My uncle married his high school sweet heart. Prior to that he was married to another woman for around 10 years. They got divorced and then a few years later he reached out to his high school sweet heart. Now they've been married for probably 20 years.

My husband's father married his high school sweetheart five years ago. They dated, he got drafted right after high school, did 2 tours in Vietnam, came home, met DH's mom, had DH, got divorced from DH's mom after like 15 years, married some other lady I never met, had another child, got divorced AGAIN and then randomly ran into his high school sweetheart at the grocery store. They got married and are retiring to Florida together this winter.

DH's dad had a hard war, and I know (from DH and DH's mom) that he had a really hard time readjusting. Plus he also had some major injuries (fell down an elevator shaft) on the job mid-career and a bunch of corrective surgery (I think he's had both knees and both hips replaced at this point) to deal with it. When I see how happy he is with his wife/high school sweetheart, I am happy about it because I know that happiness was hard won.

Anonymous wrote:Okay, the gap isn't that dramatic, but I dated my now husband when he was 18 and I was 17. We lost touch but reconnected when I was 26, and married when I was 28!

In Canada?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dated a girl all through college and after. A total of about 6 years. The chemistry was very strong. The "problem" was we dated too long and I couldn't pull the trigger. We broke up at about 24-25 and married other people. Fast forward to 55 years old, I'm divorced, she's widowed and we reconnect. We've been dating for 4 years now. As good as the chemistry used to be, it's incredible now. At some point we will move in together and, if she'll consider it, get married.

At some point? You're dating for too long again! You've dated this woman for a total of ten years of your lives, and you will move in together at some point? What is that about?

We're not kids and we are both well off financially.
I have a son that lives with me and attends college. I don't expect to move in together until he graduates.
We spend weekends together, travel for a long weekend every 4-6 weeks and vacation 3-4X a year.
Seems to suit us just fine at the moment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dated a girl all through college and after. A total of about 6 years. The chemistry was very strong. The "problem" was we dated too long and I couldn't pull the trigger. We broke up at about 24-25 and married other people. Fast forward to 55 years old, I'm divorced, she's widowed and we reconnect. We've been dating for 4 years now. As good as the chemistry used to be, it's incredible now. At some point we will move in together and, if she'll consider it, get married.

How did you find each other?

Ran into her at the mall, had a cup of coffee.
Started slow, ramped up over several months.

Anonymous wrote:I dated a girl all through college and after. A total of about 6 years. The chemistry was very strong. The "problem" was we dated too long and I couldn't pull the trigger. We broke up at about 24-25 and married other people. Fast forward to 55 years old, I'm divorced, she's widowed and we reconnect. We've been dating for 4 years now. As good as the chemistry used to be, it's incredible now. At some point we will move in together and, if she'll consider it, get married.

How did you find each other?

I read a study a long time ago that dating ex's is a disaster except if the ex was somebody you grew up with or dated in your teens early twenties and you had not seen the person in a long time... aka broke up just because you were too young and going on with your life. Then the success rate of marriages was really high.

Anonymous wrote:I dated a girl all through college and after. A total of about 6 years. The chemistry was very strong. The "problem" was we dated too long and I couldn't pull the trigger. We broke up at about 24-25 and married other people. Fast forward to 55 years old, I'm divorced, she's widowed and we reconnect. We've been dating for 4 years now. As good as the chemistry used to be, it's incredible now. At some point we will move in together and, if she'll consider it, get married.

At some point? You're dating for too long again! You've dated this woman for a total of ten years of your lives, and you will move in together at some point? What is that about?

I dated a girl all through college and after. A total of about 6 years. The chemistry was very strong. The "problem" was we dated too long and I couldn't pull the trigger. We broke up at about 24-25 and married other people. Fast forward to 55 years old, I'm divorced, she's widowed and we reconnect. We've been dating for 4 years now. As good as the chemistry used to be, it's incredible now. At some point we will move in together and, if she'll consider it, get married.

I did this. I dated this guy for five minutes, a hundred years ago. We have a 7 year age difference, and at the time, we were in different places in our lives and the age difference was too big. We stayed friends while we were with other people, had kids, etc.

Then suddenly we were both single and ... now we're married and it's awesome.

There's an academic psychologist who has done studies on this-- well, a subset of this. She looks at couples who reunited after being split up (usually by parents or circumstance) in their 'formative years' (generally late teens/ early 20s). She says when the couples get together later and they're both single, they have an incredibly low divorce rate. She says if either of them is married when they reunite, it's usually a disaster because it can ruin even healthy, happy marriages and the 'rekindled' relationship doesn't stay together statistically either. I think, like the person above mentioned, the chemistry is amazing.

Meh. I know two couples who did this, married, and divorced.

^ that is sweet. And happened to a relative of mine. they divorced (because of an affair), the adulterer remarried and divorced, and then the couple married again. I always thought the wife was very strong, and levelheaded - once they remarried she never, ever brought up his infidelity.

Two people in my HS, voted one of the class couples for the yearbook broke up right after graduation. Each married someone else, had kids, divorced. There was no contact between them for all those years until the 20th reunion. They are now married.

My parents divorced after 20 years of marriage and my mom remarried a few years later. 10 years after their divorce, they got back together. Mom divorced husband #2 and remarried my dad. That was more than 10 years ago and they are really happy.