s****j
发帖数: 2542 | 1 ‘There He Was, On Facebook, With His New Fiancee Beaming At The Camera’
She split with him 13 years ago, so why was Katy Regan looking up her
first love on Facebook? Was it pure nosiness, or a nagging doubt that
maybe she’d made the wrong decision back then?
‘Engaged.” There it was, with a little red heart alongside it. My ex’s
‘relationship’ status update on his facebook page. A feeling like my
stomach had been drained, and then – before I was even aware of them
starting – tears, running down my face. It was an immediate and
involuntary reaction that even I couldn’t believe. This was ridiculous,
right? Get a grip, woman! He and I had finished more than a decade ago.
But Simon was my first love, and so, as I’m sure many others will
understand, he was different.
We met as teenageers in our home town of Morecambe during the summer of
1990. I had a perm and a asize 8 figure I didn’t appreciate; he was
dark, handsome and on crutches – a rugby-related injury I would soon get
used to as his girlfriend of six and a half years. Eventually we split –
a long and drawn-out process-in January 1997, when I was 23. Even though
it was mutual, I was cut up for years.
Since Simon, I have had relationships with men who were undoubtedly more
suited to me, who have affected and shaped me in arguably more dramatic
ways. But there have been none I have loved like I loved him: that all-
consuming, sometimes scary kind of love. And now here he is, announcing
his engagement on Facebook with a photograph of his fiancee beaming at
the camera.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them. It’s just that Simon was the man
who,once upon a time, I thought I would marry, whose children – our
children – I had once imagined. He is the man everyone else thought I’d
end up marrying. Instead I learned that he was tying the knot with
someone else while I’m still single, and it stung. I’m kind of
embarrassed about how much.
OK, I admit it, I did know he had a girlfriend. Over the years, we’d
kept in touch with the odd email here, the odd phone call there. ’Still
single?’ I’d ask. ‘Yeah, but dating,’ he’d say. Then, in 2004, I had
my
son, Fergus, and was a busy, working single mum. But I still
occasionally thought of Simon and very occasionally I’d get in contact
with him. Then, about three years ago, he told me he’d met someone. To
be honest, my first thought was, ‘Good on you.’ But then, you know how
it goes, over time I began to replace my odd email with the odd Facebook
‘stalk’. Was he still with her? What did she look like? I’m not ashamed
about behaving this way; I know I’m not alone –even some of my married
friends check out their exes on Facebook.
Clearly, if I weren’t still single I wouldn’t have cared so much.
Perhaps I’d even have better things to do than be on Facebook at 11pm.
But then I also wondered whether it was partly because of him, of us,
that I was single at all. Had I peaked too early? Had I found The One
too soon? Could that be why nobody has quite matched up ever since?
But let’s not forget that this is a relationship that ended in 1997 and,
in the manner of Carrie Bradshaw, it got me wondering… What is it about
first loves that does this to us, that has such a hold on us and our
emothions that it makes it impossible to let go?
‘Because they remind us of another time,’ says my friend Anna, who
recently met up with her first love after nine years. ‘A carefree and
exciting time, when falling in love seemed so much easier.’
She’s right. Falling in love with Simon was a piece of cake – something
I’ve found very difficult, impossible in fact, to do since. Perhaps the
reason we find it so hard to forget our first love, then, is because we
fall so deeply in the first place, and perhaps the reason we fall so
deeply in the first place is because we are ignorant. Blissfully so. We
haven’t been hurt yet, so why would we protect ourselves? The first time
we fall in love, we do so without any limits. Raw and exposed.
The truth is, Simon will always be part of me. Not just a part of my
history, but part of who I am. I lost my virginity to him, went through
most of my teenage years with him. He was there when I got my A-level
results, went to university, bought my first car… He watched as I found
out who I was and what made me tick. He was there when I turned from
girl to woman. So perhaps it’s not surprising that I should find it so
difficult to forget him.
When Anna met up with her first love, she left promptly and burst into
tears. ‘It wasn’t so much that I felt we should be together – he is
totally not right for me – but meeting up with someone from your past
like that brings home how much you have changed,’ she says. ‘Being
reminded of how you were then and how you are now can’t help but make
you access your life and where you are.’
Thinking, then, about my reaction to Simon’s engagement, perhaps the
tears I cried were more about me than him. I am 36 and have been single
for too long. Unlike back then, when fancying a boy was just about all I
needed to sustain a relationship, now my criteria are as long as my arm.
On paper I’ve achieved a lot in my life: been a successful journalist,
written two novels, had a child. But I’d never managed to find love, and
yet Simon has.
But this is where the good stuff comes in, why first loves are sch a
rite of passage and why the hurt of losing them is a necessary part of
our ‘love journey’. Simon was a foundation course in love. He was where
I learned how I am in a relationship, what it is to love and be loved.
He was also where I made lots of mistakes, experienced the
disappointments relationships bring and what it feels like to be hurt.
I realise now that as well as feeling sad when I saw his Facebook
engagement status, I also felt hopeful for the future. If he could do it
at 37, then surely I could, too? And when it does happen, I know it will
be all the more potent for what I learned from that relationship and
what I’ve discovered in subsequent ones.
It may never be as exciting as the first time, because it’ll never be
the first time again. But with each relationship, I’ll get it more and
more right and that, in a way, is the most exciting thought of all. | t*******y
发帖数: 11968 | | s****j
发帖数: 2542 | |
|
