Falling in love is a beautiful thing. At the same time, though, chances are that it will end up being one of the worst experiences of your life. It sucks, but it’s true; chances are that the person that you are in love with at this moment will, at one point or another, break your heart.

Take your first love for example. It’s true: you will never forget your first love. Not because you will be in love with them for the rest of your life, but because they will leave you so beat up and bruised that you will never completely heal. The first love is the worst love.

It’s one of the most intense loves simply because it is the first- it’s a novelty. The first time you fall in love you are exposed to what I truly believe to be the greatest feeling in the world. Every touch, kiss, and embrace floods you with a feeling of euphoria that you have never before felt. You are experiencing natural ecstasy- and it feels fucking amazing.

But just like every time you roll- you’re going to come down off it sooner or later, and it’s going to suck. For the most part, you were in love with being in love. Sure, initially what you felt might have been real- but at some point you stopped thinking about the person that you were in love with and started focusing on the feeling of being in love instead. Love is intoxicating and addictive- it’s not your fault.

And now comes the worst part- the moment you realize that you are no longer in love with the person that you thought you would spend the rest of your life with. You start to try to replace the feeling with the somewhat euphoric feeling one gets when intoxicated, which gets you to start experimenting with different types of alcohol and drugs.

This may work for a bit, but eventually your significant other will start to realize that you are getting trashed all the time just so that you won’t need to spend time with them sober.

And then starts the fighting, the verbal abuse, the crying, the pain. Your world seems to be collapsing right from under you and you can’t find anything to grab onto. You feel a tightening in your chest similar to what you imagine it would feel like if someone were to slowly crush your heart in their hands.

You hate the situation that you got yourself into. You hate the person that you are no longer capable of loving. You hate love. And you hate yourself for no longer being in love with the person that you believed you would love for eternity.

You are left with a laceration so deep that the scarring will be permanent. You will never forget the gut-wrenching pain you experienced, and yet will be cursed with comparing every future relationship to your first. But all is not lost.

If you are smart, you will realize that you are still capable of loving. You will eventually fall in love again and some of the wounds will start to heal; that’s the beauty of love- it has the ability to heal the wounds that it leaves behind.

But the scarring will remain. Hopefully you will be able to take your first love tragedy as a learning experience and take to heart all the mistakes that you made. You will go into your next relationship wiser, more knowledgeable in the ways of love.

You’ll realize that love isn’t simply the feeling of euphoria that you experience and begin to understand that love is a changing, mutable thing. If you’re lucky, the next time around you may even stay in love forever. Nevertheless, your first love will remain with you until the end of your days. That first love changed you; it became part of you. You will never be the same.

Paul Hudson | Elite.