She may not be your first love, or the one that got away, but she’s the “her” you can’t forget.
I hate it when people call her “the one that got away.” She didn’t get away; she simply didn’t work out. The wiser among us understand this very well, while the rest allow themselves to dwell in the past and recount memories.
This, however, is not to say that the wiser among us ever actually get over that one special person — the one person who has set the bar for all future love affairs. I don’t believe any man ever fully gets over her. Although we know she isn’t “the one,” and we know it wouldn’t work out if we tried again, she remains the fullest memory we have of love; for this reason, she will never be entirely forgotten.
Even though the girl I personally have in mind was my first love, that isn’t necessarily the case for everyone. It’s not being the first love that makes the shadow haunt you long after she’s moved out of your life; it’s the love that cuts the deepest, leaving an irreversible scarring. The relationship was very emotional, fluctuating from intense love to intense distaste, to a certain feeling that can only be described as numbing.
She was literally your everything for what was most likely a year or more. The relationship bordered on obsession and it was difficult for you to distinguish between yourself and this new you that you have become. She was the girl who made everything feel right.
Unfortunately, as most love stories go — in reality — things ended. You both moved on sooner or later, and yet, assuming you meant the same to each other, you never really let go of each other. It’s difficult for me to speak for the women in such situations because I’ve only experienced this from my own perspective, but I am assuming that men and women don’t differ greatly in this aspect.
Guys don’t ever completely let go of “that girl.” It’s not because we don’t want to — we do; we just can’t seem to. This doesn’t really differ between men. The only thing that differs is the level of love that one has experienced. Some guys have never even experienced love, yet are convinced they have. They are only awakened when love finally finds them.
Regardless, these girls remain a part of us for the rest of our lives. They are what we base and compare all subsequent relationships to. They are whom we compare a potential new partner to when considering a new relationship. They are the standard that all men live by as far as love and relationships go. The reason this doesn’t change is because the woman we can’t let go of no longer actually exists. Who we remember is not the woman she now is, but rather, a woman she once was.
Who she is now, we usually don’t really know because most of us had no choice but to cut her off from our lives completely once the relationship went south, or we would risk repeating the same mistakes. She is a ghost we keep alive and go back to when things get difficult — the hope for better days that keeps us going.
Men never let go of her. Until she is replaced, that is. Every time guys meet someone new they automatically remove “her” from their minds; they have someone else to occupy those thoughts. Of course, this usually doesn’t last forever because the interest, and inevitably the relationship, won’t last forever — until the one time it does.
If we manage to find a deep love once again, then the woman will be the new “her.” She will take the place of our past love and fill all those cracks and crevices that our deepest, truest love left behind. She will then become your new reality, rewriting all the past rules. If you can make it work and things last, then you’ll be the happiest man alive. If it doesn’t work, the process repeats.
Originally published at Elite Daily
—Photo Marta Nørgaard/Flickr
Paul Hudson
A young writer, philosopher, music producer and DJ, Paul Hudson has been writing for Elite Daily since last year. Currently located in Manhattan, Paul Hudson has many interests stretching from physical activities such as dancing, running, bike riding and swimming to consuming as much information as he possibly can in just about any intellectual field. With a passion for love and a love of life, where life will take him is yet to be decided.
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doomed to suffer….
So true (for me) thank you. Now I know im not unique in this experience. I have found better partners since my 1st so “they” have become the new standard like your article expresses. I luv being in luv even if its unrequited love. Life is so much more vibrant & fulfilling, well worth the pain
I can only speak for myself. The answer is “not really”. I first learned this from my mother who often regaled me with stories of a man she dated before marrying my father. Every time she would see this man, he would always tell her, “You are still the prettiest woman I have ever seen. Until the day I die, I will always love you.” This was more than twenty years after and of course, went back to their youth. In my mid-twenties, I dated a woman for 3 years. I must admit that at the time I didn’t realize… Read more »
Not sure who actually wrote this article, and I wonder about the tailor-made-for-self-pity quality of the copy, which is what I think some of the negative responses are directed at.
In any case, there is a simplicity about what’s said in the article that allows room for the weight of the subject matter. It’s true. We all carry that weight. Then we expand to carry more.
This is a bit of a nonsense of course. Everybody gets over everyone granted enough time had passed. And why not? if it didn’t work out why to mop around thinking about them. This idea that we never get over our “first love” is a myth…
This article hits a huge chord for me since I’ve spent nearly 20 years now trying to move on from my first love. While I can say life moves on and if you really take an honest look back at both you and your love at the time, the realizations can be humbling and shocking. In the case of my first love, it had all the signs of the “hollywood” version of romance where I got so lost in her that when the end finally came, I had no idea who I was and what I was about without her.… Read more »
“Do Guys Ever Really Get Over The First Girl To Break Their Hearts?”
There was an old adage I heard once: In journalism, when any headline is posed as a question, the answer is always “no.”
So, ‘no.’
You don’t always get over things, but you do get through them.
C’mon dudes. Sure, it’s love, the ultimate mystery/enigma wrapped in a secret, so of course there are scars afterwards. You were a young’un in some way and for the most part are looking at that past still wearing the young’un glasses. Take them off, and don’t let the past (de)form you.
It’s a rhetorical question: https://goodmenproject.com/marriage-2/running-into-your-first-love/
How would we know true love without having our heart broken? This girl is the one that you first let go of everything for and then fell on your face. Mine was a girl that was definitely not the right one for me and our relationship was super destructive, but she was so hot! Now I am with the love of my life I am so thankful for that first heart break.
This is something I definitely agree with. In my case I had no say, she simply walked out on me and out of my life, and only returned once in order to castigate my lack of manhood and call me every name under the sun. She came into my life just as I was starting to come out of a very nasty bout of depression, and she made everything perfect. It was honestly one of those cases where when we were together the sun was brighter, food tasted better, well you get the picture. sex was always amazing, we practically… Read more »
Beautifully written. I couldn’t agree more with this entire article and ‘she’ is a big part of the reason why I do what I do in work (until the day that someone replaces her in my heart).
Thank you for this captivating piece.
Sometimes, a man’s first love was and remains so deeply affecting that he never manages to replace the original with a copy or a new model. And sometimes, after things go south with substitute after substitute, he finds himself back at, and if he’s lucky, with square one.
To Thomas. And sometimes with square one, even decades (x3) later; he finds she loves him more than he could imagine and counts herself lucky.
I actually hate this article. It plays into a person’s deepest insecurities. If you have gaps and crevices, for heavens sake FILL them before inflicting yourself on some poor female and projecting all your unfulfillable fantasies on her.
Joanna, if you ever get your heart broken, get back to us. Until you do, your comment is just ignorant.
Michael, I’m 47 years old, had 2 marriages and 4 kids, survived depression and cancer, husband’s cancer, mum’s cancer and dad’s death of cancer. Also the suicide attempt of a close family member. I think I am qualified to comment from a place that is not ignorance and to say that our emotional struggles are our growth, not something for anyone else to come along and fix.