Hear me out: You should never marry your first love

“Perhaps those early relationships are destined to teach us integral lessons about ourselves, rather than determine the people we spend forever with.”

I’m so glad I didn’t marry my first boyfriend. He was a beautiful guy. Sweet, positive, lovely to my friends. But I didn’t fall in love with him for the right reasons. In fact, I fell in love with him for all the wrong ones.

I have this theory that we should never marry (or plan to stay with) our first love. I clearly didn’t have this theory when I first fell in love. The total opposite: I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else or loving anyone more. But now, I see things so much more clearly. And I’m really glad I didn’t hold onto him for dear life, like I so desperately wanted to back then.

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I fell in love with my first boyfriend partly because of something primal in my body that felt like undeniable love, but mostly because he was avoidant and emotionally unavailable.

I was young and desperate to be loved. There were circumstances in my life at the time that made me feel isolated and unloveable. My antidote to that was to be chosen by someone unlikely. Someone who perhaps wasn’t ready to choose anyone. Someone who didn’t love me as much as I loved them. Or someone who, in my first boyfriend’s case, was openly in love with someone else. What was I thinking, you ask? I wasn’t. That’s how we are the first time we fall in love. 

I was convinced that being chosen needed to feel like hard work. And I was even more convinced that if I worked hard enough, if I was good enough, pretty enough, chill enough, eventually my hard work would pay off. I would be chosen. And then, finally, I would feel worthy. I was wrong, of course.

I was desiring from the place of my inner child. A child who, for many reasons, had never felt quite good enough. I carried that insecurity straight into my first relationship and chose an impossible person to love, who I knew would struggle to love me back. It’s not that he didn’t want to love me back, but that he couldn’t, at least not in the way I needed him to.

But at the time, I distinctly remember feeling as though his avoidance was proof of real love. How wild is that?

My experience of love, up until that point, had been one of discipline and hard work. It was partly how my Italian family was structured, partly the expectations of my parents, teachers and the world around me. And partly me, too. I had a natural disposition towards feeling inadequate as a way of motivating myself towards success. I was a child obsessed with perfection.

So every time my first boyfriend wouldn’t reply to my texts for days, bailed on plans or gave me an unsatisfyingly vague answer when I asked how he felt about me or where our relationship was going, I took it as a sign that I needed to work harder. And that motivation felt a lot like love.

If I felt this intense pull towards him, this desperate need for his attention, affection and commitment, then surely I must love him. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. I see that now. And while I know he loved me too, in his own way, we were never right for each other.

Which brings me back to my theory. Whenever I see people getting engaged to their childhood sweethearts on social media, I’ll be honest, I think they’re making a big mistake. I question whether, despite the messaging we grew up with, we should ever marry our first love.

Because surely, when we first fall in love, we’re choosing through the lens of our unresolved childhood wounds. And if that’s the case, perhaps those early relationships are destined to teach us integral lessons about ourselves, rather than determine the people we spend forever with.

It’s a fairly well-established idea in psychology that the roles we take on in romantic relationships are often influenced by the way we were brought up. That we can find ourselves drawn to people who replicate familiar patterns from childhood, especially when those patterns were painful.

For example, someone who experienced abandonment as a child might find themselves repeatedly attracted to emotionally unavailable lovers because a) that dynamic reinforces the narratives they’ve built around themselves, and b) there can be an unconscious desire to revisit the same experience and achieve a different outcome. This time I will be loved! This time I will be chosen! This time I will prove to myself that I am worthy! Etc. It is a painful process.

I know that romance isn’t the only way we form attachments, nor is attachment theory a universal explanation for who we love. But it’s one way our childhood experiences routinely follow us into early adulthood, shaping the people we first desire. And in my experience, it rings pretty true.

From 18 to 27, I was almost exclusively attracted to people I couldn’t have or shouldn’t have. I found that entering relationships with those people, whether they were emotionally, physically or ethically out of reach, helped me feel worthy. Until it didn’t.

One day, I woke up in a relationship with someone who was consistently not choosing me, and I felt totally exhausted. But more than that, I felt done with it. Why did I keep accepting their behaviour when I knew I deserved more?

In that moment, I realised the way I felt about myself no longer lined up with the people I was choosing romantically. It was a groundbreaking discovery that smacked me in the face, seemingly without warning. Like a message that had been trying to reach me for years, but that I hadn’t been hurt or tired enough to hear.

I hadn’t yet felt the full extent of the anger that had been buried inside me. The anger of spending so many years feeling inadequate, of constantly trying to prove that I was worthy of being loved. Of people utilising this deep insecurity to their advantage. It took reinforcing that false narrative about myself, over and over again, to realise that it wasn’t true.

I haven’t been with someone who makes me feel inadequate since. But I believe I needed those relationships to teach me what I actually want and who I actually am.

Am I still that little girl who wants to be noticed, to be chosen, to be the best? Who uses criticism as fuel to prove herself worthy of success? Or do I want to be supported, cared for, loved and chosen, and use that positive energy, that encouragement and grace we all deserve, to propel me towards the best version of myself? 

No shade to my first boyfriend. He helped me realise the queen I am within. That I don’t need him, or any lover of any gender, to convince me I’m worthy.

All my exes played their parts in my life perfectly. They helped me heal my childhood wounds by giving me the opportunity, again and again, to choose something different for myself. So, I’m glad I didn’t marry my first love. It would’ve been a grave mistake.

We live in a society that no longer places the same importance on getting married young, and my advice would be to really indulge in that freedom. Don’t rush. Don’t buy the pair of shoes you try on just because you like them, and don’t marry the first person you fall in love with just because you can’t imagine loving anyone else.

Wait a beat. Maybe even a decade. However long it takes to feel as though you’re choosing people for the right reasons. From a place of desire rather than need. I know it’s hard to believe sometimes, but there really are so many fish in the sea. And the right one for you will likely not be the first one you choose.

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