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By Margaret Treadwell
Who was your first love? Ask this question of men or women and the response will almost always be thoughtful, moving and sometimes funny and quirky.
“I was in Ms. Bloss’s dancing classes, and I loved to dance. One day a dark haired, freckled, extremely attractive girl asked me to dance and later I invited her to go to the movies. When I took her home, she reached up and kissed me. I walked away with a particular lightness of step and I always remembered that kiss as my first love.”
“I was 15 1/2 and he was 22. He was the boyfriend of my friend’s older sister, and we met at her birthday party. I was an aspiring writer. He was writing his first novel while working odd jobs. We talked well into the night and I fell madly in love. Early the next morning I bicycled to my friend’s house where he and I were to meet up for a mini-golf game. I took my copy of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Later that summer he invited me out for my first grown up evening, and I didn’t get home until well after midnight. My father was furious with us and my first love disappeared – for a while.”
According to an article in Psychology Today (Jan./Feb. 2010) all “firsts,” especially first loves, affect us so powerfully because they are seared into our psyches with a vividness and clarity that doesn’t fade as other memories do. This is known as the primacy effect and “flashbulb memories.” Dan McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, believes these experiences (first day of school, wedding day, first-born child) give us natural episodic markers to divide up the stories of our lives and make sense of how we have been shaped and developed over time.
Playwright Paula Stone has written “a bittersweet comedy about first loves” for which she interviewed 80 people from ages 20-80 in dozens of focus groups. It all began when she received a wedding invitation and realized her own first love would be invited too. She started telling her friends and discovered they had fascinating stories to share. She created an interview format asking, “Who does your heart tell you was your first love? How did you meet? What was the spark that attracted you? When did you know? Where is your memory lodged?”
Paula heard about pounding hearts and shortness of breath, love at first sight, a gorgeous smile, a delicious smell, a great laugh, a black stocking, and a particular coat. She says, “The interviews were meaningful, intimate and sacred and I wanted to create a safe place for people to share what they never had in a lifetime. I wanted to capture the power of the story and use it to honor the past – who we were and the ways we’ve grown.”
In her research Paula found that most first loves occurred around the age of 19 and in the early 20s and only a quarter of those interviewed married their first loves. One woman who did is presently watching her husband decline in a nursing home. She said, “No ending is a happily-ever-after for all must end, but I would do it all over again.”
Another woman who decided not to marry her first love said, “He was so sweet and boring. After all the drama in my marriage to someone else, I believe I could have lived with boring. I never was able to recapture that first love but I think I learned from him what love really is.”
At a recent reading of Paula’s play (working title “Woo is Me”), the intrigue of whether the old lovers will meet at the wedding is full of poignancy, lightness and humor. Auntie Ida, one of the wedding guests, talks about her “love pod” – a place inside where she carries memories of all past loves good or not. She says, “Stay in life fully and keep your heart open for one another, including yourself.”
Do you still think about your first love? Choosing to let our first love stories grow up with us rather than acting them out can be an immensely rewarding experience that enhances our present loves. Talking with someone you love and trust about what you learned from that first breathtaking experience can bring new insights and closeness to a relationship, despite the tendency to keep it a secret so as not to “hurt” the other.
And the woman whose father drove her first love away when she broke her curfew? She spent time playing detective to find him before internet technology made it easy, then allowed him to become her mentor. She said, “He taught me that the world was incredibly interesting and that I could enter the realm of grownups to be a different person from my parents. His life ended with enormous difficulties, but I know his love for me helped me create a good marriage.”
An anonymous writer said, “There are three kinds of relationships: 1) For a season, often those first loves that are right for the moment; 2) For a reason, often to work out a necessary healing. 3) For a lifetime, often when we know we have found a spiritual partner.”
Margaret M “Peggy” Treadwell, LICSW, is a family, individual and couples therapist and teacher in private practice.