Amanda Platell: Why you should never call your ex

Memories and feelings of intimacy can linger for decades, says a psychotherapist. Photo / Getty

Opinion

The voice soars, the lyrics haunt and around the world women of every age are jolted into nostalgia and pangs of bittersweet recognition.

When Adele released Hello, the first single from her long-awaited new album, last month, the global reaction to her soul-searching bid to get in touch with a former lover took even the star by surprise. Her new album, 25, is set to be the fastest-selling in British history, thanks, in part, to this one powerful track.

For Adele's portrayal of a woman seeking succour, redemption, reconciliation and goodness knows what else with a former lost love has struck a raw nerve with females everywhere. For those who still haven't heard the song, it begins like this:

"Hello, it's me, I was wondering
If after all these years you'd like to
Meet and go over everything
They say that time's supposed to heal ya
But I ain't done much healing."

As is the hallmark of Adele, an ordinary girl whose extraordinary ability has earned her over $100 million, she articulated something countless women have done themselves or dreamt of doing - reconnecting with a long-lost lover.

Yet I can't help wondering if, like Adele, we have become a nation of emotional stalkers. I certainly don't have to delve too deeply into my own past, or those of my friends, to find instances when I should, against my better judgment, have let go.

Years ago, I called the first love of my life not long after I became engaged to someone else. He was cool, moody, broody and as beautiful as a young Brad Pitt and, for three years, he captivated my heart. Then, he broke it. His attempts at reconciliation failed - my pride stood in the way - and I rejected him.

After the split, I moved city, set up a new life as far from him as I could and, rather too quickly, fell in love again. Yet even as I found myself on the verge of marriage to someone new, I still felt my first love and I had unresolved business.

While outwardly, I seemed swept up in bridal preparations, inside I couldn't countenance walking up the aisle without finding out if, as I suspected, my old flame still loved me. I may have been about to take another man as my husband, but a part of my heart still belonged to him. I had to find out the truth.

So I called. "Hello, it's me," I said. "I'd like to meet and go over things . . ." He suggested we meet at his house, the place where we had first made love. I instantly agreed, my heart happy and full of expectation. Shamefully, I found myself wondering how quickly I could call off the wedding.

My daydreams were short-lived, however, when I was met at the door by a sexy blonde, dressed only in her underwear. She was, it turned out, his new live-in girlfriend, who having clearly just got out of the bed I once slept in, promptly put on a rather short T-shirt and made us all coffee.

The talk was as small, black and bitter as the espresso I drank. And no, we didn't go over things: there was no resolution, no questions answered and no heart healed. I left, never to see him again.

The only benefit was that I settled happily back into my new life, new man and new marriage. No more illusions of a still-burning lost love.

That's the brutal truth about attempting to rekindle an old love: these cold calls can be as withering to the soul as an Arctic wind.

Talking to one of my girlfriends about why Hello had touched such a nerve with women, she admitted she'd recently done the very same.

This sensible lawyer had stalked her long-lost ex, whom she'd casually and regrettably dumped, on Facebook for months. Then one evening, she called. "Hello, it's me . . ." she began, thinking he'd recognise her voice instantly.

"Sorry, who is this?" he replied.

"It's Kate . . ."

"Kate who?"

During the brief and painful conversation that followed, he confessed he had "never been that into her", and had hardly given her a second thought since their split.

So why do we put ourselves through this? Why are women so obsessed with their exes, regardless of whether they were the ones calling time on the relationship or were the ones who were dumped? Psychotherapist Hilda Burke has encountered many women who have an insatiable curiosity about their past relationships.

"From the break-up to years down the line, we wonder what happened to these men, particularly the ones we feel got away - those with whom we pictured a future," she says.

If that love affair was a grand passion, the memories and feelings of intimacy can linger for decades. "There can also be a perverse longing to know if they are doing really well or really badly," she says.

"Some women are hoping for drama: if it's all gone wrong, the less generous part of ourselves can find solace in that, along the lines of: 'See! Without me, he fell to pieces!' This can be gratifying to our egos, particularly if we feel hurt and low."

But why is it that women, not men, are the main culprits? Yes, I've had former boyfriends who've fought hard to keep me when the relationship was failing. But once it was over, that was it for them. No late-night calls, no plaintive letters.

The contrast between men, who have an ability to end things decisively, and women, who linger and wonder, could not be greater.

Is it due to our narcissism, insecurity or hopeless romanticism? Is it the case that we can't give up the idea that having loved and been loved, we still hold a special place in a man's heart? Or is it a maudlin, melancholic, manic response to being unfulfilled in our own lives?

Daniel Mullensiefen, a psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of London, believes our longing for lost love reflects a collective sadness, for which songs such as Hello act as a form of catharsis. "The sadness in Adele's music can be restorative," he says.

I encountered a very different type of sadness, however, when reconnecting with my university boyfriend years after we had broken up. I was then married, but curious about what had happened to him, so I made the "Hello, how are you?" call and we met for a drink.

Ten years on, he was exactly the same as when I left him. Still living at home with his mum, still partly employed, still single. Yet he was clever and attractive, so I asked him why he'd never settled down.

"You destroyed my life," he said. "After you dumped me, I never trusted another woman to get close to me. I was distraught for years and couldn't work properly. You didn't just break my heart, you broke my life."

I can assure you I felt no satisfaction on hearing that, without me, his life had fallen to pieces. I wished I'd never made the call.

You'd have thought I'd have learned my lesson by now, that trying to reconnect with an ex doesn't bring resolution, only resentment and disappointment.

Yet just a few months ago, having heard that a very dear former boyfriend was ill, I tracked him down on Facebook and called him. I wanted to explain that, despite his affair, the horrible ending, his haunting cries for forgiveness echoing through the walls of our tiny flat, I still cared what happened to him.

But I was met with a barrage of bitterness - and a reminder of the personality flaws that had made me boot him out in the first place. To add insult to injured feelings, he wasn't even sick!

Facebook is another reason why Adele's song resonates with women. In the past, a lost love would disappear into the ether; now, they may be omnipresent in our lives, thanks to social media.

Younger women in particular have become secret stalkers, checking social media daily for new photos of their exes, torturing themselves over how pretty his new girlfriend might be, how happy he looks, how many promotions he's had.

"Such behaviour can become like an addiction," says Burke. "You click on link after link, going deeper into other people's lives, analysing pictures and comments in which he is referenced.

"You may have defriended each other after the relationship ended, which means you are looking at his friends' Facebook posts. Pictures of events and holidays can prompt fantasies of how it would have been had you still been together.

"All of this can stop you moving on, as it keeps you stuck in what might have been."

And so it was through Facebook that a friend tracked down a former lover, a successful, middle-aged, happily married, filthy rich property developer. He hadn't seen or heard from her for 25 years, yet she called him in his office and suggested they meet for coffee, to "go over things". He declined, and said if she was looking for a new home to contact his assistant.

She then turned up at a birthday party of a mutual friend, declared that she had never stopped loving him, regretted how she'd hurt him and how brutally she had ended things. Was there, she wondered, any chance of another romance?

He pointed to his wife and four grown-up children across the room. "Not a chance in hell," he said.

While Adele's mournful lament to a lost love may tug the heartstrings and tap into unresolved, languishing longings, in reality that 'Hello, it's me' call usually ends in disaster.

So, Adele, do the sisterhood a favour. Don't make us wait another four years for your next album. And, this time, how about a song entitled Goodbye And Good Riddance?

- Daily Mail