Searching for your old lover? More than a pastime, it is becoming somewhat of a virtual social networking trend.
As I see it, for many women it is a way of reviving fish you had already tossed back to the sea. Or looking up an old lover who spurned you – and meeting him for a date looking sexy and hot. In some ways, this new fad is threatening to become an elevated form of friends with benefits, sex benefits, that is.
This is how it works. You hook up with an old flame from your past, most often just to meet and rehash old times. But oftentimes, those times were rolls in the hay or in the back seat of a car. And so the new times become hot times.
Why the resurgence of old lovers and new encounters? Facebook makes it easier than ever to turn back the tide. What makes the leap from “let’s have lunch” to sex and passion is simple – familiarity. We go back to what we know. As Deidre Fulton says in “Meet the Retrosexuals,” in the Providence Phoenix, “It’s security. It’s safety. It’s brining back old feelings that make you feel young again.”
Shall we split the bill? There is an odd coincidence with the word “retrosexuals.” Look it up on the Internet and some definitions say it is a return to the past world in which dates were serious dates. For example 10 years ago a man would never say to you after dinner, “Shall we split this?”
Today this happens often. By the by, unless you are just “pals” the answer to that question is always a polite, “No thank you.” And you may quote me on that one. Or if you want to be uber-polite, you can say, “Maybe next time.”
However, I confess that the only time someone said to me, “Shall we split this,” I agreed, and then split. He never got to see me again. If you are colleagues and there is no romantic interest, then yes, you split. If not, you don’t.
Back to the past – oftentimes with retrosexuals it is back to high school or college friends. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Before you go back looking for a future, just make sure you understand the risks and benefits. Here is the full article. Are you a retrosexual?
Copyright 2009 Rita Watson