Looking for love in all the wrong places? A quick venture into your past could be all you need to reconnect with that special someone from long ago. Professor of psychology Nancy Kalish has studied the topic of lost lovers and is the author of “Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances.”

After researching the topic for four years Kalish decided to write the novel; it was published in 1997. Kalish said she chose this topic as her sabbatical research project because no one had written about it before.

Her research was done questionnaire-style and administered to over 1,000 participants who ranged in age from 18 to 95. Her book also contains stories from reunited lovers in their own words.

Her research topic has earned her appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show as well as 20/20. As of today, about 4,000 people have been involved in her research.

The majority of her research concluded that young lovers were torn apart by their parents because of their disapproval. When Kalish questioned why parents disapproved of their child’s young relationship, the truth came out.

“The girl’s father was basically saying ‘this guy is going to get my daughter pregnant,'” Kalish said. “It really bothered me as I heard these stories over and over. Their parents broke them apart.”

One of the things that bothered Kalish the most was the time the lovers had lost.

“What I found was when these people get back together then they are in their fifties or sixties or forties they can’t have children together,” Kalish said.

Shelly Maree, junior theater major, said she can relate with Kalish’s findings.

Maree experienced her first love when she was 15. The boy she fell in love with was 14 and his parents did not approve of their relationship. To this day Maree does not know what they didn’t like about the relationship.

“We weren’t allowed to go to the movies together; one of them had to be with us at all times,” she said.

They were together for about three years despite his parent’s disapproval. However one day his mother found a way to keep them apart for good.

“He ran away from his parent’s house to my house and as a result of his running away he was sent to live with his cousins in Yuba City,” Maree said.

Maree’s story is similar to so many Kalish has heard before about parental interference.

“Here is the road I tell people to walk,” Kalish said. “You don’t have to like the people and you don’t have to keep quiet. But that is different from breaking them apart.”

Cindy Hurn was one of Kalish’s students who quickly learned that she and her professor shared something in common. Hurn and her husband Rich are reunited lovers. In Hurn’s case however, their separation was due to war.

Hurn and Rich met in the summer at a cottage her father rented in Cape Cod, approximately 100 miles from her hometown of Cheshire, Conn. They met one night at a dance at the Eastham Village Hall. When she returned home after summer the two kept in touch through letters.

For Hurn, writing became her way of expressing her love for Rich. She said their letters allowed the couple to get to know each other on an intimate level and made their love blossom.

Every chance Rich had, he would drive to visit Hurn. He would stay at a local motel and spend time with Hurn during the day.

This long distance relationship lasted for approximately three years until Rich joined the Air Force and was sent to Vietnam where they lost contact with one another. While Rich was away, Hurn started a new life in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. When Rich returned from Vietnam he was stationed in Sacramento.

Years later Hurn was visiting her sister who lived in nearby San Francisco. Rich called Hurn’s sister looking to find where Hurn was and Hurn answered the phone. The couple were able to see each other for only one night. Rich was still in the Air Force and Hurn had her life in Canada.

Over 30 years had passed since their last meeting. In that time both were married with children and subsequently separated from their spouses. Six years ago the couple was reconnected through a website called classmates.com. Upon entering her information to the website, Rich, who had been searching for Hurn for many years, got a notice that the person he was searching for had been found. The rest, as they say, is history.

For the next six months the couple communicated via e-mail and all of their emotions vividly returned. When they finally met in person in Sacramento it was like no time had passed between them. The first thing she realized was how her feeling from when she danced with him the first time and how she felt when they reconnected on that day were the same.

“Immediately that sense of him overwhelmed me,” Hurn said.

When Hurn took Kalish’s class, she heard about the book the professor wrote as well as the research she had been compiling. The topic of imprinting came up and Hurn finally understood her feelings from the past. Kalish explained to her class that there are two points in your life where imprinting occurs in your emotional memory.

“There is a lot of research coming out in neuroscience?these raging teenage hormones are there for a reason and they are encoded as emotional memories in the primitive part of the brain. They pop out again when you re-meet your lost love,” Kalish said.

So what is it about young love? The story of young lovers has stood the test of time. Shakespeare wrote about it. Romeo and Juliet took their lives for it. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series features the love of young Edward and Bella. Young love is so trivial, so innocent, and so special. Kalish seems to be able to put it in better words, “You went to school together, you formed your identity together and you formed a definition of what love is together. I believe when people grow up together they grow up sharing certain values and roots and some of these people who so call ‘reunite’ were just friends in high school.”

Cozette Roberts can be reached at [email protected].