Danielle Colley: The ghosts of boyfriends past

Danielle was contacted by a string of old lovers as her marriage crumbled. Photo / Supplied

Danielle Colley was in the middle of a marriage breakdown when an old flame phoned

My husband and I had been slugging it out at marriage counselling for almost a year.

Some days it seemed we took a gentle step forward before we bungeed back against each other. Casual kitchen conversations seemed to carry barbed edges ready to jag our flesh. The end of our eight-year relationship was imminent but we weren't ready to quit it yet.

During this time a boyfriend from the past popped up on Messenger - The Chef. The Chef had just bought a used car, and on the registration papers was my name as a previous owner. Seemed like fate, he thought. I'll give that a crack.

We messaged a few titbits of how our lives had gone in the 11 years since Splitsville. His marriage had gone sour. His tone had a perceptible sting, which reminded me of his violent outburst the night I broke up with him. He suggested we catch up, but I told him I was married. He didn't mind, he said. Whatever, I thought. Good chat.

Only weeks later another piece of my romantic history lit up Messenger while I sat at my desk. It was The Kid. He was so young when we had our dalliance 10 years before, but I had great memories and a soft spot. He was 10 years younger than me, but now it appeared our marriages were on the skids. He seemed lost, and not quite matured. I had no words of wisdom for him.

Around this time I was chatting to a dear old friend from my teen years. She mentioned she was still in touch with my first love, The Surfer. I hadn't thought of him in years. In my memory he was still wild-haired, with a ripped exotic brown body. I was surprised when a day or so later he rang after my friend passed on my number unbidden. A quick Facebook stalk revealed he was now a middle-aged man, no longer the Adonis of my teens. His wife had left him, taking his kids across the world. Did I want to bring my kids to stay at his for the weekend?

I so loved hearing his voice, and remembering the sweet passion of a 16-year-old girl first discovering the delicious joys of falling head over heels with someone who felt the same way back. But no, I did not want to go and visit him with my children in tow. The world as I knew it was slipping through my fingers. I was just trying to hold on as best as I could. Life was complicated enough without throwing in another heartbroken soul searching for answers to the big life questions.

It was not lost on me however, this revisiting old loves business. I felt like there were lessons trying to unfurl like a new budding flower. I just needed to work it all out.

Danielle believed there were lessons to be learned from her past boyfriends. Photo / Supplied

I was suffocating in my home, so I took the children away somewhere I could breathe. My father lived in a place where your toes could touch the cool waters of an icy bay when you stepped from his garden. There was space and air, and trees for days. During this trip I got in touch with the most traumatic of all breakups; the double-crosser, the philanderer who left me broken and eviscerated.

The Liar.

He lived not far from where I was, and although we'd barely been in touch since the horrific day he attempted suicide after being caught in a web of deceit, I felt compelled to finish this business of boyfriends past.

We drank booze, he spilled the beans and I cried. After over a decade of holding onto hurts, we diluted them with booze and let them flow away. It was cathartic to see his face and hear his crazy laugh, but this was not where I was supposed to be.

By now the gavel had dropped at home. The words of finality had been spoken. Our marriage was over. The uncertainty was no longer, but instead of that awful should-we-stay-or-should-we-go limbo, it was now about the nuts and bolts of separating lives.

Neither place is a comfortable place to be, and the sorrow and anger can weigh heavily on a home.

My then-husband decided to fly home to his family on the other side of the world for two weeks to gather his thoughts. I sat on the couch, glass of wine in hand and my mobile buzzed next to me on the couch. I don't normally answer an unknown number but when I did, I knew the voice immediately.

It was my boyfriend from when I was 25. He still had my number, and he had wondered how I was doing — 14 years after we'd split. As you do. I actually chuckled incredulously into the phone. It couldn't be coincidence. Then what? What was the point of these seemingly random events?

A week later, with my husband still away I received an email from a man with whom I'd had a few flings pre-marriage. Unlike the others, we had always been more friends with benefits and not really a relationship. We'd not lived in the same town when we were single, and we'd hang out when we could. We'd kept vaguely in touch over the years. He was turning 40 and he invited my husband and I to his soiree. I RSVPed for one, and I went across town on that Saturday night alone.

I stayed only an hour, and I barely saw him. He had a room full of people who all wanted to wish him well. I watched him chatting and smiling with his friends, as I hung back with some mutual friends.

But something happened that night. Although it was to be months before my home situation was sorted, that night we remembered the familiar spark.

We stayed in touch and slowly grew to know that we could rely on each other for unequivocal support and care, and in a matter of months we fell in love, Mr Right and I.

I've made jokes to friends about the ghost of boyfriends past, all visiting me and teaching lessons like gnarly old Scrooge. I still wonder about the spectacular synchronicity of it, but four years later he and I are still together and that familiar spark just gets stronger every day.