old flame

plural old flames

1. idiomaticA previous boyfriend or girlfriend; a former romantic or sexual partner, especially one for whom one still has romantic feelings.

   But Philip still yearns for an old flame: Schiffer, an Oscar-winning actress.

   2008 September 25, Lev Grossman, “Text and the City”, in Time

   3 more examples

   There once lived, in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr Godfrey Nickleby: a worthy gentleman, who, taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment.

   1838 March – 1839 October, Charles Dickens, chapter 1, in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1839, →OCLC

   "Edith Bradin's coming," said some one to Gordon. "Didn't she used to be an old flame of yours? Aren't you both from Harrisburg?"

   1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, “(please specify the page)”, in Tales of the Jazz Age, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC

   Lolly Mulberry, a notorious playgirl, was an old flame of Tudy’s and an old enemy of Materkins’.

   1961, Xavier Herbert, Soldiers' Women, Netley, SA: Fontana Books, published 1978, page 50