They say you never forget your first love—and maybe that’s because it’s not meant to be forgotten.
In this collection of real stories, we explore the quiet power of first love—the way it shapes us, lingers in our memory, and sometimes, stays with us in ways we never expected.

1.

• “He was my best friend, and the first boy I met when I entered University. I fell in love with him our sophomore year, but we didn’t get together until the beginning of Junior. He was everything I’d ever wanted: kind, thoughtful, attentive, intelligent beyond belief. In the year and two months we were together, I had loved him with all my heart, and I was happy. We never really fought, and we cared about each other a lot.
  Things had been at a standstill for a while, and we were both busy and distant. A little over a week ago, he broke up with me. He said he didn’t love me romantically anymore, and it tore me apart.
  What do you when, for more than a year, you wake up every day with the knowledge that someone loved you more than anything else in the world, and then suddenly one day he doesn’t? We’re still friends, but it hurts. It hurts so much.”
  © istilloveyoubruh / Reddit

2.

• “I was 5 y.o , and I went to summer camp. There was a boy, about 3 years older than me. And one day, he threw me a note. The girls crowded around me and were like, “Come on, read it out loud!” I did one of the most shameful things. I tore up the note and put it under the mattress, to make sure that no one would take it away from me, never found out what was written in it.”
  © Kseniya_m / ADME

3.

• “We were 13. We both came from really bad homes. Our parents didn’t like that we were dating and did everything to keep us apart. We hated everyone and everything except each other. She was the first person in my life I ever told I loved them. We spent every second we could together for about 6 months.
  Then one day, her parents decided she was going to go live with her aunt in New Hampshire. I got told about an hour before she left. She left me a phone number, but eventually her aunt had the number changed. I had lost the only person in the world in my 13 years I had ever loved. I spent years on the Internet trying to find her.
  This was before social media, when the best you could have hoped for was to stumble on her AIM account. I eventually started doing searches on MySpace for anyone her age in the town in New Hampshire. I’d start messaging them one by one, asking if they knew this girl.
  Then one day I got a response from her new boyfriend, oddly enough, and he put me in touch with her. We experienced a very passionate re-emergence of our feelings and had a long distance relationship for about 3 months. Then we lost touch again for about 5 years.
  Then we found each other again and were going to make plans to be together. Then she told me that I was inadvertently bringing back her childhood trauma and that she couldn’t be around me anymore and that we shouldn’t talk. I was 28 when I lost her again.”
  © Zonerdrone / Reddit

4.

• “I was dating a popular guy at the university, and then we had a fight. The next day, he pretended he didn’t know me. I didn’t show my feelings, but my heart was breaking. Once I was walking after classes and saw him kissing another girl.
  I walked past him, but then our classmate and this guy’s best friend caught up with me. He hugged me, and I stood there sobbing into his shoulder. And then he invited me to a concert that night. The next morning, we showed up at the university as a couple. We ended up dating for 4 years.”

5.

• “That was so long ago! We’re still friends and hang out every so often. He feels like a cousin or extended family member to me now. I love him as a person who has been part of my life for the last 12 years, but I have no romantic feelings toward him.
  He’s not married, but he’s dating an awesome girl. I’m glad I met him, he was a really important part of my life for a long time and helped me through some really tough times.“
  © Forward_Ad6168 / Reddit

6.

• “Amazing. He smelled like cinnamon and hay. He lived right next door and he had a white steed. A noble one, if you will. We went through almost every major life event together. I took his virginity. His bottom lip was smaller than the top and I thought it was the cutest thing.”
  © OccamRager / Reddit

7.

• “I celebrated one year with my first girlfriend two days ago. I’ve known her since I was five, but in all my teenaged searching for love, I barely even considered her. I went for other girls and was disappointed again and again. I got my heart completely broken by a girl named Sam in May of last year. The last words she said to me were: ” I hope you find someone who’s right for you. ” It was at that point that I stopped trying.
  In July, while partnering with my now-girlfriend in a Tae Kwon Do drill, we accidentally asked each other out. The first date was incredibly awkward, but also tons of fun. I asked her to be my girlfriend a year ago on the eighth. It’s been both everything I dreamed of, and nothing I expected, both down to earth and amazingly unbelievable at the same time.
  It’s funny how sometimes the thing you didn’t think you wanted ends up being the thing you wanted, needed, all along.”
  © Unknow author / Reddit

8.

• “I was a 15 year old girl, I fell in love with my gay best friend Andy’s older sister. She was 21, Scottish and very gentle. We started dating pretty much the day I turned 16 and got engaged about four months later. I thought I was going to love her for the rest of my life, I had never really been happy before that.
  We’d spend every Friday and Saturday evening together and then Sunday night we’d write each other a letter and Andy would pick mine up during lunch break at school and take mine back to her.
  We were together for two years, but we grew apart and we both changed a lot. We don’t speak anymore due to the actions of a later girlfriend of mine, with whom my first love is, as far as I know, still friends.
  It’s 13 years since we split up and probably about 8 years since we last spoke. I’m really sad about that sometimes, but I rarely think of her anymore, it was a long time ago.”
  © butwhatsmyname / Reddit

9.

• I dated my first boyfriend for 2 weeks. And then his ex showed up, and my Andy went back to her. My mom found out and gave me a lot of advice. I tried not to think about him.
  And after 2 months, he sent me a message saying, “Let’s meet and talk.” So I thought, why not? At the meeting, he repented and said what a fool he was, asked me to come back. I forgave him, and we dated for 2 more years. And my mom’s advice was quite simple: to raise my self-esteem and persistently pretend that I don’t care about him at all.

10.

• “Back in middle school, I had the biggest crush on this one boy. I was never really interested in dating or boy-craziness, but he was different. He made me so happy when he was around, and I thought about him all the time.
  Near the end of 8th grade word got to him through a mutual friend that I really liked him, but he was painfully shy as well so nothing came of it beyond everyone knowing we liked each other and calling it “dating.” The next year we moved on to high school, and I was still hopelessly crushing on him. Things got even more awkward and we drifted apart.
  Sophomore year, another guy asked me out, and I dated him for 2 years. Eventually I realized it wasn’t a good relationship and that I still had feelings for my crush. I broke it off with the guy and told my crush how I felt. That was 6 years ago. He felt the same way, but adolescent awkwardness got in the way for both of us.
  We’re moving in together in 2 weeks, and planning to get married. I love him so much and can’t imagine my life without him.”
  © nekobecca / Reddit

11.

• “In second grade, I had a crush on a boy named Ian. I decided to make the first move. I found out he had a cat. And I couldn’t stand cats… But I decided to draw it for him.
  It turned out great: I’m good at drawing. I put this drawing with the caption ‘To Ian from Sam.’ Anyway, when everyone came back, I sat down to watch. He found the drawing, looked at it, read the signature and… crumpled it up.
  Needless to say, at that very second all my love was gone, for I was terribly offended. I’d worked so hard, and he’d done such a terrible thing to my gift. So I gave up and didn’t show any more sympathy, but I didn’t hold a grudge either.”

12.

• “She changed my life for the better. Brought me out from hard time, that I thought I would never get out of. Made me smile and laugh when all I wanted to was cry. She literally saved my life by stopping me killing myself. My first love was the strongest thing I have ever felt and lucky. I still get to wake up every morning and see her smile, feel her hand in mine. Its perfect”
  © ****spade / Reddit

13.

• “He was my first boyfriend at 15; it is young I know, but we lost our virginity to each other and we dated for a year and four months. It was the first time I had ever felt love and such care and happiness towards another person. He had a loving family life, and I had a single Mother with a new boyfriend living in our house;
  I felt like she didn’t want me there and there was tension between us so it was nice to have comfort with him when I needed it most. I think that’s what drew me to him; he was happy and joking all the time and I fed off that energy.
  Anyways, we are still on good terms but both in new relationships now.”

14.

• “So pathetic, looking back. It was fun and romantic and I thought he was ‘the one’, but I was just ignoring red flags left and right. When he eventually cheated on me I felt like I’d never be able to recover. I spent weeks coming home from work and crying in bed. I wish I could go back in time and tell that girl she’d laugh about this in a few years. I try to remind myself of that when things go wrong now.
  I still have a fondness for him- I’m not mad. I don’t regret getting my heart broken. He taught me a lot about what to run away from. He also taught me to let my guard down. I guess I’ll always love him in a way, but in the sense that I love because of what he helped me become.”
  © britneymisspelled / Reddit

15.

• “It was/is the best thing to have ever happened to me. I first saw her in the cafeteria in 11th/12th grade. She was walking towards the exit doors. Blonde curly hair, fair skin, and little makeup. She was a natural beauty. I told me friends, ‘That’s the sort or girl you marry.’ And I did.”
  © HistoryOfAMan / Reddit

16.

• “My first love was a girl I met at summer camp. She lived an hour away and since we were both 13, we relied on our mothers to shuttle us back and forth, swapping weekends at each other’s house. The next summer at camp, we decided that since we would both be going to high school the following fall, we should enjoy that summer camp time together then break up.
  The last night, they had a farewell dance, and we spent all night dancing to every slow song. I still think of her from time to time but haven’t talked to her in over 35 years.”
  © StuckInNov1999 / Reddit

17.

• “Magical and powerful. 5 years ago in October I met my SO. I was a punky 16 year old girl who loved biology and heavy metal. He was a pot head who loved rap music. He cheated off my test in AP Biology and I caught him. I said he should buy me coffee if he was going to keep cheating off my tests. We were in love a few weeks later. We taught each other how to love and grew up together. He made me believe in love.
  Our love withstood a long distance college relationship, it withstood jealousy, it withstood pain and loss. We have hated each other more than we have ever hated anything else in the world and come back. I love him so much it hurts. He is amazing. First love can be lasting love.”
  © lshippee / Reddit

18.

• “My first love is my wife. We started dating when we were 16 (I’m 33 now). We’ve been married 7 years, have hardly ever even fought. It’s been perfect. I can’t imagine it working any other way.”
  © Atari_Ferrari / Reddit

19.

• “My first love was innocent and unpretentious. It was as subtle as a rose petal and as passionate as a Shakespearean sonnet. She never imagined that a 7 year old admired her every move and watched in awe as she walked by my building block. Her beauty was flawless in my childish eyes, and I daydreamed for days about her, not really understanding my own feelings and the depth of my emotions.”
  © Unknow author / Reddit

20.

• “We were high school sweethearts, but we broke up shortly after high school because we were no longer good for one another. It was an ugly breakup, and we went several years without contact after I left the state. 5 years later, my mother sent me a box of my stuff, and one of his old creative writing notebooks was mixed in with it.
  I reached out over Facebook to ask if he might want it back, and from there, we became friends again. 10 years later, we’re still friends to this day.”
  © MoonMuff / Reddit

First love might not always be our forever, but it’s often our beginning. It teaches us how deeply we can feel, how vulnerable we can be, and how boldly we can hope.