First Loves

[silverwhisper]

irishwoody, that's a really great post!

and i think that creating that thread's a great idea. don't be shy: go right on ahead!

ed

 

[irishwoody]

Thanks silentwhisper - Yes i'll do that - Im a virgin at new postings... so about time to lose that

 

[philos]

20+ years later I still think of my 1st love almost daily. Would love to apologize for not treating her better. Weird, I'm sure she is over it and has forgotten me but I've never been able to let her go.

 

[CWatson]

I remember walking in the room, and seeing my first love, and thinking she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever met. I was right. She was playful and resilient, independent, something of a tomboy, but there was a vulnerability there, a deep sense of inadequacy. She was careful whom she got close to. Yeah, I'd say she definitely had an influence on my future love life.

I don't know where she is now. I google her name and smoke comes out. There's a guidance counselor at a college somewhere with her name, but it's not her face. Facebook... Well, 90% of Facebook has no picture attached. Maybe she never got onboard the Internet bus at all--I'm one of the oldest members of the Information Age, because I came into my own just as the Web was starting to take off. I know people from my graduating class(es) who looked at it, decided that communication at such proxy wasn't for them, and moved on. Or maybe her mom remarried after they moved away and she switched to her step-dad's last name; she never seemed to miss her biological father. Or maybe she fell in with the wrong people. Divorced mother, being raised in front of the TV... She was a smart girl, but I'm fairly sure she grew up to be a looker, and even when I knew her she had self-esteem issues. She might've gone down the wrong path. Maybe she's a drug addict now. Maybe she's dead.

The simple fact is, the last time I saw her, I was eight. Things have changed since then. Her and me. I don't know how her life has turned out, and I'm fairly sure I never will. And... I've made my peace with that. If the options are to move on or go insane, then I'm gonna move on. It's not really a choice.

(Which doesn't mean my heart doesn't skip a beat every time I hear her name.)

 

[SweetErika]

I remember walking in the room, and seeing my first love, and thinking she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever met. I was right. She was playful and resilient, independent, something of a tomboy, but there was a vulnerability there, a deep sense of inadequacy. She was careful whom she got close to. Yeah, I'd say she definitely had an influence on my future love life.
<snip>
The simple fact is, the last time I saw her, I was eight. Things have changed since then. Her and me. I don't know how her life has turned out, and I'm fairly sure I never will. And... I've made my peace with that. If the options are to move on or go insane, then I'm gonna move on. It's not really a choice.

(Which doesn't mean my heart doesn't skip a beat every time I hear her name.)

You must have been an incredibly precocious, perceptive eight year old and have an extraordinary memory to recall such details with so much clarity at 26.

Did you feel like it was love then, or is that just what you've deemed it now that you're older?

Have you been in love since? If so, have you found it to be different than what you felt for the girl when you were eight?

 

[CWatson]

Well... I dunno. Those are good questions.

If you want to be technical about it, no, it wasn't "love" in the really grown-up adult sense of being able to put that person first and be completely selfless. But I know that I cared about her a great deal, and was concerned about her well-being. Insofar as you can love, when you're eight years old and don't even know why people are scared of death (at least, until the girl you like moves away, and you find out what "personal loss" means), I believe I did love her. And I was definitely in love with her. I mean, I called her my girlfriend (which I remember because she told my mom that while I was in the car with her--typical embarrass-the-guy thing ), and I know that my life was oriented to her a great deal.

As to the details... Well, first off, that's three years of recollections compressed into a paragraph. Second, that's supplemented by recollections from my mom, who of course has a better memory about it than I do. And third... I'm a writer. It's my job to extrapolate a lot of character from a few details. (So, yes, some of that could be entirely wrong. Either way, we'll have a hell of a time proving it. *wry smile*)

 

[SweetErika]

Well... I dunno. Those are good questions.

If you want to be technical about it, no, it wasn't "love" in the really grown-up adult sense of being able to put that person first and be completely selfless. But I know that I cared about her a great deal, and was concerned about her well-being. Insofar as you can love, when you're eight years old and don't even know why people are scared of death (at least, until the girl you like moves away, and you find out what "personal loss" means), I believe I did love her. And I was definitely in love with her. I mean, I called her my girlfriend (which I remember because she told my mom that while I was in the car with her--typical embarrass-the-guy thing ), and I know that my life was oriented to her a great deal.

As to the details... Well, first off, that's three years of recollections compressed into a paragraph. Second, that's supplemented by recollections from my mom, who of course has a better memory about it than I do. And third... I'm a writer. It's my job to extrapolate a lot of character from a few details. (So, yes, some of that could be entirely wrong. Either way, we'll have a hell of a time proving it. *wry smile*)

That makes sense.

I don't think proving it comes into play at all.

It's interesting to think about how our perceptions of romantic love change as we mature, though. I know I was only capable of crushes and liking people until I was well into my teenage years, even though I was a very precocious child. When I did mature enough to love someone, that love was different than the love I developed for my husband at 19 or so. And my concept of love as a real adult is even very different from what it was at 19 because I've experienced so much since then.

 

[curiousgeo62]

I married my first love. We met in my mom's girl scout troop when she was 13. We started dating when she was 15 and we got married right after she graduated from university when she was 24. That was 1986 and four kids later, we are still married! Lots of good times and some bad, but we keep pressing on and making it work.

 

[Willing and Unsure]

I just ended the relationship with my first real love a few months back. It was weird because he was surprised at what I was doing, like he didnt understand why. I still dont get how he could possibly think that I would want to be in a relationship with someone that feels "that he's setting to be wtih me". I'm trying to move on now. It's really hard some days, especially since my "best friend" tries to guilt me into being his friend. I've talked to him once or twice, but not much and not about anything of real importance. I've seen him once and feel nothing more than indifference towards him when I see him. I really think that in the end, there will be little to no contact with him.

Then again, after taking the time to write this, I dont think there will be any contact with him.

 

[CWatson]

Sounds like you have moved on.

I dunno, maybe I'm too practical about it, but I think that, to a certain extent, "settling" is just part of what ends up happening. Personally, I don't believe in the idea of soul mates--or, rather, yes, I do believe that such a person can exist, a person who is absolutely perfect for me, and possibly even does exist. But that makes her one woman in 6.7 billion, and for that reason I have absolutely no belief that I will ever marry her or for that matter even meet her. (Wherever and whoever you are, O Soul Mate O' Mine, good luck! Let's get in touch at the clearing at the end of the path and see what we made of ourselves.)

But I also look at it as a bell curve. On one end, way at the 100.0% Compatibility point on the spectrum, there is my single mythical Soul Mate. There's just one of her out there in the world. But at the 99.9% Compatibility point on the spectrum, there's... Well, I don't even know. I'm looking at the math on the normal distribution curves and it's beyond me. But I'm guessing there's at least 10 women in the world who fit in that category. Add 99.8% and we toss on another (arbitrarily) 50, for a total of 60. Go down to 99.7% and we have 150 women total. If we continue in this vein, we'll eventually hit a point where the number is large enough that I can say, "Yes--I've met (say) 10,000 women in my life, and at least one of them was in our high-compatibility window." How low will I have to go to get that? 95%? 93%? 98%? Again, the math is beyond me. But you see where I'm going with this.

And, seriously, what's 2% or 5% or even 7% less happiness quotient? I don't for a minute believe that it's enough to divorce over. 40%, sure; maybe even 20%. But not 7%. Maybe I won't be perfectly happy... But, with this woman I'm willing to "settle" with, I'll still be able to live a life I'm proud of and happy with. I'll still be able to look back on my life from my deathbed and have no regrets. And that, as far as I see it, is the whole point.

So, yeah. I'm crazy. But that's my utterly pragmatic take on it.

 

[NightL]

I'm looking at the math...

a WAY too much

...just enjoy life and what it has to offer...

...My partner is my soul mate... took a few years to discover her... We were just only friends for 16 years before we even realized...

 

[CherryBomb24]

my first love.......................can die in a fire and i'd piss on his grave.
woman beater....enough said.

 

[Spence99]

I'm not sure I can call her my first "love." More like first intense crush. We were both in 10th grade (second year). I had just started a new school and she was one of the first girls to show any interest in me. She had this long distance boyfriend from camp (It's so ridiculous when I think back on it. There was no internet or cell phones then and we were too young to drive. How exactly were they b/f and g/f?) but for several months she did this slow build up with me, until finally over the Christmas vacation she dumped him and started up with me.

We were an official couple on a couple weeks (it seemed a lot longer considering the build up). The one day while still on Christmas break she decided we shouldn't be together but should just be "seeing" each other. I wasn't sure what that mean, but I was crushed. We hadn't even started and she was ending it. We hadn't even made it back to school.

I was completely mystified and confused about what all this meant. I thought we were still a semi-couple, but I was wrong. *sigh* I found out after that she had gone to a hockey game and met some older guy with a motorcycle and I was out. The funny thing, years later I confess, is that she gave me this ridiculous story about being concerned that she would be the subject of "locker room gossip" if her and I were together at school. Yet the older biker guy looked like a scum bag of epic proportions when she brought him around school one day. I can still remember thinking: "You were concerned about being gossiped about as my girlfriend?"

Oh well. She ended up being a bit of a class skank. When I first knew her she was a prissy "good Christian girl. By the end of high school she had changed her ways.

 

[Eilan]

Yesterday would have been our 15th wedding anniversary. I didn't even realize this until about 8:00pm.

 

[water_side]

six months of bliss

My first love took me by the hand and then totally corrupted me, I was a shy 17 year old and she was a (comparatively) experienced 19 - I have much to thank her for

 

[Mac98]

Do you have to have dated the person for them to be your first love? If not, then my first love was in Grade 2 and I was in love with a 1st Grader... I was the laughing stock of the school, but I really didn't give a crap.

Good times!

I've looked her up on Facebook and she's really gorgeous today. I'm proud I had good taste even back then