People make a big deal about firsts when it comes to romance: first kisses, first dates, first times, and don’t forget that wistful, reminiscent sigh of remembrance old folks let out when they recall their first loves.
Don’t get me wrong; your first love is great, but it also generally leads to that first gut-wrenching, soul-sucking heartbreak.
Everyone knows it sucks to get your heart broken. Maybe you were naïve with your first love. Maybe you had no real understanding of the fact that essentially, all love stories end and many of them end badly.
So, maybe your first heartbreak caught you off guard. Maybe you were so innocent and so pure that your heart actually ripped out at the hand of someone you really trusted.
Or, maybe you were like me: a cynical child of divorce who fell in love completely by accident and felt like an idiot when that heart-smashing sledgehammer finally did its dirty work.
And then, well, sh*t.
When your first love ends, insecurities are abound. Are you undesirable? Think you have a bad personality? Though none of those are true.
The truth remains that you weren’t good enough for that person to love you any longer. Regardless, there’s a reason this love is called your first love — not your last.
So, here’s to the second loves. That’s right; second loves really get the shaft when it comes to getting due credit in our romantic timelines. Cheers to them, though, because the second loves are the ones who really matter, even more so than the first.
Your second love is the one who came along and saved your heart after it was smashed. After you lost your doe-eyed innocence and wised up to the perils of love, good ole love number two was there.
When you thought you were tragically imperfect, impossible and perhaps, unloveable, your second love gave you the opportunity to love and be loved once more.
The great thing about second loves is that they are often unexpected. Perhaps you swore you’d never love again or were timid about finding someone new after things went sour the first time around.
All loves are different, of course, and your second will surely be different from your first. Perhaps your second love will pale in comparison to your first love.
Then again, maybe your second love will feel like so much more than your first. It doesn’t matter; what does matter is the fact that you’ve had love and heartbreak but have been able to love after heartbreak.
A second love gives you reason to continue to believe in love, but more importantly, it gives you perspective.
Love is not only about having someone or about being in a relationship. Love is an ability that you have and no person or heartbreak — no coming or going of a significant other — can extinguish that ability.
You fell in and out of love once and survived, then, you found the ability to fall in love again. So, if and when that second love passes, you’ll know that heartbreak does not destroy; you keep going.
Being in love, or not being in love, does not make your heart beat. Others do not define your ability to give love. You, and only you, do. And that’s a pretty powerful thing.
Photo via VK
