Does First Love Mark Us for Life?

We all remember all those beginnings in our lives. The first day of school, the first day of college, the first day at work… but of all the "first dates", the one that remains most deeply rooted in our minds and souls is the first love.

According to psychologists, first love can have the ability to mark us for life, to make its mark on our later relationships, the way we choose a partner.

“No, this trick won’t work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? ” - Albert Einstein

Have you ever wondered why you remember the first kiss so much, and why not the fourth or tenth? Or maybe, after many years of breaking up with your loved one, you compare her to a potential partner, or you fall in love with someone who somehow remembers her?

Maybe, more than that, the same things happen to you in a current relationship as in your first love story...

Psychology has the answer to these questions! The first love affects us so strongly that it remains embedded in our psyche with a vivacity and clarity that do not dissipate over time, as happens with other memories.

This phenomenon is called the "primary effect" and is experienced by people in their late teens or around the age of 20 when they begin to identify with the events they are experiencing.

This period of existence has such an impact that older people, whom psychologists ask them to carry out in their lives, tend to mention especially memories from when they were 17-20 years old.

The explanation is that during this period we do many important things for the first time and what we feel for the first time in this context is so loaded with emotional and physiological sensations that it is deeply ingrained in our minds.

“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why.” - John Green

A first relationship is also characterized by a specific element: it is the only one in which you do not have a wounded heart, you have not already experienced disappointments or disappointments in love. You can then have a better, more beautiful relationship, but you are no longer in this state of "emotional innocence."

Intense first love can create a kind of pattern, patterned in your mind, that is activated in later interactions. When you meet someone who somehow remembers your ex-loved one - whether it's a physical resemblance, attitude, gestures, voice, interests, concerns, temperament - this can reactivate your subconscious memories.

This mechanism is called "transfer" in psychology. So, if a person reminds you of the one you first fell in love with, you may be attracted to it, want to get closer to it, and even have a love affair with it.

In other words, many people are not really able to get away from their first love!

"Like an old photograph, time can make a feeling fade, but the memory of first love never fades." - Tim McGraw

What do you think about this? Have you ever realized that you have subconsciously transferred the qualities, traits of your first boyfriend or girlfriend to someone who reminded you of him/her? Can we say that we really only fall in love the first time and that, in fact, after that, we only fall in love again?

“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.” - George Bernard Shaw.