It was a typical college romance. Richard Allen and Lynne Griffiths dated, drifted apart after graduation, found others and moved on. Focused on having a big-city career, Griffiths headed to Manhattan with a degree from Connecticut College in New London in 1974. Allen, a Yale Divinity student, would have settled down with Griffiths in any place but New York City while he answered a spiritual calling to become a Methodist minister. And that presented another glitch: Griffiths, an avowed Unitarian, couldn't imagine forsaking her religion. End of story?
Not exactly. This April the two celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary in New York, where Allen, 57, is pastor of a Methodist congregation and Griffiths, now Lynne Allen, 54, a career coach, regularly attends services at her husband's church. Before they reconnected, the two hadn't been in touch for more than 20 years when she tracked him down through the Yale alumni office.
Richard and Lynne Allen are part of a trend in which couples are not simply reuniting with former lovers or friends but often actively seeking them out after decades apart. "People go to reunions to find an old flame. They use Classmates.com to look up the one that got away or someone they always had a crush on," says Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington and the author of Finding Your Perfect Match (Perigee). "They bump into each other and find a reconnection easy and immediate. Although there are no numbers, anecdotally it seems quite common that people are connecting with old loves."
The high divorce rate and the death of some spouses have returned many baby boomers to the dating arena. Most expect to live an additional 20 or 30 years, and they are determined not to go it alone. "They're doing their 50s unlike any other generation [has done them]," says Schwartz. "They're on an active hunt for companionship using all kinds of tools--online dating, joining clubs and looking for love where they found it before: in high school, college, relationships from their 20s."
Websites like Classmates and Reunion.com are tailor-made tools in this quest for another chance at romance with a school-day ex. These cybersubstitutes for the class reunion offer millions of members access to former classmates who have registered on the sites. They entice recruits looking for love to join with testimonials from reunited couples.
The reconnecting trend has been fueled by media coverage of such high-profile rematches as TV personality, actress and former New York City first lady Donna Hanover and her old beau and now husband, Ed Oster. Hanover chronicled her experience and others like it in My Boyfriend's Back: 50 True Stories of Reconnecting with a Long-Lost Love (Plume). But the biggest incentive may be that hooking up with a friend from the past holds the promise of future ease. "There is an expectation of immediate comfort with someone supposedly familiar, as well as an expectation of similar values based on a common history--and therefore perhaps of not having to work so hard to build a bond," says marriage counselor William Doherty, a professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota who has worked with couples for three decades.