Angela Philipps, Contributor

'Ex' for a reason, right? But do you still have feelings for him or her? Do you find yourself thinking about the one who got away? Have you ever really fallen out of love with that soulmate from so long ago?

Richard Bach (author of the famous Jonathan Livingston Seagull) believes in the one - he talks about it in his book The Bridge Across Forever. He always felt like he was missing someone whom he had never met and then he did come across her and could not let her go. I was given this exact book a long time ago and I am sitting here with it right beside me, wondering what it all means. I used to think that it was only possible to have one soulmate in life, and if you ever lost that person then you had missed your chances at love. But now I am not so sure. I am in a quandary. What do you do when you get over someone, and then fall in love a couple more times, but then end up still loving the first one? Is it nostalgia? Is it loneliness? Does it mean that you should be with this person and no one else?

I had a friend a while back who was quite a bit older than me. She had been in love with the same guy for 20 years - they had dated for the first 10 but had not seen each other since then. She was in her early 40s and no man could even come close in comparison to her sweetheart. She tormented herself with the memories she had of him and all she dreamed about was the day they would be back together. I remember thinking to myself how dreadful it must be for her to be stuck in the past.

Not good enough

This woman had men lining up at her door to ask her out, but she never gave any of them a chance. None of them were good enough! She thought that there was only one person for her. Clearly she did miss him, but could I say that she was lonely? Here was a gal who had many friends - male and female - a loving family, and lots of lads who wanted to court her! [In my mind she was disillusioned.] She had created a fantasy that did not exist, at least not anymore. You know what happened? He ended up marrying someone else and she is still single.

Then there's the flip-side of the coin. The fairy tale story of another couple I knew. Similar beginnings - two people go out for a few years, they split and don't see each other for nearly 10 years. They bump into each other one day, she invites him over for dinner and he proposes marriage. They live happily ever after and have a few kids to show for it! These two people now truly believe that they were meant to be together. No amount of time or distance could keep them apart forever. There had been other loves and losses in between, but the deep connection between them would ensure that they would find each other again one day, and so they did. But the bizarre thing is, they had both moved on. Neither of them pined for each other during the interim years, and in fact they never envisaged for a moment, while they were apart, that they would ever get back together. It was only when by some strange coincidence they saw each other again that it stirred old emotions. Perhaps they were suffering from a sense of nostalgia! However, I doubt it, as they really are a wonderful pair and life seems pretty good for them.

What about me you might ask? Well, there was a 'Mr. Big' (phrase coined by Carrie Bradshaw in 'Sex and the City'). He certainly was my soulmate. I do think about him occasionally, and I might even have feelings for him. But he is an ex for a reason!

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