Let me tell you something that I know today that I wouldn’t have possibly imagined a year ago today – you do get over your first love. Whether it takes two months or nine months or a year or two, you’ll eventually move past the broken pieces of a former relationship entirely and find yourself within the midst of an entirely new adventure. I know that there’s this theory that you first love will be with you for all of your life and that every lover that comes after them will always pale in comparison. There’s the idea that you can never really love as genuinely or fully as you did the first time around when you were blissfully naive to the reality of heartbreak. And it’s not true - in the least.
I don’t know where this concept came from, but I don’t think it’s anything short of harmful to people trying to cope with the ending of a relationship or something similar that can invoke the same emotions. It’s important to recognize that you’ll fall in and out of love many times in your lifetime and that it’s conditional. That’s not to say that love can’t last – as you’re reading this, there’s a couple today celebrating fifty, sixty years of marriage and are just as in love as they were on their wedding day. But love is conditional – had these couples celebrating today gone through something that called for a divorce thirty years ago, this same couple likely wouldn’t tell you that they were still in love with their former partner. If you’re with someone that truly meets your emotional and physical needs as a person, and you’re happy to watch this person grow and change no matter what it means, there’s no reason for love to disappear.
Something I stumbled upon following a relatively defeating breakup was a stereotypical Pinterest quote that read “You only get one first love. Even if you fall for lots of other people, your first love will always be the one you remember.” While I don’t doubt that the source of this quote was someone who hadn’t experienced much beyond the scope of their first genuine relationship, it still rubbed me the wrong way. I was at a point in my life where I wanted to hear literally anything but the fact that a not-so-great relationship that I wanted to move beyond would follow me for the rest of my life. Why on Earth would I want to remember the people that caused me both pain and annoyance? Someone being your “first love” doesn’t guarantee that they’re a good person who deserves to be remembered or even have any semblance of fondness in your life. Sometimes the first person you fall in love with sucks, to be short. The first person you fall in love with is not necessarily going to be a good person. Some people fall into physically or emotionally abusive relationships at a young age, and the last thing they want to hear is that they should savor their first love.
What I think is that your body knows best. Your brain knows whether or not someone deserves to occupy space within it for very long, and if they don’t deserve to own a place in your mind, they won’t. It might take awhile, but eventually, they won’t. Sometimes your first love is something pure and genuine that simply doesn’t work out, in which case you may still fondly recall the good times with them, but ultimately you’ll move on just the same.
Your body is not going to let you suffer through a heartbreak longer than necessary. Know that when you’re hurting, you’re simultaneously growing and learning. The longer that it hurts, the more likely it is that you needed to learn something about yourself as a result of that relationship. When your mind is finally ready to move on, do so with dignity and grace. An odd thing about humans is that we tend to want to fall back into missing someone or fall back into a place of heartache when we finally push past it. It’s weird, and I absolutely despise it, but you fall into a place of comfort when you miss someone for a long while. Moving on into something unknown is scary, but extremely worthwhile.
Oh, and there’s always someone new. I promise you that. There will come another person who will make your heart sing that listens to you and understands you like no other, who will make time for you and root for you and always be there to cheer you on. You’ll meet them and everything will make sense as to why you and the “love of your life” didn’t work out. It doesn’t seem like that’s possible when you’re heartbroken and you probably don’t want to hear anyone say it, but it’s true.
You might not forget your first love, but I promise you that all of the feelings you once felt so strongly will dissipate. You’ll see their face and feel nothing (okay, maybe just a twinge of disgust). Apathetic is all you’ll be towards them.
You’ll survive, you’ll move on, and you’ll fall in love again. And it’ll be just as genuine, if not more so, then the first time you ever fell in love with someone. Look forward to the future. It’s extremely bright.
