"Maybe your first love is the one that sticks with you because they're the only person that will ever receive all of you. After that, you may learn better. But most of all, a piece of you will forever be left behind in the heart of the one you loved—a piece no future lover could ever get. This piece holds innocence, the belief that love really can last forever. It holds youth and everything you thought love would be, and everything that was proven wrong."

This is something that has taken me a little while to understand. I know your first love is a big deal, and it's one of the hardest times when it doesn't have a fairytale ending like you thought it would, but I didn't see how different this relationship is from all the ones that follow it, and I was wrong. You never get over it, you never come back quite the same.

I think every person you meet changes you in little ways, but your first love changes you in a big way because it takes something from you that you can never get back. You lose your ability to be naive and you lose your belief in fairytales. You give one person everything you have and they do the same, and then when it ends you feel like you have nothing left until you find somebody who gives you those butterflies again. You will have so many relationships but none of them are quite the same as the first. It's like that first Christmas after you find out that Santa Claus isn't real: you are still excited and happy that it's Christmas but you don't get the same feelings that you did when you were setting out cookies and milk and forcing yourself to go to sleep so Santa could hurry up and come.

The magic is gone.

Your belief that everything will work out and that the relationship has no flaws is gone. You have a scarred past now, and you carry that with you to your future relationships. Everyone these days has been hurt, has trust issues, commitment issues, insecurities and is scared to be vulnerable, and that is because of past relationships. Your next relationship after your first just doesn't quite feel the same. It's not that you love this new person less than your first love, but you are more realistic about what love is. When you were with your first love, it seemed as though the movies about love and fairy tales were real, and you were living in one and you felt like this special love you two shared chose you and was meant for you. But now you understand that love doesn't choose people—people choose love. They choose to work at it with somebody and they choose to accept and appreciate flaws in another person.

Choosing to love another person, and really love them means that you appreciate who they are, you care for them and their happiness, you only want the best for them, you understand why they are the way they are and you do your best to make sure they know they're not alone on this journey you take with them. Loving somebody is more than being attracted to them, taking pictures and enjoying their company. You have to dig deeper than that, and you don't really learn to do that with a person until you've seen past the infatuation and when the hard times come. You don't learn to do that until you choose them every single day because regardless of how bad things may get, your life is not the same without them in it.

So, no I don't think you ever really get over your first love because just like Christmas, there's a part of you that gets a little jealous watching the children in your family get excited about Santa Claus, and you wish for the magic to come back for you too. I'm not saying you can't get over that person, but you will be nostalgic for that same kind of relationship that you shared. First loves involves more infatuation than love. You have no way to compare how "in love" you are because this is the first time you've had these feelings, so it consumes you and you don't think logically. I think this new kind of love after your first love is mature and realistic, but it's sad in a "growing up" kind of way, and as much as everyone wishes to grow up as fast as possible, the magic of being young, naive, in love, and everything else becomes a distant memory that you wish to get back.