Do you know what happened to your first love?

[Jilly_in_VA]

I met mine at a church function when I was 15 and he was about to turn 17. It was instant for both of us, but he lived 35 miles away and didn't have a car. We had to write letters. My parents wouldn't even let me invite him up for a dance because he'd have to stay overnight...in our house, God forbid! But it lasted, on and off, for 7 years, through his army service (days of the mandatory draft (pre-Vietnam) and a move with his family to California, where I visited them and stayed for 7 weeks. We almost got married 3 separate times but the last time I finally decided I wasn't ready. Several months before I married someone else (wrong guy!) he was making desperate attempts to contact me on the communal landline where I was (nominally) living but we were never able to connect. I don't know if it would have made any difference though. We saw each other many years later when he was in the area where I lived in Tennessee and came to dinner. My daughter fell in love with him. She was 8 then. We're much older now. Still remember each other's birthdays. He'll be 82 in December. But it wouldn't have worked. He's a Republican and plays golf. I still care for him, though.

Funny, most of my old boyfriends are dead. He's still ticking. I wonder if anyone will let me know when he's gone......

[spooky3]

1. We're still in touch via email. He married one of our

Mutual friends.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I last saw my first love at our 50th high school reunion.

We were both long since married to other people, and there was no spark, although it was nice to see him.

[marble falls]

3. Mine had a collapse about one month after we married (we dated from highschool for four years)...

... she's been institutionalized for more than the last twenty years.

[Deuxcents]

5. I'm lost for words but wish I had something comforting to say

I’m glad you’ve been here for a while with DU friends

[marble falls]

9. It's more than 50 years now.

[redwitch]

7. I'm so sorry!

That must have been awful!

[marble falls]

10. Absolutely surreal and heart breaking.

[kimbutgar]

4. He passed away at a young age

He was a nice guy and treated me with respect but he was a major pothead with no ambition. I dated him though college and broke up with him because I knew he would go nowhere. He married another woman who was money demanding and put him major debt. her. He started embezzling money from a company he worked for and ended up in prison for 3 years. He called me about 6 months after I married and relayed his story and said he would always love me. Years later I ran into his friend who introduced us and he told me he died of Aids. I suspect he was raped in prison. I called his old home phone number and his sister answered. We had a nice conversation and she said he never got over me. I still have fond memories of him.

[LeftInTX]

28. Sounds kinda like mine, only mine has a string of DUI's. He's still alive.

Haven't spoken to him in 48 years.

He dumped me for someone who was pregnant with someone else's kid. I guess he liked "experience". They divorced after a year. He apparently was abusive to the kid he adopted.

He was a "bad boy" and my parents hated him. They did everything they could to keep us apart. If I had a date with him, for some reason, I always had to be in real early. If I had a date with someone else, I could stay out late.

He really didn't treat me very good. It was a very one sided relationship.

[Deuxcents]

6. I married my first love

My parents excommunicated me for it but we lasted a few years until he couldn’t keep his zipper zipped so we divorced. He and my son, grandkids and my sister’s family will be here with me for thanksgiving this year! Long story but I’m glad everyone is healthy and happy

[Hekate]

8. I wrote about this at least once here, then deleted the whole thing....

It’s probably my deepest regret that I didn’t know better than to let my mother break upmy high school boyfriend and me when we were 19. We met at 16 in high school, and it really was love at first sight. She wanted me to do what she had not been able to do — finish college (I was paying my own way, incidentally) but in order to do so she broke me. Complying under such pressure threw me into my first deep depression — I know I did not smile for at least a year. I buried it all as best I could. How strange it should haunt me from time to time in old age.

Several years later I ended up marrying entirely the wrong guy, had two kids with him, and got a divorce when they were toddlers. We were married 9 years. I didn’t realize toddlers could grow to bear a grudge forevermore, but even so I had the strongest feeling that I (or an essential part of me) would die if I stayed.

Oddly, about time I got divorced my younger sis and I reconnected as adults, and in our private conversations I learned that a quiet 13 year old can observe a helluva lot about what is going on in the family. It was she who told me, “After Mom broke you up with R, I swore I would never let her do that to me.” I was shocked — and it was like a giant lightbulb going off.

I did try finding traces of R online via google, back when that was a thing in the 1990s, but frankly I could not tell if he was alive or dead. I did find out he got married, named his oldest daughter for his favorite cousin, had 3 kids. That was all. I hope he found happiness and contentment.

Now, shall I post this or delete it now? Shall I leave it up after posting or be overcome once again with the feeling that this is not the place? …..

[MOMFUDSKI]

13. My son had a first love that her mother broke up.

He dropped out of college and her mom said he was going nowhere and to meet a nice guy at college. She married the nice guy and then her mom called my son (realizing she screwed up big time) and said her husband didn't make her laugh like my son did. It is a real sad story. He kept in touch with her and she called once for him to meet her at a bar. Just to tell him how sorry she was for listening to her mom. By then it was too late as my son was married with 2 kids. He admitted to me the nite before the wedding that she was second choice as his first love was unavailable at the time. 2 ships passing in the nite. I wanted to, and should have told him, go get his first love and everything else be damned. 2 wasted lives. I could still cry every time I think about it. Wife is a total pain and she dumped us, her mom, sister, brother. My son meets with all of us alone. She stays home. True story. I am very sorry for your situation. DU is a great place to unload and be understood.

[Hekate]

19. I am so sorry about your son -- and loss of other family members...

I am fortunate that my second & final husband came along, & we married the week I turned 40...
36 years ago in October. Not an ideal match when the kids were growing up (my daughter in particular was a handful) but we did our best.

We like the empty nest, and we love having the 3 grandkids from our daughter. The oldest one just turned 18 — we spent a lot of time with him when he was growing up & it’s a solid relationship. Most of all, I think both my husband and I looked at that relationship as a second chance at loving a kid where we weren’t scrambling to make a living and stressed out of our wits.

Several years ago, to our surprise, we found we had money — I mean we were always thrifty and paid off the first house in 15 years, then a few years ago sold it and took our real estate stash to a marginally cheaper area and bought a beautiful house with room for nearly all my books. We don’t say things like “we’re blessed” because it sort of sets our teeth on edge*, but we do say it’s a combination of hard work and luck. Luck — lots of people work damn hard and can’t get ahead.
(* “We’re blessed” is so often said in context of things like the entire town being lost to a natural disaster, except your house. Always makes me want to ask why your neighbors were not blessed.)

At 76 hubby is still working full time from his home office and he was the one who suddenly looked at his salary, pensions, and IRAs in toto and said, in effect, “Holy Shit, now what? Maybe we should start giving it away.”

So I started agitating to write a family trust so as not to leave a mess behind when we shuffle off this mortal coil. (Complications include our son hasn’t spoken to us in several years & we’re not cutting him out but he’s also not getting 50% — and if we didn’t put that in writing, the law would force the issue. ) It took two solid years to sort things out in our minds, and we definitely set aside college money for each grandkid.

The 18 year old was blown away late last year when we had the college talk with him — he works, started at community college this month, lives at home, and thought he was going to have to take out loans for all of university. Instead, when he transfers to university we’ll start writing checks for tuition and books out of that account. My husband, who has always worried about our daughter’s living situation (rents across the region are absolutely ruinous) up and told her the house is hers when we die, which made her extremely happy but freaked me the hell out because at that point we hadn’t settled the paperwork. We have settled the paperwork now, as of last week. It is done. If something happens to us before the 12 year old and 6 year old get to college, our highly responsible sister in law will be trustee. I can sleep at night.

And for the second time tonight I find myself asking if it would not be better to delete, delete, delete these intimate thoughts.

[MOMFUDSKI]

11. YES, I married him.

22 years later we were 2 very different people and he had to go. Couldn't keep his zipper up. I then married the best guy in the world. He treats me like gold and everybody asks me where I found him and does he have a brother? lol I got lucky second time around. We are now married 33 years.

[Iggo]

12. According to my last love, I never had a first love.

[Biophilic]

14. He died in Viet Nam.

He was more a teenage crush, but he was the first guy I ever really like or felt comfortable with. Super guy. An artist. What a fucking waste that war was.

[Skittles]

15. he lives in Idaho

I last spoke to him in England over a half a century ago.

[BComplex]

17. He became a cop in Texas.

[sinkingfeeling]

18. He went into the Army and I went to college. He married a girl in California while

at Ft. Ord and I married the wrong guy and dropped out of college. I divorced less than 3 years later, when my son was 10 months old. I knew my first love had gone back to Ohio to farm his dad's place. I didn't see him until my 50th. class reunion. It was sweet that he apologized for breaking up with me. We still text each other every once in awhile. He's on his second marriage and I never remarried.

[Solly Mack]

20. He's dead.

Long story short.

[mnhtnbb]

21. I was in touch with him about 15 years ago.

We were a couple my senior year (he was a junior) in high school. I went off to UCLA after I graduated and he finished high school in La Jolla (CA). We broke up during that year.

I had lunch with him about 10 years later after I divorced my first husband (whom I had met at UCLA and was the reason for our breakup). He had married his college girlfriend (who reportedly looked a lot like me) and they were well on their way to having, eventually, 5 children.

When I was last in touch with him--after our house in Chapel Hill burned down in 2007--he had been working in cyber security for Northrup Grumman for many years. Huh. Sounded like he was a serious Republican. He'd gained so much weight I would never have recognized him if I were to pass him on the street.

I've been googling him this am and discovered he has a what used to be Twitter account. I might have to join just so I can see what he posts, although I have no desire to reconnect with him.

[Dulcinea]

22. Yes!

We started dating in high school. I went to college & he went to art school, & that led to the demise of the relationship. We reconnected again as young adults, but stayed friends only. We're both married to other people now & are friends on Facebook, but a small part of me will care for him forever. No one has ever made me laugh as hard or appreciated in me what few other people did. I smile every time I think of him, even though I graduated from high school 40 years ago.

[Mad_Dem_X]

23. I married him.

We'll be married 26 years in November.

[malthaussen]

24. It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. n/t

[TomSlick]

25. She is seated in the chair next to mine.

[Ocelot II]

26. No idea, haven't seen him or heard from him in 30+ years.

If he's still alive I hope he's at least a little sorry for being a duplicitous dick.

[LudwigPastorius]

27. I don't know.

She moved away my Junior year in high school, and I haven't seen her since.

I suppose I could get on Facebook and try to track her down, but that doesn't feel right to me.

It was wonderful, but it what it was...and what it is now is just a memory.

[Mr.Bill]

29. I haven't seen her since high school

but we made contact with each other around 20 years ago on Classmates.com. We spent a few hours swapping messages. It was good to know she's had a nice live and I think she feels the same about me. My wife even got involved in some of the messages we traded.

[Conjuay]

30. Well, we both graduated first grade...

[flamingdem]

31. A lawyer

We were supposed to get together. Maybe someday.

[gratuitous]

32. Man, I don't even know who would qualify as a first love

I have a singular lack of "game" when it comes to charming the ladies. I was in probably about a dozen relationships in high school and college, and the other parties didn't know anything about it.

There was one young woman in college that I had a hopeless crush on. Tried to ingratiate myself throughout freshman year and into sophomore year. Not going anywhere, but I was too dumb to know it. My oldest friend was a year behind me and came to the same college. As my oldest friend, I told him about my feelings for the young woman, and he was quite supportive. Within a couple of weeks, he'd totally beaten my time (he had game in bunches) and swept her off her feet. They got married at the end of the school year, and I was crushed. I lost track of both of them shortly after getting my degree.

As it turned out, she was a reactionary Republican (something that lovesick me was content to overlook). When I found out through the grapevine a couple of years later just how conservative she was, I felt like I had dodged a bullet and in my personal history, she has become the biggest mistake I never made.

[Jokerman]

33. She got the life she wanted and so did I.

She wanted children and had three.

I didn't want children and had none.

We had many critical differences but parenting was by far the deal killer for me.

[DFW]

34. Not really recently, but as of a few decades ago, yes

We met in my last year of high school, were never close geographically. But we used to have wonderful weekends together. She was my absolute soulmate. We loved all of the same things: Chinese food, European languages, humor, intimacy, everything. It ended when she went to Yale. I was 20 and she was 18. She was jumped on by half the guys in the freshman class. I guess it was like what the guy told Jim Carrey in "The Mask:" She might have been looking for the BBD (Bigger Better Deal), which, at least as far as the money end goes, she found. Or else, maybe she just outgrew me, and I was looking to rationalize it to myself. This was over 50 years ago.

Two years after she dumped me--this was now 1974--, I met the woman I am now married to, and as a happier ending, I cannot imagine a more fortuitous dumping. Like the song "Pamela Brown:" "Lord, I hope she's happy, 'cause she sure deserves to be, especially for what she did for me."

She ended marrying a German, as did I. Fate takes funny turns. She went into banking (I think), and met this guy, who was a hotshot German banker. I ran into her briefly in 1981, and we chatted long enough to find out that we were getting married within a week of each other. I don't even know where she got married. I knew his name, and my neighbor in Germany knew of him when the subject came up and I mentioned the name. He was the central figure in some immense international banking scandal involving Germany and Ireland, and he was given €150 million (!!!) to go away and please disappear, which I guess he did. I read somewhere that his name came up in Florida somewhere, but that's where I lost the thread. I have no reason to assume they are not still together. Her family was solidly Republican, and with all that money her husband got thrown at him after his questionable dealings, I would have to suppose she is, too. "That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun. For €150,000,000 you can buy some serious real estate, but where they eventually ended up, I don't know.

Would I have been happy with her? Who knows? I was absolutely devastated when she left me. I was only 20, but it seemed to me at the time that the end of the world had arrived. I finished college being taught that beautiful, smart, well-adjusted women were not interested in the likes of me, because they could "do better." Those were just the rules of the game. When I was 22, in 1974, I met a beautiful, smart, well-adjusted woman in Berlin, and she disproved what I had been taught in college. We just celebrated 49 years together this past July. Rules are made to be broken.

[Chi67]

35. Yes

And he is still one of my best friends.