Is Love Lovelier the Second Time?

Frank Sinatra once sang that “love is lovelier the second time around.” Callers quite frequently ask me if a partner from a failed love affair is going to return… and, if so, will the relationship go better than it did the last time?

From what I see in readings, people quite often do return one more time to try and make a relationship work. The attraction they feel to the other is still there. All of the qualities that first drew them still exist. The person still lives in the area and is physically available. The factors that began the relationship still exist. Chances are great that the two will reconnect.

But if they do, what are the odds that they will be able to make the relationship run more smoothly this time? Callers are often puzzled over what actually went wrong. They say that the reason their partner gave for the breakup seems trivial to them. They believe that so much went right, as opposed to what went wrong. What really happened?

One woman told me that her boyfriend broke up with her because she was always late. This seemed to be insignificant to her. Another said that her boyfriend broke up because he couldn’t stand her family – in particular, her mother. One called to ask what to do regarding her husband, who left her when they just couldn’t seem to agree on anything. Their lives used to be so good together.

Our brains process the events in our lives as to what our emotional reactions will be. If someone is told that they may be laid off from their job, their first reaction is fear. This fear can translate into an emotion we can more easily manage-anger. We tell ourselves that this company is lousy to work for, anyway, and we would have left before long on our own. If we fail to process the emotions of fear and anger into more constructive ones of looking for a new job (or trying to save the old one), then we have a situation with a dead-end.

The lady that said her boyfriend broke up with her because of her lateness failed to understand (as he might) that what he was really telling her was that he felt a lack of respect coming from her, that his irritation did not matter enough to her for her to change. This lack of respect spilled over, he felt, into what she felt overall about him. This was a major insult to him. His mind processed the events of unpunctuality into frustration, then anger.

In the situation where the relationship ended because the man disliked the woman’s family, it turned out that he felt that the mother tried to get her daughter to end the relationship because she felt that he had no solid financial prospects. The mother constantly told her daughter that she could do much better, and so of course the boyfriend felt rejection on a regular basis, not only from the mother but from the daughter, as he felt that she did not defend him as she should. His mind translated this event from fear of rejection into anger.

The last caller did not know at all why her husband had really left her, or what had gone wrong in her marriage. It had begun so well – they were only married for two years. With a reading, though, she discovered that her husband felt that she did not understand how truly painful his unemployment was for him. Although she financially supported the family, he did not feel that she was emotionally supportive of him, and so next came the constant quarreling over what were basically the small things in life. He was not able to translate his pain of unemployment into a more honest communication, so he took this pain out on his wife over small daily things.

Love can work and be lovelier the second time around. But in order for this to occur, we must find out what really went wrong, and correct it. Because if we don’t do this with honest communication and respect, the relationship will go the same way as the first one, and this would be a shame.