Many people get hung up on their first love. Sometimes it’s OK – just a pang of nostalgic longing for a timeless romance that you miss. Other times it can be much more of a problem. It can seem like you just can’t get over them, that you are romantically stuck – no one else compares to them, and you are unable to get them out of your head. It’s like you’re addicted to them.
Why is it that first love can be so powerful and so stubborn? There is an easy answer, of course, which is that the first anything is special. You can only experience it once. While that’s true, it’s a bit trite. There are many deeper psychological reasons why first love is especially potent.
First love is the first time another person causes you to feel powerful sensations of euphoria and bonding that are unmatched by any other life experience. It shapes your perception of what love is, what romantic attachment feels like. You often have many formative experiences together, at a time when life is full of promise, and before bad romantic encounters have demoralised you. Combine that with the first experience of heartbreak when the relationship ends, and you have a towering psychological impact that lasts a lifetime.
For people whose first infatuation develops into limerence, these factors can be even more significant. If you are someone who experiences the altered mental state of limerence during the early phases of love, the first time that you experience that dazzling, euphoric high is epic. There must be something extraordinary about this other person who has made you feel such joy and excitement. They are the first person to set off the fireworks in your head.
You don’t get over someone like that in a hurry. They become a romantic touchstone for all later experiences, and shape you in many subtle but formative ways.
In fact, in at least ten ways that form a convenient list.
1. It’s founded on the innocence of youth
Before you fall in love for the first time, your ideas about what love is, and what it feels like, are based on fantasy. All the stories you’ve heard, and the role models of early life, form a kind of template for romance in your mind. When someone real comes along and captures your heart, you fit them into that template and play out your fantasies. Sure, in time, reality bumps up against your expectations, but for a while they are your dream partner. First loves tend to be idealised more avidly and impressively than any who follow.
2. It’s carefree
First love is usually young love. It comes at a time in life when your cares and responsibilities are minimal, and you are able to enjoy romantic time together in an uncomplicated way. As life goes on, recapturing this carefree vibe becomes increasingly difficult.
3. It’s promise seems limitless
Following on from the previous points – first love is all promise and potential. All those possible open futures are looked at with an optimistic bias. You’ve found someone. They make you feel amazing (at least some of the time), so the future looks pretty blissful and bright. They carry all your hopes and dreams, and you don’t yet have enough negative romantic experiences to make you cynical.
4. You share lots of first experiences
Often first love comes with a lot of other firsts. There’s the physical stuff of course, but also the psychological firsts. First person you trust with your most intimate secrets. First time you are treated as one part of a couple in society. First time you prioritise a partner over your family. You go through these novel experiences with them. Your first lover forms your idea of what love is like – they shape you in ways that no-one who follows can. They are baked into events that shape your adult persona.
5. You don’t know what you’re doing
None of us really know what we’re doing during a first love affair. We are running on instinct, not experience. Consequently, we are very naïve about what a good relationship is like. We tend to assume that it should all be effortless somehow – as though love is only real if it is easy. After all, love is a force that cures problems, and so surely if we are having problems we just need to try and love them a bit harder and that will solve everything. There is also a risk that any problems in the relationship are interpreted as our own personal shortcomings. We haven’t developed the relationship skills to deal with setbacks yet, and find it hard to blame them for their own mistakes. That naïveté feeds the idealisation of them. First loves get an easy ride.
6. First relationships often end clumsily
Linked to the last point, the lack of emotional sophistication typical of first love means that it often ends badly. One or other of you wants out, but lacks the courage or maturity to end things honestly. That means the breakup is messy and frustrating. If you are the person who was dumped, you can feel adrift – like you weren’t given a fair chance, or that you did something wrong that you should be given the opportunity to put it right. Or you feel resentful, and they end up haunting you for the sense of betrayal rather than loss.
Alternatively, maybe you ended the relationship for reasons you later regret. God knows emotionally immature people can make irrational decisions. That can leave you with a sense that you ruined the best thing you ever had, and can’t recover it. You broke the fantasy bond out of stupidity. Not a trivial burden to shake off.
7. First heartbreak is devastating
It seems fair to assume that a first love lingers longest when you were shattered by the loss. Just as the positive “firsts” have special impact, so does the negative. This is the first time that the person you looked to for emotional support has abandoned you when you needed it most. It is also the first time that you realise that love does not conquer all, and that loving someone hard enough does not solve all problems like a fairytale. This can be especially hard to cope with if giving of yourself emotionally is an important part of how you express love. You gave, but it wasn’t appreciated enough for them to stay.
Bouncing back from that takes some time, and leaves some battle scars.
8. Time and experience only make them more special
A curious feature of lasting love is that it can be harder to secure if you are too experienced in romance. I’m not advocating marrying your childhood sweetheart, but there does seem to be a Goldilocks point for long-term love where people make the decision to commit before they have too many alternatives to make comparisons too. In a way this is understandable.
Let’s say you are someone who is skilled at finding lovers. As time goes on, you decide to settle down. You start to look for a life partner, and hope for someone who has the best attributes of all the people you have been intimate with so far – Rob’s body, with John’s sense of humour, Bill’s sharp mind and Peter’s natural authority. Jane’s sexiness, Kate’s sensitivity, Jo’s beauty and Helen’s snark. Not many humans measure up. Every new person you meet falls short in some way, and while you’d like to settle down, you don’t want to settle. You have, after all, had someone better in the past.
For people caught in this impossible standards trap, the only person who seems to transcend all the others is the First. Their uniqueness makes them special.
9. Experience tells you what you should have done
The converse to this problem of excessive comparison, is that the accrued romantic experience of adulthood can make you look back and realise how much you got wrong. With the painful wisdom of hindsight, you realise how badly you messed up, and know that if you had another shot you could do so much better. This is a special trial for those who ruined their first love through poor choices. Cold comfort to understand now what a fool you were then.
10. Maximum nostalgia
All of this adds up to the main reason why a first love can linger in the memory forever, and can even overwhelm people with limerence at midlife. Your first love is not just a person. They represent much more: lost youth, the innocent hope for fairytale love, the embodiment of regret or resentment or thwarted hope. If you find yourself lamenting the loss of old dreams and youthful fantasies, then they are the north star that could guide you back.
The worst part of nostalgia is in the knowing that you can’t go back, can’t recapture the simple uncomplicated love you felt then, no matter how much you crave it.
But the memory of them connects you to who you were and how you felt then.
All of this also reveals the way to start recovering from the romantic limbo of pining for a first love. This is really about you, not about them. The reason they haunt you is because of what they represent, not who they truly are – and certainly not if you haven’t been with them for years. Getting to the bottom of what you are really craving is key, and finding ways to add purpose to your life so that the future has more cause for optimism is the only way to defuse the explosive power they have for you.
If they couldn’t save you then, they can’t save you now. You’ve got to save yourself.
It was the experience with my first love that set off my journey as a full blown limerent. And I’m completely over him. He was a toxic, manipulative guy and I am relieved that I am totally over him.
Maybe it’s the guys who have trouble getting over? Probably because they mature really slowly and late.
Natalie,
“Maybe it’s the guys who have trouble getting over? ”
Some seem to hold on to it much longer, sometimes for decades. Like you, mine was toxic and hideous. I don’t idealize him and have no interest in seeing him again. I didn’t even idealize him when I was with him. Now, he did set a sexual standard. I’ll say that.
I agree with you. They kind of do hold on. It’s weird for me though.
And my ex set a standard academically. I think it’s wise to let the good aspect of our past LOs set the tone of our future relationships.
Natalie,
“They kind of do hold on. It’s weird for me though.”
I don’t get it, either. I don’t have a lot of patience with it. I have to admit.
I think it’s probably harder if one’s LO is the so-called Good LO (https://livingwithlimerence.com/good-los/) because the Uncertainty could be stronger. I can’t remember how many times I went back and forth with LO#1, breaking up and then reconciling and breaking up again, and again until he dated with someone else. And it was me who initiated their first date too because I knew LO#1 has a crush on that new girl but was too shy then to do something about it. Reverse-gender white knight syndrome.
But anyway, just like Dr L said, it was young love when it comes to LO#1. We were both immature, clumsy and the relationship was not a love born from experience and deep commitment. I would definitely call the love between me and my SO (LO#3) as real love because it has survived years after the limerence faded and remains strong despite my last mid-life LE with LO#4.
So much has been invested in my good but slowly stagnant relationship with SO that I think the LE with LO#4 was just a wake up call to not get complacent, in both love and life. While the subconscious appearance of LO#1 were hints to what’s been missing. Not him but within myself.
Thankfully in my case, if I were to compare SO with LO#1 (or with the other LOs in between and after) SO wins by a mile. And if I were to do what’s written in Number 9, the What If I Could Turn Back Time option, LO#1 could have been a good friend if it weren’t for my limerence. Another shot? No, not with the Glimmer that he projects and for me, it’s not going to work when it’s one-sided too.
Re-purposing the old and dented knight armour as a shield against future limerence instead. Rather than trying to fix some poor chap’s broken/lost soul, the energy is best spent healing the chip on my own shoulder.
I’ve had emails about first loves from men and women, but anecdotally, I would say that more men have contacted me. The numbers are not huge (maybe a couple of dozen) but the men do seem to be more haunted by the loss and more likely to idealise the girls and women who were their “firsts”.
Always risky to ascribe traits to groups though 😉
Well it’s true for me and the article pretty much hit it on the head.
I ruined my first love, got dumped for someone else a few months later and 2 decades later this still haunts me a couple of Times a year.
Tell your Kids that they will never forget their first love and treat them well, I wish someone had told me this.
I’m going through this now. I’m 53 and been always living with the regret of breaking up with a girl 30 years ago, but in the last week it has hit me like a SLEDGEHAMMER to the guts. I’m really, really struggling. Whereas previously it was a dull shadow I could mostly ignore, now suddenly nothing has meaning outside the idea of that lost past, despite my best effort to rationalize my way out of it. NOt really sure what’s going on but I’m honestly losing the will to live. If my parents weren’t still alive I think I’d honestly be hard-pressed not to end it all, despite my wife and kids. It all feels like a lie and worse than second best.
I come to the realization many months after I went no contact that ex-LO (hopefully I can maintain that status) was in a lot of ways like my first love as well. From her looks, frame, hair, personality, voice, smile, etc was very very much like my first love.
And like ex-LO my relationship with my first love started out platonic. So there were huge similarities between the two women that subconsciously I was drawn to ex-LO. But in the middle of limerence I couldn’t realize that. And I think that’s what started the limerence. That was almost 30 years ago that I last saw my first love. She never saw us as more than friends after my actively perusing her. Got my heart broke. Drank lots of gin while listening to Air Supply. I guess I am still apparently drawn to the same kind of women.
I think women will be the death of me long before alcohol. :-/
@Daryl
You’re in good company with a lot of us mid-lifers here. I would hope you choose not to end your life over a breakup 3 decades ago. Although I suppose I can understand why you feel like everything is for nothing. Like even with what good you have acquired and all you have made is just a waste. I struggle sometimes with suicidal ideation myself, but I’ve messed my family up enough with my bad choices over the years. I really don’t want to add to their hurts.
I am a 52 yo mid-lifer myself have an LO that is 28 and she swings my moods from complete ecstatic joy, to incredibly depressive lows. The crazy thing is I don’t even really know her, other than just being a Co-Worker.
I recommend you perhaps find someone to talk to about your issue. Many limerents here are in some sort of counseling. I also have Priest I talk to about once a month. Having an outlet sounds to me like something you need right now.
Keep us posted with your progress. We will try to help here as best we can, without judgement.
Dear Daryl,
You’re not the only one on this predicament . I m much older than you, and am still ruminating about the love of my life, with whom I broke off fifty one years ago this year. A looong time ago! Twenty months ago I had a dream of him (LO) and limerence got me stung for quite an awful ride. Like you, I thought life was meaningless for me in spite of having a good SO, children and grandchildren. It’s amazing how these close relationships have no bearing in your emotions and feelings for them. The world loses it brightness if LO is not going to be part of it. It’s a regret that overtakes your entire world, and every reasoning has no meaning. One starts evaluating every single detail of one’s entire life! It’s incredible! One cannot describe these feelings of awareness…and what have you done to your life. Absolutely distressing.
I can only say to you to be strong for your children, they need you, I’m sure you’ll get over the first wave of this terrible situation. It took
me ten months of not being able to control my thoughts of LO. He was everywhere and in every thing. It was a three year exclusive relationship, vey lovely, we shared a lot. And it’s very hard to forget, for I love him still. LO is married and so I am. There’s no hope to ever see one another again. He is in ann content. After the ten month of great ordeal, I automatically regained some of my executive brain back and everything slowed down quite a bit. But the regret and sorrow is definitely there and I have learned to live with it. Some days are good others very bad. Acceptance is my mantra.
I suggest you take walks or some kind of excersise program to distract you, also a spiritual journey. ( Going to church and fellowship helps quite a bit) .
We’re here to help you discharge your burdens and sorrows. To share and make you feel comfortable with yourself and the community.
Courage and stay strong. Best wishes.
Daryl: correction: my LO is in another continent…
I think its pretty much like the article stated. If you are the course of the end of the relationship and realize later what a horrible mistake you have made and that you ruined your first love, that can be very painful in the long term.
You have only yourself to blame for the Joy and love you have lost.
Song of the Day #1: “Young Love” – Sonny James (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCmGPhpkeQQ
There’s probably a song for every item on that list.
I think there’s a #11 but maybe it’s part of the summary I missed.
#11: They affected your destiny. My wife once asked a friend, who knew LO #2, a question about her. My friend replied, “If he hadn’t been with her, he wouldn’t be with you.” That’s not precisely accurate. It’s entirely possible that my wife and I would be together if I hadn’t been with LO #2. What is certain is that I was with my wife because I had been with LO #2. Being with LO #2 set off a chain of events that eventually led me to meeting my wife.
Song of the Day #2: “I’ll Never Find Another You” – The Seekers (1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QISuv4qoJYM
“love on the brain” by Rihanna unwittingly became a song about limerence.
With the exceptions of a few notable post-Millenial songs/artists (e.g., early Maroon 5 & Evanescence) that I picked up from my kids, my development was arrested in the late 80s.
I would imagine it did. New maroon 5 is garbage to say that least, I agree. But the title of this song by Rihanna screams “limerence”.
@Natalie,
Like it, link it: “Love On The Brain” – Rhianna (2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Anr_L9U2kkw
It definitely belongs here. It has just the right undertone of self-loathing that seems inevitably a part and parcel of this kind of relationship. You hate them, you hate yourself yet the dance goes on. What fun!
A song like this is often followed up with something like Joan Jett’s, “I Hate Myself For Loving You.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjrWw0h1qeo&list=RDKjrWw0h1qeo&start_radio=1
“For people whose first infatuation develops into limerence, these factors can be even more significant. If you are someone who experiences the altered mental state of limerence during the early phases of love, the first time that you experience that dazzling, euphoric high is epic. There must be something extraordinary about this other person who has made you feel such joy and excitement. They are the first person to set off the fireworks in your head.”
I suppose my “first love” and my first experience of limerence coincided. But the funny thing is I wasn’t consciously looking for love or a relationship at the time. I didn’t think much of my friends who were interested in dating. I was kind of ambushed by my biology and/or something unconscious within me. I fell into infatuation, even though my conscious brain thought romance was lame. 😛
The same sort of goes for euphoria. I didn’t sit down and think, “Gee, I’d like some euphoria in my life” or “Hey, better go back to that person and get some euphoria”. I think what happened at the time was being around LO just felt really, really great. I had no idea why being around LO felt really, really great. And, of course, I kept going back for more. But it was largely instinct. I didn’t put too much conscious thought into it. Then it became impossible to disengage…
The dazzling, euphoric high certainly is epic. But I didn’t even know what euphoria was back then. I couldn’t have put it into words. A part of me suspected I was “in love” and this made me feel really guilty. But because there was no physical involvement and any deep emotional involvement took place entirely inside my own head, to onlookers and to LO, it must have just looked like some really pitiful case of hero-worship. And I really hate the idea of being pitied… 😛
At least now I sort of have acquired the vocabulary to talk about what happened. Sometimes I think I felt higher anticipating time spent with LO than any actual time spent with LO. Even at the time, my LO didn’t live up to the fantasy. And yet I couldn’t let go. Limerence seems to play such strange tricks on one’s mind.
That’s a really good summary of how we slide into limerence without realising what’s happening, Sammy. You don’t consciously analyse “oh, I am feeling euphoria while I am with them,” you just feel great. And you don’t consciously think “I would like some more of that euphoria sensation,” and seek out LO, you just feel drawn to them and want to be with them. It’s all instinct.
And then you get addicted.
DrL,
Yeah, then you toss #5 into the mix and it gets even better. In one of your early blogs you noted that hormone crazed teenagers have no clue what they’re doing.
I remember being in Freshman HS English class and the girl (I still remember her name) next to me crossed her legs and it zeroed me out. It was “Ehhhhh….what?! Where am I?”
I remember thinking, “I really, really want to get my hands on that. I have no idea of what I’d do if I did but I think it would be a whole lot of fun.”
I think puberty is part of God’s punishment for Original Sin….
Thanks, DR.L. The LwL blog is a great source of information and the articles are often fun to read as well. Thank you for putting together this resource. 🙂
Sammy,
I think your phrasing is so accurate, I can remember myself being in really similar situations.
Actually, I know I was fangirling LO, so the way I acted didn’t only _seem_ like some pathetic hero worship.
My last LE taught me not to put anyone on a pedestal any more.
Weird – just as you’re writing about it: the anticipation of seeing LO was even more romantic and exciting (looking back, probably because then I could let my fantasy loose) than finally seeing them.
Seeing them was more like feeling nervous to the point of sickness.
Because of the mixed signs or the lack thereof, every time we met I always had this sensation that so much was at stake. Like every single motion and word of mine can contribute to either winning or losing LO forever.
I’d like to understand where my tendency to idolize someone came from. I remember thinking LO was “so beautiful I could hardly look at them,” which sounded ridiculous even back then, but felt so real.
“Seeing them was more like feeling nervous to the point of sickness.
Because of the mixed signs or the lack thereof, every time we met I always had this sensation that so much was at stake. Like every single motion and word of mine can contribute to either winning or losing LO forever.
I’d like to understand where my tendency to idolize someone came from. I remember thinking LO was “so beautiful I could hardly look at them,” which sounded ridiculous even back then, but felt so real.”
@J79.
So many interesting thoughts to unpack there!
If they make us nervous to the point of sickness, why do our brains still register them as super-rewarding?
I guess the sick feelings tie into your next comment – maybe it’s related to the fear of losing them? The fear of losing a potentially huge reward? 😛
The psychology of putting people on pedestals – definitely a theme worth exploring. I guess it ties in with idealisation?
The “so beautiful I can barely bear to look at you” thing didn’t come up for me with one LO, because after a certain period of time, I had very little face-to-face contact with him. But when you get to see LO often in the flesh, it can definitely can become an issue. I want to look at LOs/potential LOs without them catching me looking!
Maybe physical appearance is part of the glimmer for some people? I notice when a young man has a really cute laugh. It’s like his eyes and teeth are really cute, but only when he laughs. I guess I’m responding to the emotion he’s displaying more than physical features per se… Are happy people intrinsically attractive? 😛
Really interesting article. I have often thought that limerence if more about recapturing the intense “highs” of first love, the original path that is so strongly delineated neurologially and that all subsequent loves make a shallower route in that path which has already been dug deep in the first instance.
I wonder if treatment with psychedelics/iboga would help to “reset” the path (or erase it altogether) so that the limerant is no longer physically addicted to the dopamine highs associated with the LO, in the same way that psychedelics and iboga in particular, can reset addictions to certain drugs that induce similar lifelong addictive feelings and behaviours.
I never got to experience this. My first serious relationship was with a man I had zero attraction to and who was just using me for attention. I didn’t get to experience real mutual love until I was 33, and I never got to date him so don’t have any of those ‘shared experiences’ I can think about. I really envy people that do.
I’m nearly 40 now and have pretty much given up on ever getting to experience a good relationship. I would love to know what it feels like to build a life with someone I love, who loves me, who is able to do all those ‘firsts’ with me (sex is off the table already, but I’m hoping they won’t have already done everything else with their exes). But I’m losing hope that will happen now. I just get to watch everyone around me do those things together.
It’s so rare that I meet anyone I really click with that likes me back and I’ve never got to date any of them. I think if there were loads of options for me out there, I would find it easier to move on from people. But at my age there just isn’t.
I always knew I had limerence for about a decade, but never knew there was a word for it. I just thought I was crazy. I am so glad I found this website and know I’m not alone.
My LO was my very first boyfriend. He was the first person in my life to ever show romantic interest in me. I was severley bullied growing up, to the point where I had to move to get away from my bullies. My LO was the first person since then to show kindess and interest towards me. Months later he broke up with me out of the blue. And he also never told me why he broke up with me.
I realize now as an adult we were just dumb teenagers at the time, but the pain is still relevant. I am trying so hard everyday to forget the pain he has caused. As much as I don’t want to forget him, I need my sanity back.
I’ve had this kind of love. He swept me off my feet. I’d always kept my standards high and he surpassed everything I’d ever wanted. He was physically attractive to me, he was an amazing artist and was very very intelligent. We had a beautiful relationship when he wasn’t pushing me away. He never knew what he wanted with me. He was my first kiss, he was a lot of firsts for me. Our chemistry was sickening and he’s the only man I’ve ever had an “eyes talk” kind of love with. As he says, he gets frustrated by the long distance and never thinks it’ll work. I just think he never loved me. It’s the only way I can think about it that doesn’t drive me mad. First loves are hard, and he’s hard to beat. The experiences with him were different than any I’ve experienced since then and it’s been 8 years :\
Great article. I also really connected with the affecting your destiny comment. There are so many factors that come into play and i don’t think that just because something is a first that it has to always leave a deep impression, but rather the emphasis is more perhaps on the state that you are/were in, as the receiver, or giver when having those first encounters. I will always find my first love something difficult to totally settle in my mind because I am aware that it was the first time i let myself love someone, and I decided to do it whole-heartedly. Coming from a broken family with lots of problems where I felt that I sometimes had to assume an appropriate identity to suit whoever I was with, here was finally someone who claimed that if I let them they would look after me and love me for who i was. Who would say no to that? Someone stronger than I was, obviously. Yes, he was attractive, polite, and I’ll never forget how he smelt amazing (I do think pheromones or some sort of chemistry also played a part there), but I can remember thinking that it felt too good to be true because I never thought I’d have anything decent or that successful in life, I didn’t feel I deserved it, but I threw myself in anyway, allowing myself the chance to be happy in a way that I had been protecting before. I was holding back my own potential and I let it go with him, in that way it is a no brainier that a lot of emotion be involved. Long story short, he wasn’t over his ex to say the least, and allowed me to be dis-respected in a way that would instantly be a major red flag for me now, years on. Also, he brought up marriage way too early because he was insecure, but when I said yes I stupidly believed that he meant it, and we were living together, so I was mentally planning and putting finances aside when perhaps he wasn’t serious at all. I wanted love and a stable home if I’m honest (who doesn’t?), so it did hurt to consider the details which i have tried to come to terms with, simply because i wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t met him too. Not that he was good for me, as such, (you could always find better or worse in life,) but his (mis)treatment of me ended up having a massive impact on how i viewed life and my own future, and in hindsight I struggled with feeling duped and lied to as well as the sense of having tried for something that perhaps wasn’t worth it at all, so there’s an expenditure of a lot of energy there, potentially wasted. In a tangled way you might say that it drove me into the relationship with my now husband. I was so much in shock when I thought that perhaps certain aspects were meaningless or totally cheapened in this first serious relationship, that I had a completely different outlook and mental checklist when i dated my now husband, later on. A lot of the superficial things were gone from what i held important, not because i don’t know what i like or I had been previously shallow, but because I felt that those characteristics or talents of his had actually been used against me or become a weakness of mine. I couldn’t experience the dazzle with my now husband because even though our relationship became deeper on a more grounded level and i was impressed by him, I always had to live with the scars of hurt and in some senses abuse. I was too exhausted and changed as a person to have the same hope or freshness, in fact part of me was very sceptical and jaded for some time. Firsts stick out because you might not be innocent but you are like a sheet that is blank and then you meet someone and they write on it, and then even if you try to erase it you cannot fully get out the indents and this is how it is with every human interaction. With first loves they are people that we invest in, that we consent to, and the fact that they become the past not only tells us it ended unsuccessfully but also a lot about where we went wrong in ourselves. My husband and I know each other extremely well and have stuck out many happy but choppy years because we are like-minded, comfortable, and we keep trying, but I will always remember the chemistry I had with my first love, because we shared a lot in common in other ways and the sexual spark was intense, i think at that time we were both scared of life, but the physical side and silent communication was amazing. I have never had that since, and it is quite powerful if you encounter it because we are human, physical beings who are comforted by the senses, but there again if I turn the table and consider that a lot of his words might have been useless or cheap, and some of his important actions fake or degrading, there is no real comparison between firsts and forever. I guess firsts tell us a lot about ourselves, who we were and who we desired to be, and therefore it is great to be able to accept that but it makes complete sense as to why we would essentially mourn it too, because we don’t get another first time and then we ultimately change, as we are always changing until we die, into a better or worse form of ourselves who will never be able to give as we gave that first time, whatever the situation. What would i tell myself if I could rewind before so many firsts? I would say “be careful”. There are many things that we cannot help in life, but if we knew how things would impact us, even those things which we never anticipated, surely we would tread more lightly and love ourselves more as well as the world around us. *Peace to all*.
My first intense love and LO#1 was an on again off again girlfriend in highschool. For nearly 3 years she held my complete romantic attention and looking back now, the LE sort of ruined my HS experience. When I went away to college my LE almost immediately ended. Oddly enough we reconnected right after college, went on a few dates, but I had zero real interest in her any longer and pretty much walked away. So for me, my first love does not haunt my dreams at all.
My second love and LO#2 was my college girlfriend of 3 years. We broke up my senior year, which sent me into an intense LE for her. I pursued her for the next 3 years and we almost got back together a few times until she finally made it clear she was not interested. At that point I went NC and it took about a good 10 years for the LE to completely fade. Today I have zero feelings for her.
The “one that got away” that still haunts me a bit, though I would say it’s a fairly low regret, is a girl I had a short, but passionate fling with after college. I spent a summer in another country, met a girl, and we instantly had mutual attraction and strong connection. We danced around the attraction for about 3 weeks and then had about 3 days of complete romantic bliss. That was it. After I left we corresponded quite a bit but I never considered her a real option for a life long partner due to our distance. About 2 years after this I met my SO. Here is where the regret comes in…this girl contacted me about a year into my relationship with SO (before we were engaged) and wanted to come visit me. I told her no and chose my current SO. But I have questioned that decision for 25 years now. I reconnected with this woman on FB some years back and we talked over FB some. I would not say I am over her, and still think of her and our time together fondly. I don’t think of her as an LO because nothing about her caused me much distress. But I think I could have married her just as easy as the time. She was so beautiful and I loved her a great deal. Still have feelings for her.
What gets me the most about current LO and what sent me into my LE with current LO is the vibe of attraction between us is remarkably similar to how it was with that woman. I think part of my LE is wrapped up in what I said no to 25 years ago and the what if of that.
my first love was just that. At 18, I met her and for 10 weeks we enjoyed each other. No intercourse but hrs of foreplay and long talks, and laughing. It seemed like magic. Then one day she asks me to come over to her dorm. She simply says ; I can’t see you any more. I’d see her around campus and she would not even say hi. To this day, I have only my speculations as to why. That was 55 years ago and it still haunts me. I did not understand why it haunts me but this article was helpful in understanding that. If nothing else I know I’m not the only person who is still haunted by your first love.
I had longer relationships in highschool but breaking up was never like what I experienced. I apprciate know why I feel like this but that relationship still haunts me.
Hi David, have you ever thought about contacting her via social media? I don’t think in this day and age it is anything unusual given the severeness of the breakup, although it might obviously be intimidating/embarassing. That said, the coldness of the breakup suggests it might not be someone who would react sympathetically.