Getting over your first love?

[SiennaT]

Why can’t I stop thinking about my first love?

I’m a married, 40 year old woman with 4 children. Life is good and I have everything I could wish for.

I regularly think about my first love. I dream about him and wake up feeling like I never want that feeling to go away. I check him out on social media and think about him too much for someone I haven’t seen for 20 years!!! I have all these feelings that I used to feel for him when we broke up 20 years ago!!! What the heck is wrong with me? It was a very close and intense, 7 year relationship / friendship. It ended badly as I broke things off with him at university and he met someone else. She is wonderful (they’re happily married with kids) and I was very jealous at the time and acted out. It took me about 5 years and I moved on to dating again. I dated a few people until I met my now husband who reignited feelings for me that I hadn’t felt since my first love.

When I got pregnant with my second child I woke up after having a dream about him (10 years ago) randomly and that was the first time I’d really thought about him but my dream feelings were so intense that I haven’t stopped thinking about him since.

What the heck? I know that now we’re completely different people, I don’t want to be with him (do I?) and this is just mad. What can I do to move on? Help!!!

When we are young our feelings are intense, magnified. First loves are often like that, especially as we had nothing to go on before. They are literally life-changing. Like a sunrise saying this is what day looks like.

Getting older is something none of really want to do. On the other hand we gain from our experiences and in many ways we become happier and more rounded (kids help). But we also become aware that our time is limited. It is perfectly natural to not let go, to yearn for the past, to do it all again.

I am 75 and nodded off in a garden chair yesterday lunchtime. In my dream she was there again, walking up the lane, under the shady trees to meet me on one of those hot, hot days of those glorious summers. For half a century my life has been enriched by so many other things, that it does not really matter.

There is a saying. It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. And it is true. Our canvasses our more colourful and the picture tells a better story. I am not sure if any of this will help, but try to think of it as you are still connected but only connected in the past. He is doing his life and you are doing yours. You will have these dreams again. You have the memories. No need to spoil them. There is still much more to do in the today and in the tomorrow. Life is a journey not a destination.

I met my first love at 44...it made me realise that everyone before that had never came close including a 23 marriage. It took me 5 years after her before I could think about another relationship. I'm happy with someone else now but you never forget.

First love is intense because it is first. But also because it usually happens at a time in your life when you have few duties and responsibilities. It's never connected with doing the shopping/cooking/laundry/paying bills/making ends meet/getting the car serviced because your parents do all that while you just feel an immense connection because you both like the same band! It's a desire to return to responsibility-free days.

I have very fond memories of my innocent schooldays boyfriend but can see from SM we're very different now. Then my first serious boyfriend I'm still FB mates with and all I can say is - rather his wife than me. As to my uni boyf, he got back in touch recently declaring that he still had feelings... then slagged off his ex wife and admitted he was back home living with his parents and his much younger girlfriend. Nice.

My first love died when I was 20. He was 24. It almost destroyed me. I made the decision I wanted to try and love again. It was scary and I made myself a promise I would never compare anyone to him and I never have. I met my DH 5 years later. I still miss him but I am happy. I have a good life and my husband is amazing and always ok if I want to talk about him. I don't know if we would have made it, or whether I would be FB stalking him to see what he's up to 30 years on had he survived. He taught me so much though, and for that I will forever be grateful.