Always looking to the past. Why?

[KinseyWinsey]

I've been married for 16 odd years.

It's a reasonable marriage. Big ups and downs. Children too.

I seem to always look back to my first relationship when I was 18. I loved that man/boy (as he was 18 too) and I've never really felt the same about anyone since.

We split up because of university distance, met new people etc.

I can't stop thinking about him. I would never contact him. What would be the point? I don't know where he lives Or anything anyway. Zero contact. But I feel like he was the one I should have been with. I feel sadness instead of just being able to chalk it up to experience.

I've always known that and I've never done anything about it and never will. But I would like to train myself to accept this.

Is it a sign of great immaturity on my part or a slow recognition that what I have now doesn't make me particularly happy?

The grass is always greener when you aren't happy.

OP I could have written this. I’m not married but I’m dating someone and have been in a few LTR over the years. I met someone when I was in college and he was the love of my life but because we were separated by distance it didn’t work out. he met someone else and got married and I’ve muddled along never married and now in a meh relationship.

At almost 50 I’m still trying to forget him and accept that I will never meet anyone like him again.

I don’t think you’re immature at all. We are only human and I think when things are not going right in a relationship we tend to compare it to other past happy relationships.

Unfortunately I have no advice. Maybe except to try and find happiness in your current relationship especially since you have children. Possibly counseling would help too.

What is it about your present and future that stops you looking at them?

Dunno. Midlife crisis making me feel I don't really have much to look forward to. Am nearly 50.

Do you think these people didn't have time to disappoint you Kinsey and widespread before you broke up with them for reasons due to logistics.

I think you get better at spotting peoples flaws and limitations in people so no one is really as perfect as the first person, my first boyfriend was a bit of a twat, scared to progress the relationship and move in with me, but if we'd been cut short after a couple of years I wouldn't know that about him, I'd just remember that he was the first person who made me feel really good about myself I loved me more when he did.

I think it's pretty common not to feel quite the same about anyone after the first "big love", because those feelings were intensified by the youth, newness and novelty. Nobody else can ever be the first. Doesn't mean we don't love the next people just as much or more, or with a more enduring love, but when you're young and it's the first, there's a layer that just isn't possible any other time.

It's very easy, when life is feeling mundane or unsatisfying to think, "John wouldn't do this! John would have bought me flowers/flipped me over in bed/put up the shelving" or whatever. John's not here doing anything so you can make him anything you like in fantasy. Would he be able to measure up if you found him again?

I guess the only thing you can do is look at your relationship and life on its own merits, leaving John out of it, and see what can be done...see why exactly you feel dissatisfied, what you could do about that, what you want to achieve.

Good luck.

@Anotheruser02
That’s possible of course. I wish my first love was like your first boyfriend cause I most definitely wouldnt still be mourning over him. 😂

I don't want to encourage you, but if you really feel that way, maybe you could find a way of getting in touch with him?

However, IMHO if you'd been that keen on each other you wouldn'tve split up in the first place, you would've had a successful LDR and then moved in together.

My main first love, Darren, we were like chalk and cheese, it would never have worked even in the medium term.

Perhaps it would help if you sat and tried to remember all the reasons you split up, all the ways in which you were incompatible etc?

No way I would get in touch with him. It would only cause distress for my family if I did that and stuff developed. I can't possibly do that.

I'm on SM so if he'd wanted to get in touch with me, I'm sure he would have by now. He's not on SM that I can see. (stalker!!)

I certainly don't think he was perfect but I loved him deeply. And I couldn't get in touch with him because of that. It wouldn't be an overture of friendship and it would be really inappropriate.

The past is another country. I need to focus on here and now and stop being such a drip.

I honestly think that you want to go back to a time rather than a person, or a place.

I had a friend who moved here with her DH. They were perfectly happy living round here for 20 odd years then divorced - and she is now desperate to go back 'home'.

She has no family back there, and no friends that she is still in touch with. It's very sad that she doesn't seem to realise that she actually wants to go back to 1987 - rather than back to the town she spend her teenage years in.

Could this be it with you? You don't actually want an 18 year old you saw through rose tinted glasses and perhaps wouldn't recognise (emotionally) as a 50 year old man. We aren't who we used to be.

Yes. I think you might be right. It's a time I yearn for like some silly old nostalgic git.

30 years is a long old time and we aren't the same people at all.

I would love go see him again and have a coffee mad teenage sex together though. Just for old times sake. 😁