Once we become adults, I don’t think enough credit is given to young love - especially not young first love. It’s easy to discount it. In fact, I remember plenty of individuals who readily discounted my very real relationship with Scott. Even my own parents, who were themselves elementary school sweethearts, urged me not to tie myself down to one guy for the duration of my high school career.
Scott and I spent a lot of time throughout the course of our relationship breaking up and getting back together. Each time we broke up our families would hold a collective breath, wondering is this it? And each time we would get back together, they would heed us that it wouldn’t last.
Am I still with him, nineteen years after that first dance?
No.
But I will never believe that our final break up stemmed from the fact that we started dating so young. It came down to the same thing almost all break ups come down to: a basic incompatibility that cannot be reconciled, not matter how much you love one another.
It drove me absolutely crazy that my feelings for Scott were never taken seriously, so when I see young couples today, or co-workers talk about their teenage daughters’ “flings”, I am on the side of the teenagers, empathizing through that time of discovery, amazement and agony. Because the fact of the matter is, after your first love, nothing may ever be so real again.
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In Memoriam: Janet Reid
11 months ago
I married my first love and we are still together, over 35 years on. Both sets of parents worked against us, hard. How much easier life would have been with their support. Relationships are hard enough without family hassle, especially when you are in your teens and experiencing all these new feelings and complications. Maybe with their support we'd have found a way to work through some of our earlier issues. Maybe we wouldn't have got married, ironically what they wanted. We will never know. It didn't happen. Despite all, we don't regret it, my husband and I. We know so much about each other, we've learnt so much along the way, and even more miraculously we are still talking to each other. That aside, as I always say, who in their right mind wants to break in a new model at 55 when you’ve only just got the old one trained!
ReplyDeleteI married my first love and we are still together, over 35 years on. Both sets of parents worked against us, hard. How much easier life would have been with their support. Relationships are hard enough without family hassle, especially when you are in your teens and experiencing all these new feelings and complications. Maybe with their support we'd have found a way to work through some of our earlier issues. Maybe we wouldn't have got married, ironically what they wanted. We will never know. It didn't happen. Despite all, we don't regret it, my husband and I. We know so much about each other, we've learnt so much along the way, and even more miraculously we are still talking to each other. That aside, as I always say, who in their right mind wants to break in a new model at 55 when you’ve only just got the old one trained!
ReplyDelete