The First Love Syndrome

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Whether it’s a real personality disturbance unit or not, I don’t care. We all know what this pseud-scientific definition holds: a stubborn crush that won’t go because it was the first one to come round and tries to define all others that come after it.

This said, I don’t have first-hand experience since in my numerous failures, most of the ladies have been the first in this or that way, so the power is diluted in distribution. However, I get creeps whenever I hear or read a story that involves it. The last time I had to stop for a while. From people’s tales and from literature, as well as from my own experience with feelings or at least “something” staying for a long time, I can very much imagine how it feels.

So, given that so many of us here are advice givers or even formally qualified therapists of sorts, just how bad is it really in people’s lives? Say, people grow up together, they’re friends since toddlers, something starts transpiring when they’re ten, they stick together as teenagers, finally they can’t deny having a crush, but then boom, something happens, like a move to a different country or a city far away or some other such event that splits them apart. Sounds like a horrible waste, but apart from this, just how much can it really mess up people’s lives?
 
I’ll let you know when my dd’s boyfriend moves and her “first love” is in another state.

I hope this doesn’t turn into one of those situations, but it’s exactly as you describe.
 
1ke said:
Only as much as they allow it to.

People who let these types of events rule them are very different from those who do not.
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Yep - makes perfect sense. I had what one would call a “first love”. I view it as a very positive experience. Looking back on it I suppose I “loved” him but at the time would not have defined it as such. Now I have a different kind of feeling for him. I wish him the best and hope he and his family have a great life.
 
I think that often times, one’s first love, really isn’t love at all. Not agape love…but more of a superficial, infatuation. I look back at my ‘first love,’ and we thoguht we were going to get married…(I was 16 he was 18)…and now, being married to a wonderful, sacrificing husband for nearly 18 years now, shows me that what I had as a teenager, was not love, but something else. Something meaningful, fun, and energizing…something that caused me to have butterflies, and lay awake at night thinking of him–but it wasn’t love.

I then had a two very serious relationships in college…I also thought I was in love–both times. lol I remember back then, feeling love only when conditions were met. That is what is so different from my marriage now. My dh and I love one another unconditionally. Now, we get angry at each other now and again–but that agape love…that sacrificial love…that willingness to give 100% because you are living for another, because you want the other to be happy–because he wants me to be happy…
Now, the major difference is that God is so much a part of my life…He guides me, and gave my husband to me, and me to him. I think that before, when choosing guys, I looked at secular things, and not Godly things.

I just laugh when I think about all those other guys that I claimed I loved…and who claimed to love me. Oh, and those guys all dumped me when they realized I wasn’t ever going to sleep with them. Those guys never loved me, see. My husband waited. 😉

Love waits. Need I say more?❤️
 
So, given that so many of us here are advice givers or even formally qualified therapists of sorts, just how bad is it really in people’s lives? Say, people grow up together, they’re friends since toddlers, something starts transpiring when they’re ten, they stick together as teenagers, finally they can’t deny having a crush, but then boom, something happens, like a move to a different country or a city far away or some other such event that splits them apart. Sounds like a horrible waste, but apart from this, just how much can it really mess up people’s lives?
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Hmmmmmm. Intersting query.

Well, I definitely know the feeling of that ‘one’ person who you just can’t get over, which I have come to equate with the way we never really ‘get over’ someone’s death…we come to terms with it, we live with it, we go about our ad nauseum lives, and we have feelings for other people, marry other people whom we do love, have children with other people, you get the jist.

BUT

there is always that BUT.

They’re always there, in the back of your mind. Things come up that make you remember them, and you reminisce for a blink, then logic kicks in, and back into reality you fall.

Sometimes its like what WG described, the whole you thought you loved them until you got a taste of real love, someone who will wait for you, that kind of thing. But, sometimes, it’s nothing like that. Sometimes, you really could have been perfect for each other, but it just didn’t happen…who knows why? Not me.

You can’t let it mess up your life is all, but it could, if you LET it.
 
Yes, if you don’t let it mess up your life, it normally will not. So ultimately in most cases it depends on how much we let it. On the other hand, in the remaining cases, there’s the bad decision not to marry someone. Here probably an example would be a young man having a since-toddlers female friend in a situation like I described in the first post, leaving for the army, university, work, whatever it is that makes him hit the road. Now undoubtedly he will meet many fascinating women and perhaps some will be a better match to his character and personality than the original one. But there will always be this but.

The romanticised first love against all every other one is compared, is not merely a literary concept, it does exist somehow, perhaps in much a similar way as, say, how a woman compares men to her father. I don’t think it’s great for a marrage since it sometimes goes as far as to mean that the husband or wife is somehow second best. A replacement for the idealised first love, never to live up to that standard. Then perhaps the first loves meet and they share a psychological connection that isn’t there with a spouse.

A good illustration to the above would be a situation in which someone meets an ex-fiance (or ex-fiancee) while walking with a new date. The new is the new and now and the old is the old and past, but it can’t be helped that there’s a certain understanding, familiarity and mere being used to someone. I don’t wish on anyone experiencing this kind of thing in marriage. A more extreme example would be the new spouse versus the old spouse in a civil marriage preceding and following a divorce. See what I mean?
 
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