I met the love of my life in 1988, when I was 19 and he was 18. We were together for six months and were very much in love. He was in the Royal Navy (he used to show people around the world my photo and say, "That's the girl I'm going to marry"), but as I found it more and more difficult to cope with a 'long distance relationship', I made the very difficult decision to end the relationship. It really broke my heart.
In time, I married someone else and had two wonderful children, but the marriage ended 13 years later.
About six years ago, I registered with Friends Reunited and one of the first people I looked up was ''The love of my life'', just to find out how he was, but he hadn't registered with F.R. Over the years, I would often type in his name and nothing would come up.
In April 2005, not expecting to see his name on F.R., I was absolutely amazed to his name on there and e-mailed him a friendly, 'Hello again, how are things with you?' kind of message. He was over the moon to hear from me and before long, we were chatting on MSN and were on the phone to eachother. Our lives had turned out in a similar way. We had both separated from the people we had had children with, and had each gone on to have a very difficult long term relationship with another person.
A few days after our first e-mails, he travelled 97 miles to come and see me. It was amazing. He got out of his car, we threw our arms around each other and cried! It was incredible.
We both felt as though we'd never been apart. We stayed up all that night, just talking about everything, including the fact that he had carried my photo around in his wallet for a year after we had separated and that I had kept a special teddy which he had bought me all those years ago. He couldn't believe it when I showed it to him!
We are now 37 and 38 and have been back together for 15 months and are living together.
Life is wonderful and feels right at last for both of us.