Do you try to recover communication with someone where your relationship ended badly?

My first love ended badly for me. I was terribly upset and terribly angry with her for at least a couple of years. After two years, she came by once or twice, and if I had any control over myself, I would not have seen her.

Those days went by, and she disappeared for decades. Now she appears on my Facebook suggested friends, and I have not yet asked her to friend me. I don’t know if she gets the same suggestions, but she hasn’t asked me, either.

Another friend and I had been very close. We’d met on the train in the days before the internet, and had corresponded very intensively via snail mail. I was living with someone then, but the relationship was heading for it’s end. My correspondence with my train friend got very intimate. We talked about seeing each other all the time. Finally, we arranged to meet, and I went out there, and we had an intense three day affair, and then I went home, and I never heard another word from her again, even after I broke up with my girlfriend, she never responded to my letters.

I don’t know if I should try to reconnect in the first example. Yet I’m curious as to what happened. I think it would be interesting to be friends on some level.

I don’t know what happened in the second example. I think that up until I met my wife, I still wanted to reconnect with the second person because she filled my imagination.

I could tell another few stories like this—where relationships end abruptly with nothing. There are also relationships where the end did not mean the end, which is much nicer.

Have you had this kind of thing happen to you? What happened? Did you ever want to reestablish contact? Why? Did you connect again? Was it satisfying? Did it end some kind of wondering you had? Or was it not really worth it? If you didn’t connect, why not?