It’s the message no one wants to receive: a photo of an ex, smiling beside someone new – especially when that ex is your first love. For Édaein O’Connell, that unexpected image reopened old wounds and stirred memories of a love that shaped her deeply. Here she asks the question many of us ponder: Do you ever really get over your first love?
“Don’t know if you want to see this, but thought I’d send it on anyway,” the text read.
Of course, I didn’t want to see it. No, that’s a lie. Of course I did. I’m inquisitive by nature, maybe it’s a side effect of the journalism. I have to know what I shouldn’t know. Even though the logical part of my brain knew it would push me into a psychological tailspin, the masochistic side of my emotions was eager to delight in the chaos.
You all know the message I received. Sooner or later, a friend or family member will forward that unbearably precious photo of your ex, beaming beside their new love. It’s practically a rite of passage, a symbolic shove into the next chapter of your life, one where that relationship no longer holds your hand. You’re like a child lost in a supermarket, the shop manager calling for your parents over the intercom, only this time, no one comes to get you.
You’re on your own, kid.
This summer will mark my second anniversary of being single. In those two years, I have received numerous Instagram story screenshots of my ex with his new partner. The first was the hardest blow, as it always is. I was out at the time, gin and tonic in hand. I ran to the toilet because I thought I would be sick. The shock felt life-shattering after a few drinks. It was Christmas, it had only been four months since I had said goodbye.
I picked myself up, got on with building my own little life. Anyway, it was I who initiated the end. In the world of romantic entanglements, I wasn’t entitled to feeling melancholic on the matter. I did the breaking, I committed the crime, so I must suffer the time in a cell of my own making.
Nevertheless, the messages kept coming, and my heart flinched each time. But with every photo, every mention of his name in passing, the soul-stirring blow softened and became less of a wave and more of a ripple.
It had been months since I had been presented with photographic evidence of his new life. I assumed that by now I would be immune to the realisation. However, the very moment I opened the picture, I felt that familiar wince and I knew why. This was my first love. My first boyfriend. My first fight. My first makeup. My first idea of forever. My first breakup. My first aftermath. My first future without.
The lore of your first is well-versed. They say you never forget him or her, no matter the age. Maybe you met them at the age of five and think about them now as you put your kids to bed. Maybe you reminisce about the teenage love affair that consumed you whole and spat you out when you were 16, as you go on yet another horrid first date. Maybe it was the late-blooming first relationship of your adult years – the one you knew was worth waiting for, but understood it couldn’t last – that still sends a quiet ache through you when your eyes catch the diamond on your ring finger.
So, as I reminisced on shared breaths, tangled sheets and hands held, I asked myself: Do you ever truly get over your first love?
Some questions defy a yes or no, and this, I think, is one of them.
This was my first love. My first boyfriend. My first fight. My first makeup. My first idea of forever. My first breakup. My first aftermath. My first future without.
I was 22 when I fell in love, and the rush of it gave me whiplash. Eight years later, my neck still aches. Love is a monster that shows up uninvited, and like any good ghoul, it scared the living daylights out of me. When I faced it head-on, beneath the terror lay this wondrous, seemingly infinite thing that belonged to no one else but us. He was mine, I was his – is there anything more magnificent than that?
If you’re lucky, you will experience that fizzy hedonism at least once in your life. These people who are blessed with one are chosen by God. Their first is forever. The intimately painful stab of lost love doesn’t pierce their skin. For many others, you will experience romantic love many times, in myriad forms. Your first wasn’t meant to last – like mine – but it will inform your expectations, your hesitations and the quiet way you compare every love that follows. It is the foundation you build on.
When I looked at that photo, I knew that I wasn’t in love anymore, but I would always love him. The form it had taken was different. There was no head rush, no potent feeling of want. Instead, it felt like a warm light in a room I no longer lived in but still visited sometimes. A memory, not a future. My first everything, but not my always. There is something so utterly devastating and buoyantly joyful in that.
This juxtaposition of feeling is exactly what a first love is. It teaches you the wrongs and rights of relationships. It shows you how freeing it can be to let someone in, to let them cherish you and take care of you. It also presents you with the understanding that even the purest connections must end. For you to get the most from this life, to live big and brave, sometimes you have to let go. Life won’t let you keep the people that don’t fit, no matter how many times you try to change their edges.
And that’s okay. I’ll love better because of it, because of him. There’s magic in that.
So when my phone lights up with a message next, I think I’ll just let it be.
I think it’s finally time.
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