They say that first love is the most sincere. For some people, it is just a sweet memory, but others are more fortunate: they manage to build a life-time relationship early in life. Either way, it’s impossible to be indifferent to stories about the first butterflies in the stomach.

Story1
I dated a boy at school. But then my parents sent me to another city. At first, we texted to each other, but then it went quiet. And now I came to the city of my childhood. My friend was like, “Do you want to see who your Mike married?” Of course!
We go to the grocery store, and his wife is behind the cash register. She stared at me and suddenly said, “Excuse me, aren’t you Olivia? I recognized you at once. Mike has a lot of your photos. And a whole bag of letters. I read them all, it’s so interesting! Mike keeps them all safe. How long are you going to stay here?”
I was very embarrassed and said that I was leaving right away, waiting for the bus. The woman said goodbye to us with visible relief. © staloweselo / Pikabu

Story2
I was 5 years old, and I went to summer camp. There was a boy, about 3 years older than me, doing martial arts. And one day, a couple of minutes before bedtime, he somehow went around the counselors, opened the door to our room and threw me a note. The girls crowded around me and were like, “Come on, read it out loud.”
I realized then that it would be ugly to tell others about what was written to me personally. And then I did one of the most shameful things in my life. To make sure that no one would take it away from me, I tore up the note and put it under the mattress. I never found out what was written in it. © Kseniya_m / ADME

Story3
We were 13. We both came from really bad homes. Our parents didn’t like that we were dating and did everything to keep us apart. We hated everyone and everything except each other. She was the first person in my life I ever told I loved them. We spent every second we could together for about 6 months. Holding hands, cuddling, making out.
Then one day, her parents decided she was going to go live with her aunt in New Hampshire. I got told about an hour before she left. She left me a phone number, but eventually her aunt had the number changed. I had lost the only person in the world in my 13 years I had ever loved.
I spent years on the Internet trying to find her. This was before social media, when the best you could have hoped for was to stumble on her AIM account. I eventually started doing searches on MySpace for anyone her age in the town in New Hampshire. I’d start messaging them one by one, asking if they knew this girl. For a long time I got no responses, or they never heard of her.
Then one day I got a response from her new boyfriend, oddly enough, and he put me in touch with her. We experienced a very passionate re-emergence of our feelings and had a long distance relationship for about 3 months. Then we lost touch again for about 5 years.
Then we found each other again and were going to make plans to be together. Then she told me that I was inadvertently bringing back her childhood trauma and that she couldn’t be around me anymore and that we shouldn’t talk. I was 28 when I lost her again. © Zonerdrone / RedditStory4
I was dating a popular guy at the university, and then we had a fight. The next day, he pretended he didn’t know me. I didn’t show my feelings, but my heart was breaking. Once I was walking after classes and saw him kissing another girl.
I walked past him, but then our classmate and this guy’s best friend caught up with me. He hugged me, and I stood there sobbing into his shoulder. And then he invited me to a concert that night. The next morning, we showed up at the university as a couple. We ended up dating for 4 years.

Story5
That was so long ago! We’re still friends and hang every so often. He feels like a cousin or extended family member to me now. I love him as a person who has been part of my life for the last 12 years, but I have absolutely no romantic feelings toward him.
He’s not married, but he’s dating an awesome girl. I’m glad I met him, he was a really important part of my life for a long time and helped me through some really tough times. © Forward_Ad6168 / Reddit

Story6
I dated my first boyfriend for 2 weeks. And then his ex showed up, and my Andy went back to her. I was very sad. My mom, having found out about it, said, “Believe me, he will come back to you.” She gave me a lot of advice on how to behave with him in the same company. I didn’t think about it and just did what she said.
And after 2 months, he sent me a message saying, “Let’s meet and talk.” So I thought, why not? At the meeting, he repented and said what a fool he was, asked me to come back. I forgave him, and we dated for 2 more years. And my mom’s advice was quite simple: to raise my self-esteem and persistently pretend that I don’t care about him at all.