Has anyone disappeared from your life, only to reenter it later?

I’m not sure what you mean by disappeared. My brother often goes for years without contacting me. We have been in contact every Christmas for the past few years, but not much beyond that, until the hospital contacted me this year. His affairs are pretty much on hold right now.

My oldest son has gone years between communicating with me. He randomly sends messages to our family group every few years or so. Now he has Skype and I have talked to him just this week. I am flying out to visit him next week – in Sweden.

Yes and it is weird and wonderful;
I recently reconnected with friend from college years, hadn’t seen in 35 years. He visited briefly on his way from where he lives to Germany and we stay in touch.
Must thank Facebook for that.

Lost touch with a friend and former boss when he unexpectedly left the company, followed not to long after by myself. In the meantime I had moved to Capitol Hill and renewed my government career. I ran into him in the Capitol Hill Safeway about 10 years later. He was then working for the government also. He left the area around 2000 but we’ve stayed friends and visited each other.

Ran into a guy I dated briefly in college in DC about 8 years later in Amsterdam. He was staying on a houseboat with a friend; I visited, stayed overnight and got a feel for Amsterdam living from a native perspective. I also remembered why I didn’t date him very long.

Okay it hasn’t happened to me YET. But I know there will be a time like it for me some day. I think it would be a coincidence maybe, but I would also think it would be weird and great to see an exciting someone back after so many years. But I do understand.

Also Facebook. Just last year, my best friend from 1st grade in California. We exchange messages about once a week, mostly about art and photography.

Yes, a very dear friend and it’s wonderful. I’m sure it’s going to happen again in the future. I don’t believe in coincidences.

Yes, one of my best friends and neighbor. One day, we didn’t see each other after the summer. For no reason we didn’t see each others for a year or so, then suddenly we started seeing each other again. It was the weirdest thing.

My birth father was never actually in my life, until I tracked him down when I was 18 years old. (He and my mother were a one night stand.) He tried very hard to dissuade me from meeting him in person, saying he didn’t even know if I was his child. I insisted anyway. We met for lunch, in the industrial park we both worked in. It turned out we worked a block away from each other (and both frequented the spot we’d chosen for lunch), lived less than 2 miles from each other, and shopped in the same damn grocery store. All of this was not in the town I was conceived and born in, either. Weird, huh? Anyway, he took one look at me and knew I was his. I look a lot like his sister. We ended up having a 4 hour “lunch”, during which we both cried our heads off. That night, he told his wife about me and the next day they invited me for dinner at their house. We had a pretty good relationship (though not father/daughter) for the rest of his life. I also gained a ‘step-mom’ and a brother out of the deal! All in all, I’m really glad I got to know him before he died.

In another case, an ex-boyfriend who then became one of my best friends was lost to me when my ex-husband objected to our friendship (he had decent reasons, so I cut my friend out of my life). Years later, again in a totally different town, I was at my polling place on election day. It was extremely crowded, and I was snaking around the line when I came face to face with him. I was so stunned, I stupidly asked “What are you doing here?!?” Without missing a beat, he replied “I imagine the same thing that you are: voting.” Yeah, I felt like an idiot. Anyway, not only did we live very near each other, we both had children in a magnet school that accepted fewer than 30 students every year out of a very big county. It was pretty surreal. After my divorce, we reconnected again through Facebook and now message each other. It’s nice to have my friend back.

A couple years ago I ran into a girl I had a massive crush on in college. We never hooked up because I was dating someone, then she got married, then divorced and that was the last. I bumped into her a my sons school dance and we were both Chaperone’s that night and turns our she is happily married and been living in my town for a while! I still bump into her now and then and is always nice to say hi and get a hug.

Facebook has facilitated this a few times for me in the past year. Folks I haven’t seen since high school (20 years) or even grade school (30 years).

The initial meeting is great fun and surreal at the same time. In most cases, however, I’ve found that you can’t go home again.

If I had a lot of free time, I could probably do a better job cultivating these long lost friendships, but as it stands, I barely have enough time for my current friends.

Beyond these Close Encounters of the Facebook Kind, we have a group of friends we were inseparable from in high school and college. Now, we make a point of getting together once (maybe twice) a year.

In 1993 I ended a close friendship that had become toxic. it wasn’t pretty! A few months ago I reconnected on Facebook and last Friday I met up in an airport for a visit. 17 years later we had a great time and are friends again. None of the old crap applies anymore, time and distance did a great job of erasing the old issues.

I’m still waiting..

I had a good friend at uni I lost touch with after she graduated ahead of me, got married and moved away.

Fast forward 16 years, and another mutual friend, with whom I have kept in contact, let me know she was in Brooklyn (and now divorced) and we befriended each other on FB. We hang out a couple of times a month now.

My old roommate did that. I was not all that happy. She stole my fiance. She contacted me on Facebook. I guess she has been married to him for the last 20 or so years… It brought up all the old feelings and I had. I was just nice to her . It is senseless to tell someone off 20 years later again LOL . I figured.

A high school boyfriend, I was so in LOVE with him (ok, as much “in Love” as you can be at 15 or 16 years old)

he graduated h/s when I was still in 10th grade and went into the Navy… broke my heart!
He wrote a couple of times, and then the last I heard he was out in California and then that was all.

Fast forward 20 years…

I’m picking my daughter up from camp, and I see one of her friends’ last name is the same as this guy…

His brother still lives in town, so I assumed it was one of his kids

The next day, I ran into HIM while I was dropping my daughter off in the morning.

It was very strange…my heart went up into my throat and I felt my face flush (twenty years later!)

He looks HOT too… and how strange his daughter and mine are close friends now.

I got over the whole OMG feeling and now he’s just “Jessica’s Dad”

I am usually the one that disappears. And I leave people puzzled. My exits are from toxic “friendships”...that is, from friends who really are not true friends. Most of these have been the back-biting “Do you know what so-and-so said about you?” type of friendships. This is very elementary school and I have no patience for that sort of thing——nor would I ever tell a close friend what gossip/tales someone else said about them as it is not worth repeating. I also find that I exit from friendships with controlling and manipulating people. I don’t look back. It may be heartless, but not as much as being pushed around by vicious people calling themselves a friend.

So, I don’t return to those friendships. Sometimes, I disappear because I have personal issues in my life and I don’t like to burden friends with my difficullties. This upsets them, I know. Eventually, I do turn up….but most of my friends know now that if I disappear it is because I am working through personal issues. They are great about this.

Having said that, I have lost touch with two or three people that have meant a lot to me (not in my circle of great friends) and I suppose that when the time is right, if ever, we will re-connect.

Yes, and it was fabulous. She was a girlfriend from junior-senior high. We lost touch for over 25 years. She had long-since moved far away, married and raised two kids, but we resumed our friendship like no time had passed and are still in contact 20 years since the reunion. Old friends are the best!

Haha, yes. Not for long, only four years actually. :] But I had a lot of friends in grade school that I lost contact with during high school. Now some go to the same college as me, and I’ll see others at random parties back home. :]

Yes, I have lost touch with friends and years later reconnect. As far as a romantic partner, no.

I usually disappear. I’m….. odd. :) But your question is if someone disappeared from me and returned. Um. No. But sort of. But not really. I got tired of a bastard ‘friend’. Twice he had the nerve to try to reenter my life, I just said hello/goodbye. If he had the money he stole and a heart felt huge apology for a LOT of behavour I might wearily watch him from a distance otherwise STAY GONE! I’ve tried looking up people but get no response (online). In person I once met a group of people I loosely knew and it was weird at first. They were all welcoming and then we were friends, then I had my problems and repeatedly fell away. Thing is, no one’s ever come looking. I wish someone decent would look and find me. It’d make me feel loved and appreciated and all old movie like. But they don’t (haven’t during past in/out outs – not once) so I feel more rejected. :)

Yeah an ex girlfriend re-appeared when my wife & I separated, we’d been together for two years ten years prior, her timing was impeccable, although no coincidence I think!! Still it was good while it lasted! :-/

Yep

I got a text from an old friend a month ago and we met up for the first time in about 30 years. We picked up where we left off as if it had been just a few weeks. I wondered where the time had gone.

Reentering in one’s life can be caused by different things.
Some say it’s fate when two people meet again after a long period of time.
Others use “it’s a small world” when meeting with friends after they have been separated.

Anyway people will go in and out of one’s life ^^