I have had so many first loves. I was pretty sure I was in love with a girl named Christina when I was 14. She liked me a lot as a "friend" and I was smitten with her. To this day I will often wonder what came of her. Never even kissed the girl, but I'd talk to her for hours on the phone. Me discovering feelings I'd never had before and her discovering her newfound powers of attraction.

Then when I was 16 I had my first serious girlfriend. She was the first girl I ever had sex with. Four of us friends skipped school one day and went to a friends house while her parents were at work. We had sex in our friends parents bedroom. I was in heaven. I was certain that this was my real first love. I wrote her poems, I hung out with her instead of my friends. We had sex everywhere possible, several times a day. This all lasted for 6 months. -An eternity back then. Then she broke up with me for a senior that she banged on spring break. -Broke my heart.

I didn't really "date" any other girls, but I had a very close girlfriend that we can call N. N and I are still friends to this day and I actually played guitar in her wedding. But... back in my senior year of high school, I was sure that I was in love with "N". She liked good music, we read comics together, she was cute as all hell and she could put down a six-pack of beer like one of the fellas. But... she had a boyfriend. She always had a boyfriend. We would stay up late, smoking cigarettes around a bonfire and she would snuggle up against me with her head on my shoulder and I was certain that I was in love for the first time. "N" will come back in to the picture.

Then I went off to college. My first two years there were uneventful from a romantic standpoint. I had met some girls that were nice and some that were the devil incarnate. But then, end of my sophomore year we threw a party at our house on campus. There was a pretty red-headed girl there and I ended up smooth talking my way in to kissing her and she stayed the night and we had sex. I figured it was just sex, she gave me her number though and I was excited to call her. I did the normal, wait a couple days so as not to seem desperate and then went to find the number. -It was gone. You younguns have to remember that this was before cell phones.

I spent the next three weeks looking everywhere on campus for her. She wasn't hard to miss. Lisa was a very pretty auburn haired, busty girl with a big smile and a bhindi on her forehead. Why? Because she was 19 and was trying to carve out her niche. She was the hot red-headed girl with the bhindi.

One day a few weeks later I saw her on campus sitting at a table by herself. Without hesitation I sat down opposite her. She turned redder than her hair. I explained about losing the number and she didn't buy it. She said, "you're just an asshole." I asked her to let me prove that I wasn't. We ended up dating for almost 5 years. I was sure that she was the first girl I had ever really loved.

Lisa and I attended the University of Montana together and when I came back to Michigan, she decided to come with me. We dated for one year in Michigan until one day, while arguing with her, I half in jest, half in truth said, "well maybe we should just break up then."

She agreed.

I was sad.

I was depressed though and it was time for a change. I weighed nearly 200 pounds back then. I now weigh 175 and I should probably be at 165. I was big, lazy, complacent and unhappy.

After just two months of being single I had lost almost 20 pounds, I was happier and I had begun hooking up with a steady string of girls.

One day, a girl I went to high school with named Shannon called me and asked me if I would like to go on a date with her friend? She was sure we would hit it off. I said, "no thanks, I don't blind dates," and left it at that.

I had started taking "N", you remember the girl from high school, out on a couple of dates. I was encouraged about it. She had just gotten out of a bad relationship and so had I.

I was managing a restaurant back then and one night my friend Shannon walked in with her friend "J". I looked at shannon as if to ask, "is that the girl you wanted to hook me up with?"

Shannon nodded, "yes."

I gave her a quick "thumbs up". -J was gorgeous.

I dated J for six months before I asked her to marry me and six months later we were married. You may ask, what about "N"? Well, I thought a lot about this as it was sort of a choice between "N" and "J". "J" really liked me and I wasn't a "fall-back" or "runner-up" for her, I was her first pick. We were both new to each other and that's a lot of fun.

I married "J" and I was sure that she was the first woman that I had ever really been in love with.

You may be noticing a pattern here. You may think to yourself, alright thenewgreen doesn't have a real answer to this question... but I do.

On December 17th 2010 my daughter was born. -That was the first time I had really, truly and completely ever fallen in love. Not just with her, but with her mother too. That changed everything. -They are my first true-loves.

Shoot, I'm not quite sure, though I've been crushing on women since Kindergarten. I could probably chart my school career with lost loves instead of years and it would make sense (i.e. well I went to my first school dance in the year of Sarah); women are probably my greatest motivation.

My crush was probably in Kindergarten with a girl who I would play tag with after school while our mothers chatted. I didn't see her again until high school where we became friends again. Or perhaps it was in the first grade with a girl who I car pooled with and who was probably my first good friend who was a girl. I also didn't see her until high school at which point she was a popular cheerleader and didn't have for me, who was the only one in school who still knew and called her by her full name an not her nickname.

Or maybe it was the first girl to really broke my heart. You see, I had quite the routine by grade 10. I would fancy a girl and over the school year build up the courage to let them know. Then they would avoid me and I would get over it during the summer break. This happened again in grade 10, but this time it really kicked me in the ass. Maybe it was just because her reaction was so contrary to what I thought was her nature, or because she was a closer friend than any of the other girls. You see, she was the first girl whom I ever made cry (well, apart from my sister). I saw her walking in the hall of school and just looked up at her and smiled as kindly as I could as we passed each other on the way to our respective classes and she grabbed a friend and ducked into the nearby bathroom. I later found out that she either cried or laughed in the bathroom, and I'm not sure which I prefer to think of. I tried to make amends somehow before the end of the year and wrote her a note saying something or another. The only thing I remember putting in that note was, "as they say, 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'" Needless to say, this didn't help.

That whole ordeal, however, was the first to really rattle me. So much so that the 11th grade is just a blur, probably because I can't define it by who I fancied that year. Sometime in that year she did end up coming up and meekly apologizing. She said she didn't know how to handle that kind of attention. Later, when I would get my first girlfriend at the end of grade 12, I would look back and that and empathize with it much more. I had spent my entire life chasing and being rejected by women that when I actually got one I hadn't the faintest idea of what to do in a relationship. I was so paralyzed that I ended up just stopping talking to her, not even breaking up with her, because I was too cowardly to do anything.

I like to think, however, that my wife is the first person I truly loved (and not just to score brownie points with her, though that too). I met her after going through my usual cycle in college and we just sorta clicked. It probably helps that she really did more of the initial work than me: inviting me over to play Halo 3, stealing our first kiss, giving me enough to drink so I wouldn't be sober enough to drive home and would have to stay the night. I dated my wife for four and a half years before we got married, and I loved her more each and every day. It's like something my mother told me, "You don't find your soul mate, you become someone's soul mate." She was only my second chance at a relationship and I made sure to not just let her slip by (by which I mean not to let myself be a lazy coward). I consciously worked on building our relationship and she made it really easy. I like to think that all the work we've put into our now-marriage is an investment that we will see the dividends of throughout our lives together.

Still in the process of getting over mine. I wrote about it at length on Louder Words, but took it down because it felt too personal. It does, however, still live on my Tumblr.

You Were My Sunshine

It's pretty raw. I wrote it when I had a huge attack of memories one night and couldn't sleep until this was out.

I'm often confused by love. There's the Romantic definition of love, the idealized True Love that seems to have become what we expect to hear about when we hear the word. I think it's a concept that's unfairly reduced in English and also blown way out of proportion.

To answer your question, I met my first love on the first day of 5th grade. I remember that we were all milling around, looking for our seating assignments. For us, 5th grade was the first grade in the Middle School, as the school district covers three towns, each with its own Elementary School, so there were a lot of new faces to me. Anyway, I saw a friend and we looked for our seats together and on our way we ran into two girls he knew. One of them was real butch and into sports. It turned out that all the time we spent calling her a lesbian (because we were 10 and all manly girls were automatically "lesbians") she really was one. Anyway, the other little girl was so beautiful I forgot how to talk for a minute or two.

Reality came rushing back as her words started to get through to me. I realized that she was making fun of my friend and me for associating with him. Long story short, we kept ending up in the same classes and we were always making fun of each other and drawing pictures of monsters and finding ways to freak her younger sister out. My friends kept telling me that they thought she liked me, but I just brushed it off because we were friends, even though (not so) secretly, I wanted to ask her out so badly.

But, it never happened. Every time I got up the courage, she'd just started dating someone else and in the meantime I was off doing my own thing until eventually we went to college far away from each other.

We still correspond every once in a while. Last year, we ended up going to the beach together and when I saw her, I felt like that 10 year old kid again. If we ever ended up living in the same area, I'd like to think that I have it in me to hang out with her again and maybe even ask her out, but then again, maybe the memory of her and how she was the first one to trigger those emotions in me are enough. My love life has been pretty . . . tumultuous, I guess you could say. If I'm an accomplished artist in any medium, it has to be making a mess of things with girls. I promise, I'm pretty spectacular at it. I don't say that to be bleak though, I think that's the natural contrarian in me, always looking for a story or a poem and ending up in an adventure. Well, except lately.

Well then, better get my typing fingers on!

I met Tatyana during a Friday night football game in marching band last year through my best friend Russell. We were all standing behind the end zone stands during the fourth quarter. I, as usual, was eating leftover pizza that I brought to the game with me, and we were hanging out and having fun during an otherwise unpleasant rainy Ohio night. I thought she was really cute. The next day, I received a friend request. I didn't recognize the name [I didn't ask her what her name was the night before] and I actually mistook her for someone else at first, so I left it in friend request purgatory. After another week and another football game and another bag of leftover pizza hanging out during the fourth quarter, she messaged me afterward, and that's when I recognized her and accepted. Over the next month and a half, we started talking a lot and hanging out whenever we could during school, not just the Friday night football games with shared pizza. Our personalities matched perfectly - she completely understood my sense of humor and found it to be hilarious, I thought her playful personality was absolutely adorable. We talked for hours on end - our longest chat was when she was babysitting and we ended up talking from 7 PM to 2 AM - 7 hours. I wasn't sure if I loved her yet, but I was sure that I was having a wonderful time with her regardless. [damn this is getting long. I haven't even gotten to the part about Doctor Who yet!]

Cue November 2nd, 2012. I was really excited this day. I was going to ask her out - during the fourth quarter, of course. But she didn't show up that day. Needless to say, I had leftover leftover pizza and an extra RC Cola after the game that day. Around 10:30, she sent a text saying that she didn't want us to change and that she was fine how we were already. I mistook that as saying that she didn't want to be with me and cried myself to sleep. Around 2:00, I woke up and basically vented saying how it's fine if she wants us to stay as is, but basically I cared about her very much and wanted to date her regardless.

...I didn't expect her to say yes.

Our first date was pretty awkward. Basically all we did was sit on a sofa watching Doctor Who. [Last three episodes of Series 2 and the first two episodes of Series 3, in case you were wondering.] To fully convey how nervous I was, let me just say that it took about an hour for me to finally put my arm around her. Sitting on the sofa watching Doctor Who, Star Trek, or cheesy zombie movies consisted of about 90% of our dates, but we very quickly got much more comfortable around each other in terms of cuddling. All was going well. I helped her with her depression and all, she helped me with my loneliness, we both loved each other a lot, etc.

Then March comes around. She was going through another hard time, and naturally, I helped her in any way I could. But something seemed a bit off. We hadn't gone on a date in three weeks; she was being a bit weirdly distant. She might be really good at picking up body language, but I'm excellent at picking up subtle changes in voice and word use. She wanted to go on a break. It seemed that every month around the 20th or so she wanted to back off a bit, but this time she was more sure of it than most. I got frustrated how I was constantly not sure if we were together or not, and on March 25th, after only 142 days, we separated completely.

The next few months were interesting, to say the least. The first two months after I was still very broken up about her, and I kept getting completely bullshite advice to try to get me in good spirits again. But the one piece of advice that helped me came from a friend who simply said that the second time is always better. Made sense. I took this advice and actually started talking to a variety of different people. None of the other girls I was talking to ended up working out, but at least I was in the right mindset. At this point, Tatyana and I were friends again. Then summer came. Tatyana was spending the summer without any online communication, so over the summer without talking to her or seeing her, I convinced myself that I was completely over her. That proved to not be the case.

Over band camp and the various band related events that came in late July and earlier this month, I realized that I DO still have feelings for her, they were just buried before. We have been talking extensively again. She said last Thursday that she wouldn't mind dating me a second time. I plan to ask her out this Friday, during the first football game, in the fourth quarter - while eating leftover pizza.

I'm not particularly ready to spill every personal detail to everyone, but my first love was a girl I met in middle school.

I still remember how we met. I had brought a folder of artwork from home for showing a friend at lunchtime, when she asked me if I drew them. Back then, my group of friends hung near the Hot Topic wearing crowd. Normally I didn't pay attention to them, but when I glanced at her face, she had these eyes that spoke of innocent wonder. I didn't know that I was in love with her. I didn't know that I wanted to be friends. All I wanted was to show her things that made her happy and inspire her to pursue her passions.

That was the quickest I have every clicked with someone.

The problem was I became a complete tool my freshman year and had a fuck buddy. I told her about said fuck buddy and hoped that I could make him stable enough to function without depression. It took me three years to realize that it wasn't going to work, but by that time there was no salvation for anything. I remember her swearing on the phone that she wouldn't allow herself to fall that deeply in love again.

I don't know how to make it truly end for me.

The movie wouldn't go to Hollywood; I want this to be a French film please.

I'm jaded. I'm going to claim that I've never been in love.

This isn't true, but none of them feel right enough to actually be my "first love." I know there have definitely been people I thought I was in love with that I really was just infatuated with, or people who weren't significant enough to me for it have been 'real.'

The guy who broke my heart, ripped it out, and stomped it into little bits - now, maybe that was love.

Can you measure love by how much someone can hurt you?

Edit: Cop-out answer #2, can I decide I love everyone all the time? #copout