I hope you all had a great Valentine’s Day!
Once again, I was single, but I didn’t let that stop me from having fun with some friends. I’ve actually been forming this post in my head all week now, and I was going to post it on Valentine’s Day, but I didn’t have access to a computer, and didn’t want to write a long post on my phone.
Difficult break-ups are immortalized in “the majority of white person art” with a special focus on first loves. (Yes, I know Hikki’s not white, but she grew up in New York City, so she was exposed to white culture.)
When I read The Game, one of the things Style mentions is that the pick-up community developed for nerds who for one reason or another lacked natural social skills, and the training gave them those tools. He also mentions that because of this lack of natural skills, a lot of pick-up artists were unsuccessful with their first loves. They then “put the pussy on a pedestal” and that fixation leads them to the pick-up community.
It reminds me a movie I saw a long time ago. I don’t even remember the title, actors, or majority of the plot line anymore, but it involved a group of friends doing a road trip across the country. The girl in the group had a childhood romance with a neighborhood boy, but it was broken up before anything really happened because her family moved away. She idealizes this old flame and all her relationships since then have been measured against this ideal and failed. Well, since they are doing a road trip, they decide to stop by her old hometown and see if her first love still feels anything for her. Turns out, he’s married with kids, and a bit of a jerk to boot. But the kicker is that she meets her first love’s little brother, who was always into her and kept the keepsake she exchanged with the older brother as she was moving. He also reveals that the older brother was only trying to hit it all those years ago anyways. (By the way, if you can tell me what movie I’m talking about, I would really appreciate it… it’s been bugging me since I first started thinking about this post.)
There seems to be a bit of truth to the idea. I don’t consciously make comparisons between love interests, but I can understand how your first experiences can influence your attitudes towards love. So tell me, how did your first love turn out? Are you a Marshall, who is still with your first love and everyone else is jealous of what you have, or a Barney, whose first love was a disaster and you have difficulty with relationships now, or something in between, which I guess Ted is?
I remember telling you yesterday I was going to comment on this post. I think it’s definitely true that your first love can set the stage for your future relationships in terms of expectations, idealizations, defense mechanisms, etc. My first relationship was a typical puppy love thing. He was really into me, broke my heart, and rebounded quickly. We ended up becoming pretty good friends a few years later though, and he’s now married with two daughters!