I suspect it's very common for relationships to be subtly diminished or spoilt by the embedded memories of an older relationship.
Not in my case perhaps, because none of my youthful romances were especially intense or sensational, but I imagine many couples are contending with some hidden emotional or sexual nostalgia.
How many bedmates are secretly thinking of that passionate affair of ten years ago, that disarming man or woman who led them to new heights of love or sex or joy or excitement but then for one reason or another disappeared from their life?
How many couples are privately comparing their present partner with someone else and thinking that what they've ended up with is okay but lacks some extra something they had a tantalising taste of in the past?
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most couples are quite satisfied with what they've got and aren't comparing their partner with anyone at all. They may even be relieved that they've landed someone so much better than that immature idiot they were so besotted with in their more impressionable youth.
But what woman has not at some time or another been called not by her own name but by the name of some previous heartthrob the man still carries a torch for? And which he frantically takes back in a flurry of red-faced apologies?
