First love has a long lifespan. Indeed, the intensity of affection can survive well past the twosome’s formal breakup.
A transformative romance stretches time like taffy, far beyond the last goodbye. When it does, the memories impact the former lover and those who take her place.
The first time packs a wallop. Risks are surmounted, among them opening your heart, exposing your unclothed self, and saying three words that total eight letters.
Is that number lucky? It all depends.
At its best, first love combines enchantment, joy, and touching intimacies. For those who doubt themselves, it represents an affirmation, too.
The message of love demonstrates your worthiness of the consideration and affection of another, about which many lack certainty. The partner gives you wholeness sufficient to salve your insecurity, at least as long as the relationship continues.
Assuming delirium-inducing emotions persist on both sides, the gift of substance and meaning endures.
More often, one has either found someone else, decided he is unready for a permanent connection, discovered troublesome qualities in the admirer, or realized the spark is gone.
A young heart shatters.
What happens then? Several possibilities exist.
Questions are asked. Why? Wasn’t I good enough? Did you meet a guy you liked more? What did I lack? Tears have been known to enter the conversation, including those of person who decided to end things.
Denunciations are spoken or written. Blame. Indictments. Accusations of infidelity or lying. Rage.
Perhaps the one departing offers friendship. The invitation to a platonic relationship tends to sound like a guaranteed last-place finish in the Kentucky or Epsom Derby.
Deal making. Promising to do better even to the point of begging and pleading.
And then? Nothing but memories unless torturous photos of sunnier days survive.
Closing the door produces a formal conclusion of the partnership if the one left behind plays by the rules. No more emails, texts, phone calls, surprise appearances, or dates will be written in the calendar, nor rapture emerge in response to a touch now forbidden.
Shadows persist, nonetheless. The image lives on, as do both the best and worst recollections.
Scenes are replayed by the abandoned one. Return visits to favorite old places recall better times and delightful occasions. “Our song” is back on the open market, no longer ours. After grieving, perhaps the sad one begins to date again, but he is not the same.
In many cases, the first love carries a part of you away, like a thief in the night. Your heart is now a hostage without a payable ransom for its return. The emotional attachment is the property of the ex.
Once a welcome visitor in everyday life, now makes regular appearances within. She pays no rent for the space or heartache inside, rendering automatic comparisons with appealing newcomers and serving as a measure of perfection unlikely to be matched.
Any fresh flirtation must contend with the one who loved you for too short a while. Sleepless and thinking of her, you carry a torch, hoping to rekindle her interest.
A first love tends to be idealized regardless of your need to shrink her to size. The previous lover becomes the gold standard because the one who is hurt makes her so. She is unique, as all “firsts” seem to be. Seem …
She now inhabits a mental and emotional room in the individual she left, where all her gifts grow in the guise of a phantom.
Yearning can persist for years. The spark of such a one lasts, in part, by making an imprint that cannot be duplicated.
The initial feelings of a person being swept away are similar to the astonishment associated with the birth of your first child. Neither the newborn’s enlivening effect nor the electricity of first love had ever been encountered before.
No matter the virtue of any new romantic interest, the entrance of another is hard-pressed to produce the wonder that came earlier. The advantage of the predecessor was her entrance into another life innocent of love.
We can only be innocent once.
Revisiting old emails and texts, if the bereaved chooses to, is a self-imposed twist of the knife. Writing letters you don’t send can express the pain and perhaps drain some of it.
Sometimes, taking inventory of all the former lover’s good and bad qualities is helpful. Doing so may reveal fewer reasons to continue worshiping the one you paint as a goddess.
Destroying old photos and written communications can reduce the temptation to think of her over and over.
A question arises—a question that needs an answer. Was #1 irreplaceable, or were your emotions the simple product of the human desire to love and be loved? Were you ready and waiting, ripe for the taking?
Potential mates, some quite remarkable, can still be found nearby if you seek them. The right moment awaits. You carry it with you.
In the end, the magic of your first love almost always diminishes as the breakup recedes in time, but requires returning to the dating game without her.
Yes, you erected a statue of the one you believed was the only one. Still, as you reconsider the pain and preoccupation of something that cannot be, one hopes the sculpture will be seen with new eyes and without adornment: the remnant of a spell that must be broken.
The initial sweetheart was on time at the right time, and now that moment is past.
Perhaps you are ready to realize, as did Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that the wizard was unnecessary for the life she wanted. There were other possibilities there for the taking if she pursued them.
Kansas and her family might not be your destination as it was for Dorothy, but love doesn’t only reside in a single place or departed heart.
As Shakespeare’s Coriolanus reminds us upon being banished from his Roman homeland, “There is a world elsewhere.”
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Rejected Suitor at the top of the page is the work of Norman Rockwell. It originally appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1926. Next comes Salvador Dali’s The Ghost of Vermeer Van Delft from 1934. It is followed by Arcimboldo’s Summer, completed in 1563. Finally, The Torero of Broken Hearts, 1902, by Gerda Wegener. They are all sourced from Wikiart.org/
My first real love was also my last, my late husband. I see similarities in the grieving process. Thanks.
Lifelong love and loss is certainly a different category, no matter the heartache and other qualities they have in common, I’m sure, Lois. But as you say, grieving is a human experience we all know something about.
Happy Mother’s Day, Lois!
Thank you! With my kids well into their 50s now, I’m really feeling ancient!
I can identify, though my kids are younger and my grandsons are 5 and almost 9.
“We can only be innocent once.” Wow, what a powerful sentence. Funny how innocent and wise seem to be mutually exclusive. Thanks for sharing your wisdom, Dr. Stein!
Experience of the world also arranges a meeting with pain and knowledge. I suppose this is part of the encounter with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
We do pay for our wisdom, but, to the good, find joy at the expense of innocence some of the time. I imagine only children attain an unalloyed joy that displays to adults what we lost when we experienced enough of the world.
In effect, we all have our time making the same error that the Garden story tells us about. Ours, however, doesn’t come all at once usually, but in slow motion.
Thanks, Wynne.
Happy Mother’s Day, Wynne!
Love and loss…love and loss. Intertwined forever. Thank you, Dr. Stein. ❤️
You are welcome, Vicki. Nothing can be added to those 11 letters.
❤️😉❤️
Happy Mother’s Day, Vicki!
Thank you so much! 🥰
You are welcome. I hope it has been a wonderful day!
Yes, yes! So good! 🥰
I think I have to say my first real love was my now ex husband and what you speak about Dr. Stein is so true- all of it in the aftermath. There was a lot of good for some amount of time but as the years go by it’s harder to remember that. The bad is still sitting pretty prominent, taking center stage but I hope to chip away slowly to something better, to memories that hold stronger positive meaning. Work in progress for sure.
Good luck with that process, Deb. It sounds doable, especially if your contact with him is either friendly or limited. In either case, time is on your side
Thank you. Right now “limited” is the key word and the jury will remain out on where “friendly” manages to settle in the overall scheme of things. Remembering and accepting the good is for my kids as well. I want them to have a more well-rounded picture of their dad
Happy Mother’s Day, Deb!
Giving the kids a different view might be a little harder since no one controls their minds as we control our own. But again, there is time, especially if he shows them kindness and dedicated interest in their well being.
“A transformative romance stretches time like taffy…” How poetic and well expressed! My first love, though transformative, was nothing like the love and loss you’ve described for my heart was elsewhere.
Indeed, Rosaline. And I believe I know your heart’s lofty destination.
I knew you would, Dr. Stein 🙂
My first boyfriend was not my first love. My first love was my first husband and the father of my child, who passed away after our divorce. It is true, the tie in our hearts to our first love never quite leaves us.
Happy Mother’s Day, Tamara!
Thanks so much Dr. Stein!
Very sorry for your loss, Tamara.
Excellent!
Your blog gave me lots to think about. I lost a first love very young. It was my father. I’ve spent a life time “recovering” one way or another…or not at all. Joan Chandler
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You have said something important that I didn’t think of, Joan. It is a category by itself, and a unique kind of devastation. Thanks for offering it.
Your blogs are a great contribution to mental health efforts. And, you have a knack for finding rare photos!
Thank you, Joan!