What’s the name of the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Easy. Charles Lindbergh, right? What’s the name of the second person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Not as easy to answer that one, is it? Bert Hinkler, in case you’re wondering. This example comes from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. The Law of Leadership states that it’s better to be first than it is to be better.

According to Nancy Kalish, author of Lost and Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances (lostlovers.com), the same principle often works with first loves. There may be others that follow, but it’s the first one that sticks.

There’s something unique about that first bond. The person knows you from a more innocent time, and in a way that no one can ever know you again; that is, before you got all warped and cynical about love. And often, early relationships split up for reasons beyond your control, like disapproving parents, distance or simply life circumstances. That’s why Kalish warns parents not to be too dismissive of a teenager’s “puppy love.” That puppy may bite them on the ass later on in life.

You have to be careful messing with early loves, warns Kalish. It’s a powerful connection that can really throw you for a loop. Kalish has seen people leave their marriages after innocently looking up a lost love and realizing they wanted to be together again. She gets letters from jilted spouses, blaming her for the fact that their husband decided to look up a lost love. “I try to calm them down, tell them that it’s not due to any failing on their part, they just came second is all,” Kalish tells me. Others have told her they decided not to look up a lost love after reading her book, because it made them realize they didn’t want to open up a can of worms.

These days, thanks to Google and social networking sites like Facebook, it makes it even easier to casually look up past loves, and it can be dangerous. Make sure you know what you’re getting into, warns Kalish. Before you go looking and/or thinking of making contact, be aware of what could happen. It may stir up feelings that interfere with current relationships. The person might not be open to hearing from you again. The fantasy you’ve been living in your head might not match up to reality.

Then again, reuniting with a lost love can turn out to be a fabulous thing. Among the 1,001 people Kalish surveyed for her book who had reunited with a lost love, the divorce rate for those who had married their first love after a previous marriage was 1.5 per cent. Slightly better odds than the rest of the population with its 50 per cent divorce rate.

And, it seems, it’s never too late to reconnect.

One guy she spoke to left his girlfriend to go fight in the Second World War. He decided it wasn’t fair to ask his girlfriend to wait for him, so he wrote her a letter and told her he got married while overseas. She was furious, but eventually news got back that he had died during the war. She moved on with her life and remarried. Turns out the guy hadn’t died and eventually came back, found out she was married and left it at that. Later in life, he heard her husband had died and decided to look her up. He travelled to her town and called her. She was blind by this point and thought he was dead, so it took some convincing to make her believe it was him. She asked him some questions to which only he would know the answer.

“He told me the first question got him in the door, the second question got him to the couch and, by the third question, things got a little friendlier,” laughs Kalish. They’re in their 80s now and happily married.

Some stories don’t have such a happy ending.

Kalish spoke to one older couple that reunited and married at age 95. Tragically, they were only married five weeks when they had a car accident that left them both hospitalized. They moved into a nursing home to recover. He developed a fever eight weeks later and died. She left the nursing home to live with her brother to recuperate.

However, to put a twist on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous words: ’Tis better to have loved and lost, and found and loved again for five weeks, than to have died wondering, what if?

If you have or are planning to seek out your first love and things work out, post your story on Kalish’s website. She’s always looking for stories of lost loves reunited.