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| Art Card by Samantha Sopeña |
Love doesn’t have to be an intimidating thing to explore, even if it’s your first. It can be just as simple as these 8 easy steps.
Step 1: What constitutes as your “first love”?
You can’t know how to build something without knowing what it is first. Sure, you’ve had your fair share of experiences in romance, at one point you believed one of them to have already been your first love. But something still feels missing, something doesn’t click as you feel it should with any of them. Your first love should be grander, more solid, more… just more, shouldn’t it? Maybe your real first love is still out there somewhere.
Step 2: Just go outside.
Love won’t come to you spontaneously. To find something great, to find something as a “first”, you have to step outside. You have to venture beyond where you are now to find something as great or as grand as your “first love”.
Walks, trips, dating apps, arranged dates, study sessions, parties, who knows where you’ll find “the one”? You don’t even have to be actively looking for love all the time. Sometimes it’ll come to you naturally, easily.
All I know is that your one will be out there, somewhere, so you just have to keep going somewhere until you find… them.
Step 3: Test the waters, be the cat (or the mouse) in your new game.
It’s awkward, until it isn’t. 20 questions, all your favorites splayed out, you both put (mostly) everything on the table. They tell you about their background, and you tell them about how you got to where you are right now. They ask about your experiences, and you hear about their past attempts at finding love.
Deeper and deeper you two go. Courtship is a dance you two perform well. And just when the music is about to end, you get to the finale where the beat finally drops— Will you be in a relationship with me?
Step 4: Bask in the glow of your newfound life.
You’ve made it! You finally have your first love! Each new day being together with them feels like a piece of your life is completed, as though you’ve finally achieved a milestone that will stay with you ‘til the end of time.
They care for you in a way nobody else has, and you give them all the love and affection that’s been buried beneath you all this time. You go on dates and dates and dates; the future's just so bright with the image of you two, and you couldn’t be any happier.
Other people will say “oh, it’s just the honeymoon phase”, but you’re pretty sure this isn’t a phase. It’s what being in love feels like, right? When you find your one, life and love is supposed to feel as though everything is right in the world and nothing could ever go against you.
So congratulations, for finally having your first (and hopefully your last) love!
(But if you’ve made it, then why are we only halfway through the list?)
Step 5: Hmm, are those warning signs?
Ooh, is that a crack? A slip? A mistake? You’re not entirely sure, but whatever it is, it’s just a small bump on the road. It’s not the end of the world to have those off–chance moments, where there’s tension or anger or disappointment, is it?
Everyone has their off days. You’ll sort out whatever needs to be sorted out, and everything will be fine again. You’ll move on happier and forget this even happened. Until something happens again. And again. And again.
Are these red flags for you? You’re pretty sure they were red flags to you, maybe even non-negotiables at one point in your life, but not with them.
Surely, not them, right? You can forgive them for this, you can make allowance for this. They accept you for all of you, so you can learn to accept them for these too, right?
Right?
Step 6: Are we okay?
Conversation is the key to understanding, understanding is the key to maintaining a happy relationship. At least, that’s what you tell yourself. The more it goes, the more you think you’re only creating issues so you could fight with them.
But fights are normal in a relationship, right? It doesn’t mean the love diminishes, or that it’s a sign you’re about to end. At one point you think you’re fine, until you see something online or hear something from someone, and then all of a sudden you’re not fine.
Maybe you should be less clingy. Maybe they should be more dominant. Maybe you should raise your standards about how they treat you — or maybe you should lower them? All these maybes that weren’t there before, or were they and you just brushed it off because you were in love?
You’re so confused, but it’s not your fault.
Remember: it’s your first time loving someone.
So you ask them, every now and then, are we okay?, to which they always reply yes, we are, and you want to believe them. You want to believe that you are okay, but you just can’t.
Where does that leave you?
Step 7: Break.
When you can’t take it anymore, what’s left for you to do? You break.
You break right in front of them.
You break and you tell them everything that’s been warring inside you. You break and you tell them every little thing that you’ve seen, heard, realized, and you tell them how you don’t know where you stand because you thought you knew but now you’re only left feeling lost at sea, adrift in a place you thought you were so anchored.
You’re a mess of all these thoughts and influences and leads as you’re desperate to create the perfect first love, that you’ve forgotten it goes a million different ways for a million different people.
What happens when you put too many things in too little a vessel?
It breaks.
So you break.
Step 8: Breathe.
One beat. Two. Three. Four. Up to however many you can’t even count them anymore. You think, this is the end, because how could a person be with someone so messy?
You thought you had a real shot at this, but now you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re ruining yourself, and nobody would possibly love to stay with someone so paranoid and anxious and destructive and—
A touch. A hug. A kiss.
And everything quiets down.
After what feels like a life sentence of doubting everything, agonizing over everything, they sit you down and soothe you. A touch, a hug, a kiss, they pour over your wounds with a balm you didn’t know existed.
For every fear you have, they calm you. For every doubt you have, they reassure you. For each tangled thought, they sit with you and they help you unravel it, help you understand exactly where you are, and where they are.
Slowly, but surely, they anchor you back to the shore of where your love stayed. Some of the pieces are not what you expect them to be, but one after the other, they help you rebuild what broke by accident.
You’ve read about this before — kintsugi, a Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with gold; embracing imperfection, the beauty of brokenness by seeing its resilience.
After you break, you rebuild.
But before you rebuild, you breathe.
You don’t have to figure everything out right now. That’s not how you build your first love — it’s a learn as you go process. You don’t have to prepare for everything right now. You don’t have to have an answer for everything right now. A certain degree of uncertainty’s okay, but if there’s anything you need to remember, here’s the greatest lesson that you’ll learn:
Love changes, love adjusts, but as long as it is a choice, then love will remain yours.
