While reading Susan Miller’s horoscopes for March, I came across this line for Scorpio: “I should mention that today of all days, while watching the morning news, the newscaster mentioned a statistic that made me think of you, dear Scorpio: 72% of couples that reunite with an old flame find happiness and stay together.’”

It’s unclear why this was on the morning news so recently, but it’s based on research done by psychologist Nancy Kalish in the 1990s. Kalish, a professor at California State University, interviewed 1001 couples that had reunited and then wrote Lost & Found Lovers: Facts and Fantasies of Rekindled Romances. As broken down by a USAToday article (and me), this is what she discovered in research from 1993 to 1996:

Study participants whose reunion started as an extramarital affair: 30%

Of that 30% who had in a troubled marriage before the reunion: 50%

Those who stayed with their lost love after reuniting: 72%

Those who regretted leaving a marriage to be with a lost love: 0

Most common age they were in the original relationship: 17 or younger

Most common reason those relationships broke up: parental disapproval

Most common frame of mind people are in when they search for their lost love: good and secure

Kalish has continued to interview couples since her mid-nineties research—before the Internet became so entrenched in our daily lives, especially for those not in their twenties. Her most recent discoveries have revealed a shift, it says on her website. “Although it was not planned, Dr. Kalish’searly research was conducted prior to the creation of the World Wide Web,and her current research is based on participants who have typically found each other online. These populations are very different! Rekindled romance today has a dark side: Most of the recent survey participants are married, or their lost loves are married, or both… These reunions are not nearly as successful as reunions between single, divorced, or widowed lost loves, and the reconnections are hurtful to spouses, children, and the lost loves themselves. Dr. Kalish strongly cautions married men and women not contact their lost loves at all!”

A new statistic from Kalish: percentage of those looking for lost loves online who are married: 82%. I guess it’s just easier to go hunting online as opposed to picking up the phone, which at least takes more effort, emotional risk, and privacy. But the married encounter the same phenomenon as the single: “These people did not expect the reappearance of a lost lover to carry such a wallop,” says Kalish on in an article. “They thought they could merely catch up on old times, get “closure,” or even have lunch with this old friend.” But still, she says, couples who reunite in a clean, non-home-wrecking way believe that: “They are ‘soul mates’… and many believe that a ‘Higher Power’ has brought them back together.”

Have you reunited with a lost love? Blissful? Awful? Tell us about it in the comment box below.