Interesting question..

EireEV

Hi All,

Would be interested to hear people's opinions on the question below:

Do you think a person can fall in love with somebody, fall out of love with them and fall back in love with them again?

Thanks.

EireEV

Kiera

Yes I do. It happened to me. I fell back out of love with him in the end tho. But it is possible.

pwd

Happens to some people several times a day, from what I can see.

Silverfish

EireEV, is this a personal issue for you, or a general question?

EireEV

a personal issue Silverfish but question is very general.

Silverfish

Okay, but this forum is for advice rather than surveys, and everyone's case would be different as well.

Are you looking for any specific advice?

FreudianSlippers

I think you can, but perhaps you love them a little less every time?! I certainly wouldn't view a relationship where this is happening as "stable" or "long-term"

pwd

I think people tend to idealise the past sometimes. There's that expression, looking through rose-tinted glasses.
If you feel loney, you'll be likely to miss people from times you didn't. Since you feel lonely right then, you miss the togetherness. However, you might not have the same cues to remember other things about the person: In particular the things that made you fall out with them before.
On the other hand, people change over time, to varying extents. Some people are good at learning from experience (though some aren't). If a significant period of time passes then maybe things could start again, between more developed people, who find themselves more compatible than before.

Alternatively, you could just reassess things after getting a bit of distance/perspective from a relationship. Sometimes people don't realise what someone offers them until they're gone. Some things can seem massive when they are immediate, and trivial in the bigger scheme of things - and vice-versa.
And some relationships suffer from people getting too wrapped up in each other, to the point where they feel cabin-fever - though that in itself is probably a bad sign really.

I can think of couples who break up and get back together and stay together and seem happy. I can think of couples who break up and then get back and break up and keep wrecking their own and each other's heads.
So I suppose yes, it is possible to fall back in love with someone. But it's also possible to fall in love with the idea you have of them, or the idealised memory. Maybe it's hard to know for sure which you might be experiencing.
Sometimes people lie to themselves, and pretend they're ok with past things, when they're not really, and harbour resentment.
So I suppose you need to ask yourself honestly, do you accept person's past? Do you accept the things which drove you apart before, or are you sure that they've grown out of them? Do you care about them the way you think you might, or are you just driven by an immediate need?