without warning.
The truth is, I still love Ben — just not intimately. I love him for the role he played in my story. Ben was never the right guy for me, but he was the right person to help me discover my romantic identity.
The experiences we shared together, and even how we split, stay with me in a positive and healthy way. They helped form the person I am today. In fact, because of Ben, I embarked on a relationship with my husband from an empowered place, and my every dream has become a reality — well, minus the urine and feces.
When Reconnecting Makes Sense
Most people have a lost love they wonder about. Someone who knew your younger self, held your hand through transformative moments and helped you define yourself. Experts agree it’s psychologically intoxicating to reconnect with a former flame; the brain lights up in the same manner as a drug addict’s just before a hit of cocaine.
But, unless you’re single, divorced or widowed, it’s probably best to avoid searching for that former love on Facebook. In fact, according to Nancy Kalish, Ph.D., professor emeritus at California State University in Sacramento, when social media collides with a mostly happy marriage, the results can be disastrous. A whopping 62% of married folks in her study wound up having an affair with their ex … even though they didn’t initiate contact with any such plan.
“You can’t compare the person who you experienced a first or early love with someone who you’ve had a deep abiding love for many years through the course of a marriage,” says Kalish. “Both are good and both are powerful.”
So before you follow a former flame on Twitter, send a Facebook or LinkedIn message or stalk them on Instagram, consider two big factors: Are you single? And if you’re not, do you have your love priorities in order? If the answer to either question is “yes,” you could be in store for a pleasant reunion with an old friend. A bonus: if you’re happily coupled when you reconnect with an ex, the flood of feel-good and bonding hormones could mean your committed partner is in store for hotter-than-usual sex.
A version of this piece first appeared in Discover Magazine.
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