Do you ever think about your first love

I always think of mine in January - we shared the same birthday though he was 5 years older than me. I went out with him from the age of 15 to 17, he did suggest we get engaged but then we had a silly falling out and went our separate ways. We did meet up once, about 10 years later.

My first love's mother did not think I was good enough for him. Even though it upset him, he insisted I was the one for him and we got engaged. 8 weeks before the wedding, he asked me to postpone it for a year until his mother " got used to the idea ". By then we had been together for 4 years! After much thought, I gave him an ultimatum but he couldn't decide so we split. I was devasted but then I met him at a University reunion a few years ago and realised that I had had a lucky escape - he had been married and divorced twice and both times his mother had been a factor! Very happy with my DH.

I do not think that remembering your first love means any implication that you regret anything since, or that anything since is second rate. To hear that someone, once dear to you has died, always brings memories back and some are good and make you smile and others tinged with sadness.

It was the same when anyone one once knew whose death you hear of affects you. I recently discovered that the nicest manager I ever had during my working years had died. We got on really well and the project I worked on with him was mentioned in his obituary.I had a feeling of sadness when I heard of his death and still do, he was not that much older than me.

Met up with him-and his wife ,after my husband died and 40 years since I had seen him. Had often thought about him during those years? Now we all meet occasionally and I get to know what they are doing through his wife's posts on Facebook!
She is vey nice -and very lucky! We never 'dumped 'each other but life took us in different directions.

"we have been together for 53 years and married for 49", that post is worrying, is i just a co-incidence that I have also ---- OR

?

I had a marriage proposal at age 17. I turned him down as I didn't think either of us was old enough. He was 19. I do sometimes wonder where he is now, and what he did with his life.
I have been very happily married to my DH for 34 years. I was 30 when we got married, but I'd known him since I was 18.

I was engaged to my first love for 4 years but we broke up for various reasons. We both married and I divorced some 20 years later. We bumped into each other at a function 10 years ago and he contacted me shortly afterwards wanting to meet up (He said he had just left his wife}. I decided not to meet him as I was by then in a new relationship. I understand that he re-married a few years later. I recently heard that he had committed suicide. I often wonder 'what if?'.

Your first love never fades. 44 years later I still feel the same, only he has no idea

My daughter now lives close to his family home so he does cross my mind sometimes. He was good enough for mum and I went out with him for far too long just to defy her. When I got engaged to dh she said ' bet you are glad I saved you from Xxx, aren't you?'

He WASNT good enough.

Yes, and I hear about him sometimes as his wife and i are on social media and friends. I am happy he is happy and I dont think we would have suited, as we grew older.
I have now been with husband number two for 15 years and wouldnt have it any other way (husband number one was a disaster!)

L

I suspect that everyone still thinks about their first love from time to time and, if that never went anywhere and faded away, sometimes thinks of what might have been. I occasionally spare a thought to mine and he was, perhaps even is, very special to me; I was not his first love but I was around for many years so I sometimes wonder if he spares a thought to me. Who knows?

However, I would never go looking for him after all these years. We are not who we were when we were what we were. We have other people – even other generations – in our lives now.

You cannot step into the same river twice. It flowed on.

Being totally boring – I once talked to absentdaughter (in another context) about the heart being like a huge house full of rooms. Some rooms were occupied – Mum's, Dad's, Grandma's, absendaughter's etc. When those people who were no longer with us, the room became empty and no one else could go in there except all of us who loved them. Some rooms had never been used and, if we were lucky, someone came to live there in one of them. It never made anyone else's room smaller; it just opened another door.

I guess that that there still is a room occupied, but dusty, by my first love. It doesn't make the rooms smaller for those I loved before him or after him – but he still has his room.

That probably bores anyone who is reading this but has rather surprised me!

Yes. We were engaged but I treated him badly. I met and married someone else, but always wondered about David. Then, this time last year I bumped into him in a supermarket. We caught up and shared a hug. The very next night the words to Adele's new single came on the TV - "Hello, it's me
I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet
To go over everything. They say that time's supposed to heal ya. But I ain't done much healing"

Nearly finished me off! I'm still married to the second man but I do still wonder how my life would have been had I stuck with the first.

Yes I used to think about him, although we were never really boy friend and girlfriend - I was only 15 but I really liked him. All we had was an innocent walk once when he held my hand but I can still recall how I felt about him. We moved away not long after and I never saw him again.

Sadly I found out from Friends Reunited that he had died. Such a lovely, funny bloke .

absent - I don't think your post is boring - it's a lovely analogy and one which I shall remember.

Re. remembering first love - I do often recall that frisson. We were 17 - he was French and met at a party when I was on a school exchange visit, so doomed from the start. I can still summon up that feeling of anticipation waiting for the postman to bring a letter from him. In the past I did think about returning to that small Normandy town and tracking him down, but what a mistake that would have been. So much better to remember him as 17. I would add that I have been happily married for nearly 50 years and don't think I would have had such a comfortable life had I ended up with Francois!

absent - That was a very touching post and so well put. Thank you.

I've just e mailed a happy birthday to my first love ! He's living in Bucharest now but I remembered his birthday today . Oh dear , maybe this 'can of worms' that was mentioned yesterday might open .

I still have mine on facebook - we chat occasionally, told me he would never settle down when he dumped me & promptly moved in ( withing a dew months) with the woman he is still with , but he has never married her & we are talking nearly 30 years so he still has that final commitment issue

The older I get, the more I remember my first real love, who died in 1988. My first boyfriend was more like a brother and we fell out when I left my ex and bf told me I must go back to him because I was married in the eyes of the Church. I was really hurt because there were strong reasons for the marital breakdown and bf didn't want to know. Wish I could build bridges now, but sadly too late.

Mmmm- a gorgeous Spaniard. Very passionate relationship- then he got called up for National Service & I came home & met & married someone else. I got a letter from him 3 years later & he was living quite close to me in England & wanted ' to make an honest woman of me' I was 6 months pregnant at the time! I wrote a nice letter back saying how nice it would have been but....
I wonder what he did next. He wasn't much taller than me though so I would have had a life in flat shoes. But he was gorgeous!

I did think of him and did not see him for forty years then found out he died recently

Yes every day. He was my first love and I met him when I was 14 and he was 15. We never went out and I was devastated when he got a girlfriend. Years went by and I was friends with his older sister. We both married and divorced but I was alone with three small children who would want me? He married again then I heard they had split. This time I spoke to his sister to see if he would get in touch. My dad died and I moved the day after his funeral. Two days later he rang and a week later we met. I discovered he had wanted to date me too but didn't think my dad would let me!! We had seven wonderful months together then he died in an accident on his way home. That was 20 years ago. Still single now and Still think and miss him every day.

Yes I do - surely most of us do. I was sixteen and we met on a youth hostelling holiday. We lived in different cities and wrote to each other for a few months. Then he found God ....... and sent me a 'Dear Joan' letter.

I did see him again, much later, as a contestant on fifteen to one!

I wrote a poem about him:

FIRST LOVE - SUMMER 1956

In the September I turned sixteen, I fell in love.
I was awkward, blushing and intense,
and you were beautiful, blond and godlike.

Lazy, we lay on a Cornish cliff top,
watching the sun grow on the horizon.
Your fingers, rough like new potato skins, tasted of the sea.

That night I smoked my first cigarette
and I soothed the burn with my first gin and tonic.

Next day we walked together holding hands.
You wheeled beside me to the crossroads.
We kissed, and promised to write.

I later married someone with the same surname, though not a very unusual one, and have had a wonderful life, but I don't think the wonder of first love ever goes away.