Just about everyone has a story or two about the first time they fell in love. There aren’t many people that couldn’t tell you the story like it happened just yesterday, even after 10, 20, or 30 years have passed.
As we grow older, end a long relationship, go through a divorce, or get together with old friends, we always seem to let our minds drift back to the first person we fell in love with. They hold a dear place in our hearts, and for a good reason.
We could be thinking fondly of happier times as we ponder why current relationships didn’t work out, or we could just be wondering what life would be like if distance, time, or life hadn’t gotten in the way of that very first love. There’s always the chance that you’ll think back and wonder why am I still in love with my first love, even though I’m truly happy with my current partner?
For most people, the first time we fell in love is a time that we look back on when we’re reflecting on some of the very first things we learned about relationships, feelings, trust, emotion. Some of the first loves happened to us to teach us a lesson, while others were meant to last.
For some, meeting this person at a later time and date can seem like a miracle, suddenly the time is right, and things fall back into place. For others, even a chance meeting couldn’t bring the two of you back together, but for some reason, the experience and love still live inside of us.
It’s A Perfect Storm
The first time you fall in love is likely to happen in adolescence, which is a time of being inexperienced, lacking insight, and going through hormonal changes and brain development. In a study recording the average age of “firsts,” 84% of participants reported having fallen in love with the average age of 17.47 years.
Although we can feel grown-up and certainly like we know best at this age, once you get five to ten years down the line, you usually begin to realize just how inexperienced you were at the time. Still, that doesn’t change your own first love story for better or for worse.
Part of the reason that the first time we fall in love can be so impactful is that it’s happening at an age where significant life changes are coming. There’s a plethora of growth during adolescence, significant transitional life phases and quite a few memorable firsts are happening.