‘A first love always occupies a special place’ – Lee Konitz
By the time you reach your early 30’s like I have, it’s inevitable that you’ve probably had your first love by now. I’m lucky, because my first love actually turned out to be my only love.
I actually met Dave when I was about 10 years old. He was my big brother’s best friend who had floppy boyband curtains and I would stare at him from my parents bedroom window when he waiting at the top of my drive for Gary to get ready for school. That’s pretty much about as far as out paths ever crossed at that point. When I was 21 we met again in the local pub one Christmas Eve and, although I’d had boyfriends before, I felt totally different around him.
Getting together took a while. It wasn’t smooth sailing as their were other people involved on both sides and we didn’t want to put my brother in any awkward positions so tried our best (with varying degrees of success) to be sympathetic to all involved. Sometimes in life though, as I’ve learnt through my 20’s is that there comes a point were you have to stop worrying about making other people happy and just make yourself happy. I’m so glad that I didn’t cave under the pressure we were under in the early days because we’ve now been together over 11 years (married for 2) and couldn’t be happier.
Throughout my 20’s and early 30’s I’ve watched my friends meet, date and get their hearts broken many times over by people who were their first, second, third or fourth loves and I always count my blessings that I thankfully never had to go through all of that.
