School Reunions - Innocent catch-up or adulterous affair?

Young love is always romantic, but for childhood sweethearts to stay together forever is rare. I know a couple that met at eleven and are still happily married fifty years later, but we are not all so fortunate.

Sometimes couples drift apart when they are teenagers and only meet again when they are both are married to other people.

Dangerous ground
A friend of mine recently traced her first love through Friends Reunited; the result was the breakdown of her marriage! She is not alone, either. Many people are getting back in touch with each other online and Friends Reunited has been blamed for the increase in affairs and Britain's spiraling divorce rate. This is obviously quite unfair, but it is true that the attraction you feel to your first love can be easily reignited by a chance meeting online or in the flesh. Just be very aware of the dangers of igniting old passions. Perhaps old flames should stay that way!

Old school flames
When old classmates tracked me down from primary school I had no idea that I would find myself with a front- row seat, as not one, but four adulterous affairs unfolded. Little did I know that the reunion of the class of '84 would leap straight off the pages of a Jackie Collins novel. Sally and John were the only pair that had actually been childhood sweethearts, having shared a few innocent kisses in the playground. Bring the action forward 20 years and their valiant attempts to hide grown-up chemistry served only to fan the flames of passion. But with four children and two spouses in the equation, nothing looked likely to happen overnight. Not that the rest of us would have noticed. Their other more blatant displays whenever we gathered for drinks. 'I couldn't hide my feelings any longer,' gushed Marilyn as she updated the girls on her burgeoning romance with Stephen. 'I'd always fancied him in school, but he didn't like me and now I can't believe I'm with him.' The 'with' in this case being another affair, carefully hidden from partners and five children. Unfortunately for Marilyn, the balance of power had not changed much in two decades and Stephen soon decided he was not that interested and he went back to his loving wife!

A dull marriage and a bad reaction to white wine turned mother-of-two Nicole into a monster - sullen and moody one minute and unable to control her lust for Rob the next. The fact that this was all played out very publicly did not seem to bother them, right up to the point where Nicole became pregnant and dropped out of the white- wine scene to spend more time with her family. The obvious question was written on everyone's faces, but was never answered.

The attraction you feel to your first love can be easily reignited by a chance meeting online or in the flesh. Long after these white-hot passionate months had passed, I heard about the fourth liaison. It involved Dianne and Marilyn's husband, George. They had met at one of the reunion get-togethers. Dianne never told George about his wife's affair, but knowing she had been unfaithful made Dianne feel less guilty. It didn't make George feel less guilty when Marilyn discovered his fling. The fallout was so bad that it split the group and we now rarely meet.

Destiny?
Were all these playground buddies in miserable marriages or just bored and selfish? In the case of Sally and John - who came close to leaving their partners, but decided to end the affair - it really did seem as if they had missed their destiny and were resigned to long looks across a crowded room. But for the others, it seemed that meeting old friends provided the perfect excuse to turn nostalgia into lust.

Reminisce at your peril!
The problem, more often than not, with falling for your childhood sweetheart in adulthood is that you may be mistakenly associating your carefree, happy memories from your youth with being with your first love. In reality, that adventurous teenage sex-god will have grown-up like you and is probably just as stressed as every thirty-something you know. If you are both single, by all means give love a second chance, but if either of you are attached, is it really worth causing other people pain just to take a trip down memory lane?

It may be exciting to flirt with danger and just arrange that one meeting with your old love, but if the chemistry is still there, beware. You might not be able to switch off again once you have switched on to sexual attraction. It's powerful, it's addictive and it's destructive. Is it really worth the risk?