It’s cuffing season, which is why you might be focusing on your first love

This article was written by a student writer from the Northeast Campus department.

When Northeastern senior Lily Johnson started dating her first love, she could only describe how it felt as “easy.”

Johnson met her boyfriend last year when they were paired for a dance competition. They made it official after four months of dating, and like many first loves, it consumed them. Even though they spent all their time together, Johnson still worried that he wouldn’t have the “spark” of firsts that everyone praised. He is no longer confused about whether his experience is appropriate.

“This is actually just a unique, very, very powerful experience. “I think when you experience it for the first time it really sticks with you because it’s like nothing else,” Johnson said. “I can totally understand why people get hung up on their first love. I think if we break up, which I hope we don’t, I’ll probably fall victim to that, too.”

Johnson isn’t the only one who feels this way. Your first love is like a drug: It draws you in and sticks with you even when you and that person break up. Also there is nothing to compare with. It is singular and unique in a person’s life and therefore often makes subsequent relationships immeasurable.

Benjamin Compton, Ph.D. from the University of Washington studies courtship, dating, sex, and interpersonal relationships. He says one thing is for sure: You never forget your first love. If things are going well, it can create emotions like no other. But having heartbreak be part of the love story can also be quite worrying for people.

Compton also believes that the novelty of first love forces people to constantly look back and recapture that feeling: “We all have our favorite childhood foods, our favorite movies, our favorite childhood songs. But if you go back and watch it, it probably sucks. You’re probably like: To wait wait a second! That’s why I think nostalgia is such a great drug, because we often ignore the ugly parts that aren’t the greatest. “So I also think that nostalgia can be very powerful for people regarding their first love.”

That’s exactly the case for Northeastern sophomore Izzy Langiocola. Langiocola and her ex-boyfriend of almost three years, whom she believed to be her first love, broke up during her freshman year of college due to long distance and communication issues.

“It’s crazy because I have no idea what’s going on in your life; “He’s also very off the grid in general,” she explained. While he says he’s completely over her in terms of desire, he’s still haunted by his desire to know how she’s doing and what she’s up to. He says he doesn’t want to see if she’s dating anyone new; he just wants to know what she’s up to in general .

Aside from the innovative aspect of first love, if the partner is also their first sexual partner, it makes perfect sense why people linger on it, Compton says. “This has a lot to do with the biological, like sex and stigma and things like that. If our first love is also our first sexual partner, then what is sex but the most extreme, intimate form of intimacy and affection?”

She also said that we try to compare our future relationships to our first relationship because that’s the only relationship we have to compare, probably the most idealized relationship. But this obsession has its downsides, especially in the way media and culture portray first love.

“One of the things the media does is show you the idea of ​​a perfect relationship… The sad truth is that the only thing movies don’t do well is real communication. I bring this up in the sense of the reality of what they actually show. Anyone who is truly in love knows that flirting with someone is not easy. “It’s not really smooth for most people,” Compton said.

Other forms of media set these expectations thousands of years ago, said Lori Lefkovitz, a scholar who studies sex and gender in relation to the Bible.

“A book like the Bible, Homer, or the foundation narratives that we have read for thousands of years establishes a set of expectations about what life is and what is normal based on how things happen, but that are repeated in later stories and sitcoms and commercials,” Lefkovitz said. He describes how associations create “a monotony in the cultural psyche” and humanity continues to move forward on these wheels until we no longer see them as made-up ideals.

Johnson noticed this with his concerns about the “spark” and wondered if he really knew what it felt like to be “in love.” “The idea that always really, really confused me was what does love really mean? So what are the criteria behind this? he said. She said her boyfriend, who had been in a relationship before, described it as a feeling of comfort between you and your partner, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized he was too confused about it. certain criteria that he is forced to believe.

While love, especially “first love”, is promoted by the media as a phenomenon consisting of magical, magnificent, life-changing moments that will last forever, it is very important to consider that there is also an agenda in the media that fosters cultural values. Lefkovitz said the norms apply. “Think of the heart as a symbol of love. The heart is this bloody, pulsating muscle, and in Shakespeare’s England it was the liver (the symbol of love). “You loved it wholeheartedly.” In other words, he said, “There is nothing natural or obvious about the heart and love being together.”

Compton says that when you look back, you see true love’s first love. Whether it is a relationship of six months or six years, however, when we think about our relationships or experiences with that person, all other relationships will be held to this standard. Even if the relationship isn’t unique, it doesn’t make those consuming feelings of love any less significant than those Langiocola felt throughout her two-year relationship. If you’re constantly blocked by seeing love and first love in the media, who can blame you for obsessing over your own love?