WHY YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST LOVE

Who was your first love?

I bet it didn't take you long to remember, and I also suspect you're smiling right now (or else you're wishing that someone would thrust a white-hot poker into your brain so you'll never have to think about the "he/she devil" who broke your heart and left you for dead all those years ago).

There's something about first love.  Once experienced, life is never the same.  Remember when the Wizard of Oz turns from black and white into Technicolor?  That's your brain on love.  First love.

Suddenly, the world is a wonder.  Each new experience is magical.  You're invincible.

Duncan and I talk about our first loves all the time.  My sisters say it's weird, but I think it's therapeutic.  If given the choice, when questioned about my ability to form deep personal commitments, I'd much rather talk about my first love than my toilet training. Just saying.

In my law practice, I have lots of clients who've reconnected with their first love.  After the loss of a spouse, or a divorce, it's as if they're captured in a magnetic field.  They are drawn to the simplicity and purity of what could have been.   And what still could be.  In their minds, reuniting with a first love is the ultimate "do over."  A way to actually play out the "what if?"

Someday, I think scientists will discover a link between first love and animal imprinting. Take baby ducks, for example.  When they hatch, they bond, emotionally, with the first animate object they see.   Somehow, their brains gets stuck.   And isn't that exactly what happens with first love?  At a critical time in life, you get imprinted to one person.  And it never goes away, even if they do.

I've been married forever.  Plus, Duncan and I work together, so we get a huge marital multiplier.  There's no denying that first love makes ordinary moments extraordinary.  But Duncan's taught me that, whether it's your first or tenth, it's the love of your life that counts.  Technicolor, on steroids.  Forever.