6 Reasons Your First Love May Not Be Your Forever Love

Do you believe your high school sweetheart is your destined soulmate? You might want to reconsider. Here are 6 reasons why your first love might not be your lifelong partner.

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Reflecting on our past, many of us feel a sense of relief that we didn’t end up with our first love. Bad haircuts, poor manners, and lackluster romantic skills – yikes! However, those immersed in their first love often feel heartbroken at the thought that they might not end up spending their lives with their high school sweetheart.

John Green, the author of The Fault in our Stars, once remarked that you never feel as intensely or as purely as you do when you are a teenager. Why? As teenagers, we’re beginning to develop our individual identities, and our hormones and thoughts are in overdrive. Your first love is passionate, intense, and hard to forget, mainly because it’s the first time we’re experiencing such intense feelings that are exclusively ours.

This often leads us to reminisce about our first love through rose-colored glasses, simply because those teenage years shaped our understanding of love and affection.

Why Young Love Rarely Lasts

Still clinging to the idea that your teenage love will endure the test of time? Here are 6 compelling reasons why you shouldn’t count on your high school romance to last a lifetime.

Hormones, Infidelity, and High School Drama

If you were to survey a group of 100 people and ask how many experienced their first betrayal in high school, almost all hands would go up. As teenagers, we’re hormonal whirlwinds, making emotional and sexual control more challenging than in adulthood. High school is also rife with drama: sexual issues, fickle minds, jealousy, bullying, substance experimentation, depression, lying, and partying. These factors don’t foster a healthy environment for a romantic relationship.

The Exhaustion of On-Off Relationships

While rekindling a relationship with an ex may seem magical in high school, you’ll soon outgrow this phase and realize how draining it is to continually revive a broken relationship. This pattern is not only annoying but also mentally unhealthy, breeding trust issues and eventual disinterest or distaste for your partner.

Personal Evolution

We don’t stay teenagers forever, and with growth comes maturity. The rapid changes we undergo during our teen years often doom our chances with our high school sweethearts.

Maturing Desires and Needs

As you grow, you might realize that your high school boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t as perfect as you thought. This emotional growth and experience in dating different people in high school help you figure out what you truly want in a partner.

The College Blues

Heading off to college often spells the end for high school relationships. If you attend the same college or university as your partner, you’ll probably stay together longer. However, it won’t be long before you’ve both developed new friends and interests, and suddenly realize how far apart you’ve grown. Long-distance relationships are even more challenging, especially at such an important and hormone-driven stage in your life.

Diverging Life Goals

As we grow, we develop different desires and needs, not just from our partner, but from life itself. What happens when you aspire to be a doctor in Brazil, and she wants to be a lawyer or start a family in Washington? Or worse, what if you want to be a doctor, and he wants to live in your hometown and work at the local convenience store?

While it may seem harsh to suggest that you won’t stay with your first love, remember that growth and change are part of life. You’ll continue to evolve without them, discovering who you want to be and meeting diverse, intriguing people along the way.