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Dear Breakup Girl,

I have been happily married for over a year, and I love my husband very much. We have a great marriage, no real problems. But lately, my thoughts have been drifting an awful lot to my ex. My high school sweetheart. I haven't seen him since I graduated, eight years ago. I broke up with him all those years ago because I went off to college (I was a year older) several hundred miles away and was having a really hard time keeping a long-distance relationship when all of a sudden a whole bunch of older boys wanted to have sex with me. I felt tremendously bad for breaking up with him, but I've nevertheless been very happy since then.

But for the last three weeks or so, I've been thinking about him a LOT. I have these really stupid girlish fantasies where we're 18 again and I decide not to go off to college and we live happily ever after. (These fantasies are never, by the way, in present tense with me leaving my husband or something. Always changing the past.) I've been rereading some of the love letters he wrote me that I saved. I've even tried to find his address (no luck). Why am I doing this? What's wrong with me? (Did I mention I have a fabulous marriage? Because I do. Absolutely no conceivable reason to be obsessed with another guy.) What should I do about it?

-- Confused

Dear Confused,

According to Nancy Kalish, Ph.D. this kind of past love is the kind most likely to call back for a second date in the present. Circumstance -- not indifference -- came between you; the shoulder you're glancing back over is turned toward happiness and stability. I'm not saying anything but your mind should have or is destined for a do-over; I'm just saying that the fantasies might not be as Outlandish High as they might seem.

Beyond that, remember that fantasies are data. Pointing to what? Well, my first guess would be something about Sophomore Slump. Maybe, now that you've been married for a year or so, the "Whee! I'm married!" jitters and giggles have given way somewhat to the "WHOA. I'M MARRIED" Reality Check. Maybe your brain is two-wheeling it back to an earlier fork in the road because you're realizing that in real life, you can't. Not that you regret the choice you made -- but that it's dawning on you that boywise, it was pretty much your last. You know?

And along/beyond those lines, well, you tell me: not so much why you're thinking about him per se, but about what he could represent in your life. Again: the boy not taken? a pure love without the quotidien dealings of married life? I don't know. Think about it that way, and go from there. But in the meantime, I'm not sure that anything's Wrong with you, or with your marriage. Nor, however, am I sure that you should keep trying to find his address.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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