Lessons From My First Love

People often have fond memories of their first love, and for some people, their first is even their last. I for one am not one of those people, but I am glad enough that I experienced what I did. Falling in love for the first time was a great experience for me, even if it didn’t end the way I thought it would back then. And here’s why:

My first love came when I was only 17, he was my third boyfriend and probably the longest on and off relationship of my life.  We literally drove each other crazy, which was probably a result of us being two very immature people trying to be together. That brought me my first realization about love: you need to have a certain level of maturity to experience it to the fullest.

Being 17, I still had so many issues and hang ups with myself, and this showed up multiple times in our relationship. I was always being insecure of other people and I always compared myself to his exes. Very unhealthy not just for the relationship but for myself as well because here I was, trying to share myself with someone else, but I couldn’t even make sense of who I really was. I hadn’t truly formed my identity.

Next hurdle was as much as I was discovering myself, I was also in the process of discovering what my values actually were, and not just the values I got from my parents, but values based on my own opinions, information that I read, things I experienced first hand and possibly even biases that I formed. How did this affect my relationship back then? I didn’t know what kind of love or person I was looking for. Which brings me to my second realization about love: you need to have a set of values that you hold close, a list of non-negotiables and from that list is where you can base what you will not tolerate and what you will let slide.

At the time that we (me and my first love) were together, he had this occasional habit of smoking up the grass (if you know what I mean) and as much as it never really affected our relationship, it somehow bothered me that he was doing something considered illegal. He never smoked the stuff while he was with me and I never really saw him getting ‘high’, but something made me very uncomfortable about it. But because I did not raise it up as a non-negotiable back then, the issue just took the back seat as my discomfort grew, more and more. I should have told him to stop, that even if there were no known hazards to it, he shouldn’t do it, and that he should just be a law abiding citizen but I had let love blind me of my convictions. Today, I’m proud to say I stuck to my convictions and have never dated anyone with any habit of keeping on the grass.

Third and most important thing I learned from my first love was: you must love yourself first, before you can expect to give love fully. As the saying goes: you can’t give what you don’t have;  you can’t expect to love someone if you can’t even love yourself.  Our on and off thing lasted up to before we both turned 21. I had a different boyfriend in between that time, but for some reason, I found that I always went back to my first love because I had already accustomed myself to the idea that I wasn’t better off alone or with anyone other than him, which was a very wrong notion.

I loved myself too little that I allowed myself to be short-changed. This in time, made me very resentful and changed the way I was towards him. I had allowed myself to be hurt so many times, and forgave too quickly and often but kept too many grudges deep inside of me. Eventually, I gave up. I realized that I had tried too many times to mend what could not be mended and to change what would never change. The odd part was, I had dealt with so much hurt already that by the time I had let go, I felt no pain but rather relief. I was relieved that it was over, that finally I could move on with my life and say: that was fun, that hurt me, I learned my lesson, I will not do the same mistakes again.

My first love was a roller coaster ride. I learned so many valuable lessons and had fun most of the way. Although it did not work out, I am glad that it did lead me to make the choices I’ve made when it came to love and the people I let into my life. Some people say that first love never dies, but for me, only the lessons you’ve learned from it live forever.

P.S.  before I get any violent reactions here regarding this guy (especially if you know him) please note that I did not include any names in the making of this entry and all recollections of events in the past are based on my actual experiences (not yours!).  Thanks!