What Did I Learn From My First Love?

My first love taught me... Rupi Kaur's Gratitude Writing Prompts

My first husband taught me about the love between a man and a woman. I was young, a teen but I understood clearly what that was when I met him. I was 15 when I met him and he was 21 years old. He was one of my best friends' older brother.

We started to see each other sometime before I turned 16. Today that would not be a good thing. It probably wasn't then but no one said anything to me or him. I could get served in the town bars/liquor stores with him. He was carded a few times and I was not.

After we were engaged to be married and I was almost age 17, we had sexual relations. Not before. We were to be married when I was yet 17. I was 18, less than 2 months after we were married. I used to joke that he may have lost interest if I was too easy!

What it did was give us time to get to know each other. I wasn't interested in children until I was older. He was but agreed to wait. I was 21 when we had our first child. She took 3 days to be born. During that time he was right there.

He had fever blisters on his feet because he stayed with me for the entire time. There was so much love felt when our daughter was born, so much love for me and his child.

A similar thing happened when our son was born. He was in the room until it was time for me to be stitched up. The doctor asked him to leave the room and he did, even though he wanted to be there for me.

When he left the doctor laughed and said that he didn't want to have to leave me to care for him. He was concerned he might pass out when he saw the needle that was going toward me.

We were happy most of the time, although he had a definite drug and alcohol problem that he couldn't quit. He went to treatment 5 times while we were together. I think his trying to quit every time wasn't for him but for me and our children.

He couldn't quit and we separated more than once, and still later divorced. We were married in 1971 and divorced in 1984. We were together for 15 years. He told me years later that he realized he had to let me go as in that way I would take care of our children and raise them to be healthy adults.

He thanked me and told me he loved me for that, even though we were both remarried. He died when he was only 48. Because my youngest brother died in 2021 at 48, I realize just how young that was. I know addiction kills. I learned that from him.

My time with him, taught me what true love is. It taught me that I was going to do my best for our children, that we both loved so much. I learned that I could not do anything to fix him or change him.

There was a difficult lesson but I learned I could only love him and let go of him and move on. I had an addiction also and I needed the distance to stay in recovery. A friend told me, "If you are meant to be together, you will be but it won't be sick."

We had those brief times with him in recovery so I knew what that was like. Those times didn't last. I learned a lot about love from him and am so thankful. I have been able to share that in my life. I have loved more than one man.