In a sense, talking about the subject of love is like trying to drive nails into water. There's love and love, and then there's love. It's so hard to pin down exact definitions when it comes to this feeling. There's your first love, the love of your life, and what some lucky people discover to be "real one" or "true one."
It's amazing how many people say of their first relation: "At the time I really thought I was in love, but I didn't know what real love was back then."
But it was still "love" when you were "in it" back then, wasn't it? Maybe yes, maybe no.
A first emotion can be so powerful, yet so hazy. The vast majority of us experience our first emotion when we are young, usually teenagers, a time when just about everything else about the world is confusing too. Love can be mysterious and elusive even for the oldest and wisest among us, so imagine what a challenge it is to youthful folks.
Without digging our hard scientific statistics, it is probably safe to say that the vast majority of everyone's first crush will not be the love that will last the rest of their lives. Most first loves are passionate, euphoric, exciting and feature new feelings that are equal parts agony and bliss. But first loves for teens tend to end because being young is all about going through constant psychological change - and also situational changes, as in moving away for college or joining the army - cutting a first love short by the sheer reality of separation.
Like so many other aspects of life, a first lust is a like the training ground for that later time when we are more mature, more stable, understand more, and are ready for a "real" lasting love relationship.
Unfortunately, a certain percentage of people "get stuck" on their first amour, and when it ends, it haunts them for the rest of the lives. It taints all of their future relationships. People who can't get over their first love are in for a long life of alienation or loneliness, unless they somehow manage to get back together with their first love and live happily ever after. But you can't give your heart fully to someone new if it still belongs to someone else. It's a tough situation.
Many people go through their entire lives never finding lasting love. Some men and women grow old, having never married or dedicated themselves to that "one special person." Yet, even these people who die alone and single may have had a amour at one time, and they almost certainly had a first love. But if they had true love at one time, why didn't it last? Isn't true love supposed to be "eternal?" Perhaps "true love" is eternal and other kinds of love, such as "first loves" are not - and therefore not "true love."
There is a danger in getting bogged down in semantic arguments, and fine philosophical points. Amour it whatever at the time you are in it. Love simply does not have a solid definition. As the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said:"There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness."