Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. It was a tale that even the most cynical people found a little nice. 20 years after meeting, falling in love, falling out of love, falling back in love Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck got hitched in their 50s. Fast forward two years later last week, Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck. Even though Bennifer didn't work out, the story got us at all of us thinking about rekindled romance. When it's a good idea to get back with your ex and when it just won't work. Atlantic staff writer Faith Hill spoke with some couples who made it work for a second, even a third time around, along with some dating experts who gave advice on how to make rekindled romance successful. The piece is titled What Second Chance Couples Know About Love. Faith is in studio. Welcome.

Faith Hill: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we really want to hear from you. Have you gotten back together with an ex? What made it work second or third time around? Or was it a bad idea to get together with an ex in the first place? We want to hear your stories of rekindled romance. Our phone lines are wide open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can text to us at that number if you'd like to remain anonymous. Again, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We want to hear your stories of rekindled romance. All right. From your research, how uncommon is it to get back together with an ex?

Faith Hill: It's actually surprisingly common I would say. One study found that more than 1/3 of cohabitating couples and 1/5 of married ones have broken up before. That's something I thought a lot about when I was writing this story. There's some obvious concerns in getting back together, but also a lot of people have done it.

Alison Stewart: You say that experts warn against cyclical relationships. First of all, what is a cyclical relationship? Let's start there.

Faith Hill: They define it as having one or more breakup and renewal cycles is the lingo for it. It's basically what it sounds like. It's breaking up, getting back together. Sometimes many times, but also even just once.

Alison Stewart: Why does it tend to lead to abad outcome, a cyclical relationship?

Faith Hill: I think a lot of couples can get stuck in this toxic dynamic where they have a lot of comfort and familiarity with each other, but there are problems that they're actually just not fixing when they get back together. Cyclical relationships are linked to worse relationship quality, more depression and anxiety symptoms. Researchers have actually found that the more times a relationship ends and begins again, the less likely a couple is to be happy in it. It's not optimistic in this research.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to the people you spoke to. What did most of the people that you spoke to and reported on-- Tell me about what caused the initial breakup.

Faith Hill: Some of them really had circumstances that kept them apart. For instance, there was one couple where they were together as teenagers and then young adults, but then one of them left for the Air Force, and they had a very dramatic separation. They ended up having kids with other people in their lives, took them apart from each other. A lot of people I talked to had more commonplace stories where they had breakdowns in communication, and they still had this chemistry and they really cared about each other, but it just didn't work. Then years went by and they dated other people, but they just kept finding that they were still thinking of each other and they hadn't found something that had worked better.

Alison Stewart: The couples you talked to, they often thought that their initial breakups, that was permanent. That was it. Was there a key to this about the amount of time that had passed between breaking up and getting back together, whether it's ten years, 20 years? You've even heard stories of 30 and 40 years of people being apart.

Faith Hill: There was a big variety in the couples I talked to. Some of them hadn't been apart for so long, but a lot of them had and I think that distance really helped. They prove to themselves that all of this time had passed and they still weren't over it. They had tried being with other people and it was clear that there had been something special about this relationship. I also think they had gotten more perspective in that time. They had really done a lot of thinking about what went wrong. Their circumstances had changed so when that was part of the problem, sometimes that just fixed itself. Also, I think they changed as people when their context changed. They learned and they'd grown.

Alison Stewart: I'm speaking with Atlantic staff writer Faith Hill. Her piece is What Second Chance Couples Know About Love. Listeners, we'd love to hear from you. Have you gotten back together with an ex? What made it work the second time around? Maybe it was a bad idea to get together with your ex. We'd like to hear them all. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You may call into that number or you can text to us. Let's talk to Meredith from Crown Heights. Hi, Meredith. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Meredith: Hi, Alison. Welcome back.

Alison Stewart: Thank you.

Meredith: I was telling your [unintelligible 00:05:40]

Alison Stewart: Meredith, I'm going to ask you to hold on. I'm going to ask you to get to a place where we can hear you because you're a little bit cutting through. Hold a second. It says on my notes here that you are a three [unintelligible 00:05:55] with your man. Let's see if we can get Meredith back up and maybe she-- Better.

Meredith: Sure. I'll try again.

Alison Stewart: Oh, there you are. Go.

Meredith: Any better?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Meredith: My front room is really noisy. I figured I'd split the difference. Anyway, my man and I have been together call it 15 years. We broke up twice, the first time in 2012 for the bulk of the year. He's the only person I've ever loved. All of a sudden I knew what pop songs were about, and I was so devastated. He needed to figure a few things out. We were together then for another six years, and things were not really doing anything so we called it. That was November of 2019. 2020 was especially interesting.

Ten we were dating cautiously out in the COVID world, and we started dating each other again in the middle of 2021. It was never for a lack of love with us and never really for a lack of like. He's the love of my life and even if things ended tomorrow, which I do not think they will, that would remain the case and I know that's the case for him as well. After all this time, we figured we've known each other for 22 years in November, and we're thinking maybe legalizing it. We're talking about it. Finally, we got around to it.

Alison Stewart: I have a question. What pop songs had new meaning for you?

Meredith: Oh, there's that line from High Fidelity where it's something to the effect of did heartbreak write all the pop music or did pop music cause all the heartbreak? Just everything. I was like, "Oh, my God, I might die. This is what that song really means." [chuckles] It was the first time my heart was broken. It was the first time my heart was full so I couldn't say anything. It's so long ago at this point, but it's always interesting to me when you finally truly understand the meaning of a word and how it changes. Changes you and changes what that means to you. Love and heartbreak definitely are covered in these 15 years.

Alison Stewart: Meredith, thanks for calling in and sharing so much. We really appreciate it. If you want to tell us about your rekindled love, our phone lines are open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Faith Hill from the Atlantic is with us. We just heard that story. What did experts tell you about why it's so tempting for someone to get back together with their ex?

Faith Hill: I think part of it is that one of the most common types of regret is regret about lost connections. Along with regret, there's also this counterfactual thinking, which is basically just imagining how things could have been different if you had made different choices if something had gone a different way. We feel that a lot I think about so many different parts of our lives, and most of the time, that is just something that is abstract. It stays in the hypothetical.

Getting back together with an ex is this very rare chance to actually live out that hypothetical and find out if you're just making it up or if there's actually something that could be salvaged. I also think that's just really powerful to feel like you can time travel and get back this lost piece of yourself, have a second chance. It's like a resurrection kind of something in your past. I also think it's a way to rewrite a narrative. Instead of thinking about this painful part of your past just being random and a waste of time, instead of that zigzag, you're really thinking of your life as an arc. It was all leading to this point.

Alison Stewart: How much was age a factor?

Faith Hill: I think age was a big factor definitely because a lot of these couples spent a lot of time apart before getting back together. They just realized that some of their issues were lack of maturity or life experience. They wer very focused on themselves, or they hadn't learned to communicate well enough yet. Some of them felt like an imbalance in commitment because one partner just wasn't ready to commit in the way that the other one wanted. I think when they had that life experience and they also got to see that the grass wasn't necessarily greener, they came back in a beautiful way fundamentally the same people but also transformed.

Alison Stewart: That's my question about if this is the right person, the wrong time. That sounds like what you heard from a lot of people.

Faith Hill: I think that's very real. I think sometimes we scoff at the idea that the circumstances just weren't right. A lot of people see that as an excuse, but I think it's very real. A lot can change in the course of years. I also think a big part of this for a lot of the couples was that getting back together, they had already lost each other once, so it was so precious when they got back together. They were so motivated to figure out what had gone wrong. They very much used it as a reset moment. They took what they had learned apart, and then they also communicated better when they got back together because this was their one chance to get it right.

Alison Stewart: What was one particularly romantic story that you heard?

Faith Hill: I know that you mentioned the couple that had broken up multiple times. They got married three times. They had two divorces. They are very aware that everyone hears that and thinks, "These people are ridiculous. They're just addicted to this relationship." I felt very moved by their story. They loved each other so much, but they had this problem where they would see each other as adversaries they told me.

Alison Stewart: Oh, interesting

Faith Hill: When they got into conflict, these misunderstandings would escalate because they were just fundamentally feeling like they were not on the same team. Ultimately, what the turning point was for them was they did a thought exercise where after getting back together for the third time. They were like, "We really want to try to make this work." They decided for one week to try to see each other as perfect, which might sound a little silly, but when they really tried hard for that, they ended up giving each other the benefit of the doubt.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

Faith Hill: Started thinking like, "If I can't blame the other person, and I'm just assuming that they're right in this, what is my own part in this?" I also just think doing this exercise together made their own relationship into a project where they were in on it together. They were in this team, and the goal was to make this relationship work. One of them said the goal for both of them is for the other one to have a good life. I thought that was very moving.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about second chances with an ex. We're getting your calls and your texts in. We'll have more with Faith Hill. We'll have more of your calls about, have you gotten back together with an ex? Give us a call. 212-433-9692. More of your calls, your texts, and more with Faith Hill after a break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Faith Hill. She's a staff writer at the Atlantic. She recently wrote a piece called What Second Chance Couples Know About Love. Listeners we want to hear from you. Have you gotten back together with an ex? What makes it work the second time around? 212-433-9692 or maybe you got together and it wasn't such a great idea. You can call us, too. 2212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Let's talk to Brian, who's calling in from Chelsea. Hi, Brian.

Brian: Hi, Alison. Welcome back. Love hearing you.

Alison Stewart: Thanks.

Brian: I love this subject that I wish it would happen for me, but my story started last fall. My best friend, she reignited a relationship with a guy from her past, and it worked. They're madly in love now. My direct ex, the one I was last with, he fell in love with his ex, and now they're married. I had all that in the air thinking, "This is now going to be my turn." I was on business last fall in San Antonio, and the guy I've always missed from a relationship ten years ago lived in lives in Austin.

I reached out to him and said, "Hey, I'm in Austin. I'm on business." Such a lie. I was actually in San Antonio. I literally, after business, took the only train that morning to Austin to meet up with him. He was all excited to meet up with me and I thought, "This is it. This is going to happen." Hours before we were supposed to meet, he basically said, "Oh, I have food poisoning and I can't meet up with you anymore."

I thought, "You are exactly the same guy you were ten years ago. You pulled this with me all the way back then." I told your screener if he were to ever show up in New York, I would totally meet up with him in a heartbeat. I don't know why but I would go back and just go along for the ride. Who knows?

Alison Stewart: Let's keep our fingers crossed. Brian, thank you for calling in. Did you want to respond to Brian at all, what you heard there?

Faith Hill: Oh, yes. I'm sorry it didn't work out. [chuckles] I think so many people feel that just irrational pull to someone. I think these kinds of relationships both prove that you really can have special chemistry with someone and that it takes work and sometimes change.

Alison Stewart: We're getting flip sides of the coin. This one says, "I broke up and got back together with my ex many times. It was a mistake. It was good for five minutes, but the same issues kept coming up. I saw him ten years later and wondered what the obsession was and why I kept going back all those eight painful, long years." Here's another one. "My guy and I first started dating in 2013, and we were both 25. Our connection was instant and strong, but we were both messes, spending four years of making up and breaking up, and it was very toxic.

In 2018, we broke up for good. No contact, no communication. Separately went three years working on ourselves, therapy, growing up, being single, working on our careers, dating other people. We got back together in 2021, and it took it very, very, very slow. Fast forward today, we've been on again for four years now, living together with our two dogs, and are getting married next week." There you go. Let's talk about how important it is to apologize for past mistakes in order to move forward with romance.

Faith Hill: It's really crucial. I think that one thing that I really learned here is these couples actually weren't going back to their old relationships. I think part of the appeal is getting to try again and go back, but you're not really going back. The successful cases took starting a new dynamic, and a big part of that was very explicit conversation about what each person had experienced in the relationship the first time around or the second, and what went wrong.

It sounds like this is all very romantic and glamorous, but a lot of what actually happened when they tried again was very practical, just like setting up times for regular meetings to communicate about how each person was feeling and journaling together and just setting up systems so that the same thing didn't happen again. You had to be very explicit and practical about it.

Alison Stewart: Were some of these couples-- Did they go through therapy this time around?

Faith Hill: Yes. Some of them had gone to therapy separately, and that was sometimes really huge. Sometimes partners told me one of them or both of them had had their own individual issues that they were working on that had gotten in the way of the relationship. Some couples told me that they had gone to therapy together, and that was hugely helpful. Actually, the couple that had gotten back together for a third time, one of them became a family therapist because he felt he had learned so much from this experience.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Dominic from the Upper West Side. Hi, Dominic. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Dominic: Hi, Alison. Should I tell my story?

Alison Stewart: I want to hear your story.

Dominic: I have a different story, which is completely different what I'm hearing now. When I split with my first wife, it was in 1996. We split, and I spoke to my children after-- Five years old and eight years old. My first wife said, "Maybe we should try to get back together. We have this whole idea of the family unit and all of this." I spoke to the children and I said, "Guys, your mother and myself we were speaking about maybe trying to get back together for a family." The two of them just look at me and they said, "Dad, this is not a good idea."

I said, "What do you mean this is not a good idea?" She said, "Look, we have our life in the city, in New York. We have our school, our friend, and we have you on the weekend. We go to the beach, we have this and that." They didn't think that was a good idea. What prompted me to speak is because my first wife [unintelligible 00:20:31] we realized we were better friend than we were a couple, and we stayed friends all the way to last year when she passed away from cancer.

I took her to the hospital with a really close friend, and she was very good friends with my second wife. She came to Thanksgiving, they spoke. When I was watching the convention, which is really funny, I'm taking 180 here, and I see [unintelligible 00:20:56] who was his first wife, who came and everything looked so civilized. I said, "God, that was not so different." I thought that was interesting to see that the children did not think that they could get a better dad and better mom if they were separate. I think that was an [unintelligible 00:21:14]. That's all I want to share.

Alison Stewart: Dominic, thank you so much. You brought up so many interesting points. We need to talk about kids because some people might have kids at this point. Would the kids factor into the decision? Was there a desire to work things out for the kids?

Faith Hill: Yes, definitely. I think that's a real factor here. I think for couples who have kids involved, it's motivation to be really sure if you're going to try again just because you don't want to be too messy and bring them into this. One of the couples that I spoke to, I knew them because I knew their daughter. I had heard from her about her experience when she was little. They had divorced and then eventually gotten married. What initially interested me in that was just, what was your experience of that?

I think it was hard in some ways. I think several of the couples I talked to had kids, and I'm sure that that involved a lot of conversations and was probably confusing. I did hear many different people who had kids who were very supportive of this. I think in some cases, people told me, "Our families were so supportive because they could see all along that we still had this connection." Sometimes they had never stopped being in touch. Also, definitely, in the case of kids, there's this huge shared context and stakes that you still really feel. I think that brings a lot of people back together.

Alison Stewart: It can also, though, keep people apart to Dominic's point. They were better friends and their kids knew it.

Faith Hill: I love that point that a success story does not necessarily end with two people being together romantically. I think that's a really good reminder.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Chris from the Bronx. Hi, Chris. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Chris: Hi, everybody. My wife and I got married in 2009, and in 2019, we separated for about a year. Fights would just spin out of control. There was no healthy communication in it. My wife at the time was a social worker. Later on, we learned about love languages and that we had very different love languages, and we were not respecting each other's love languages. At the time, our son was about six or seven.

I was really sad about our separation, but at the same time, I started dating during that year. For anyone that's on dating apps and you meet the guy who says I'm separated, that was me. I don't feel good about that but I started doing that. Then right in the beginning of 2020, right before COVID, we decided to give it one more shot. We set up fair fighting rules. We even have it still on the wall on our bedroom door. Fair fighting rules. Things like, we give each other five minutes to speak. We don't interrupt. If we had an argument during the day, we try again at night. Just different things like that.

We went to therapy. We went to something called Chapter 9, which if one member of the couple is in 12-step recovery, Chapter 9 is an amazing resource. Just drop that for anyone in recovery, it's really great. We did try other resources, and for us, it helped. We started to respect each other's love languages and communication, and we just came back to being on the same wavelength. Part of it is just weird. We just came together again and saw eye to eye and understood each other and loved each other in a completely new way.

I'm grateful for it because we have a son and now we have a great relationship. It's really worked out very well. We just came back from vacation and there was no fighting, and we just really enjoy each other in a whole new way.

Alison Stewart: Sounds like you've got a good relationship going on there. Let's talk to Andrew from Larchmont. Hi, Andrew. Thanks for calling. All Of It.

Andrew: Oh, thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Tell us your story.

Andrew: My wife and I met in grad school and we started dating. We dated for about two years and then we broke up for the next ten years. We probably talked to each other four or five times a week on the phone and we're just best friends. Eventually, we're like, "What are we doing?" We got back together and got married. That was seven years ago, and we have two kids. She's absolutely my best friend and for sure the best thing that's ever happened to me.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. I'm sure she loves hearing that. Let me ask you about sex. Did they have a better sex life couples who had gotten together? Did they have a different sex life? How would we think about sex as we're talking about rekindled romance?

Faith Hill: It's a good question. There's actually a researcher named Nancy Kalish who studied this for years. She surveyed 1000 people who had reunited with what she called a lost love. 71% of them said this was the most emotional romance they'd experienced. She found they had this unique passion because they really had thought that they lost each other and then when they came back, it was so fiery and steamy.

She asked them about sex and she found that when people wrote in answers for the survey questions, they would be including so many exclamation points that it was like they were writing outside of the margins. I do think there is something that's very powerful and that can translate to people's sex lives that when they get back together, they've really reignited a fire.

Alison Stewart: Did the experts you spoke to have any guidelines for folks when you realize this might not be a good idea to get together with your ex?

Faith Hill: I think because researchers are so hesitant about cyclical relationships, they definitely suggest you exercise caution. I think one thing they wanted people to think about was that when you're remembering your past relationship, you might really be remembering the positive parts about it. Those parts really stick in our memory. We don't tend to remember all the little fights as much and the things that weren't so good. I think that it's sometimes worth trying again if you're really wondering that much but certainly for many people, it doesn't work. If the communication is breaking down again, it might be time to let it go.

Alison Stewart: You write a lot about dating and relationships. Can you share one piece of advice you think is a good piece of advice if you're thinking of rekindling a relationship?

Faith Hill: I think sometimes when we talk about relationships, theres a popular strain of thinking these days that's we emphasize the work in it so much that we lose track of the fact that it is both. You have to work at a relationship and communicate. I also think this piece underscored the other side of it for me, which is that you couldn't do this work with anyone. I think there was something very clear talking with these couples. The work worked so to speak, because they did have this chemistry and it did make me believe in a spark in that way.

Alison Stewart: The name of the piece is What Second Chance Couples Know About Love. It's by Atlantic staff writer Faith Hill. Thanks to everyone who texted and called in and thank you, Faith.

Faith Hill: Thank you so much for having me.

 

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