First Loves

Our ideas of love are also shaped by our early romances. In 2015, the artist Rora Blue invited people to anonymously post messages to their first loves. Over a million people responded with notes like, “You ruined me, but I still write you love notes on papers plates and napkins” and “You’ll always be etched into my bones” and “I loved losing myself in you, but it’s been forever and I still can’t find myself: and “If I keep my eyes closed he looks just like you.” There’s a biological reason first loves create samskaras. A key area of our brain-the prefrontal cortex-doesn’t develop fully until we’re about twenty-five years old. As brain expert Daniel Amen describes it, the prefrontal cortex helps us to think before we speak and act, and to learn from our mistakes. Young people “think” with their feelings. Without a fully developed prefrontal cortex filter, much of our mental life runs through our amygdala-a brain center associated with emotional processes like fear and anxiety. As we age, our passion is tempered by reason and self-control, and we don’t feel with the same wild abandon. Those of us who felt the passion of young love may remember it as more intense than anything in adult life, even if it wasn’t ideal or even healthy. The first time you enter a relationship out of pure infatuation, the person might break your heart. If yo don’t accept the lesson and enter your next relationship again out of infatuation, then the second time, you might find yourself bored and acting out of character.