First Loves

Your first love will never truly leave your heart.

I’ve been thinking about that a little over the last few days, and I believe it to be true.

No matter how many times you fall in love in your life, there’s still a compartment in your heart that has room for how you felt for the first time.

And there are times when I like to think about those days, and I’m one of the lucky ones who have remained friends with the initial object of my affections, and since we both were able to manage long-term marriages, we’ve even talked about all those dramatic moments as children.

Which is also a great trip back in time.

I believe that first loves are important for the decades that follow because it teaches you a lot of things:

1). The ability to be vulnerable. 

We spend the first 14 or 15 years pretending that we don’t really like someone. My friends would bust my chops about a crush and that would be enough to end the flirtation.

That first time, we admit it to ourselves, our friends, their friends and finally…the girl!

It’s a big moment.

2). The heartbreak!

Oh my God…there’s the feeling that nothing will ever be right about the world when there are problems with that first ever relationship. The heartbreak is more pronounced.

When it comes to first loves I think that we see the world through rose-colored glasses. Our new love is high up on a pedestal.

“She’s perfect!”

Of course, no one is perfect.

Learning that for the first time is tragic. We carry that tragedy deep in our heart.

3). First

The first kiss. The first date. The first holding of hands.

It’s all ingrained.

As I wrote that I recalled all of those events. I don’t remember those firsts with any other girls until I met the one I married.

Springsteen has a line about it in his superb song, “Western Stars.”

“Hell, these days there ain’t no more. Now it’s just again.”

We get older…

…been there, done that, and as time passes:

4). Romanticizing it

We usually leave that first love behind. And as time passes, we recall those adrenaline rushes and those long, vulnerable moments, and we wrongly believe:

“She was perfect. I wonder how that would have played out.”

Which is simply ‘Dry Lightning’.

Yep. Another Springsteen song. All about first loves.

As that narrator he’s thinking back, wondering, remembering, and feeling it in his heart.

He speaks to her. (Not sure if it’s real or imagined)

And she says:

“Ain’t nobody going to give nobody what they really need anyway.”

First loves.

They’re real, and they live on forever, and while there is a bit of an illusion to them…

…they’re so important in forming the people we become.

And the most important part of how I’ve learned to think about them?

I believe that the love remains and will through all of time.

It just rolls around out there in the atmosphere.

As real as it was so long ago.

And I have mentioned it to my first love, and lifelong friend, that I truly appreciate that she was there in my life and that she still is.

And it’s a common feeling known to all:

Every human being (hopefully) can immediately call to mind their first love.

I hope you can look back and smile about it.