Reading the title, you’re probably thinking, “How is the first person I love going to determine the rest of my life? If we broke up and I’ve moved on, they are no longer a part of my life decisions.”

Well, we all have the potential to love a lot of people. It’s easy to fall in love if this is what your heart wants. The first person you fall in love with sets the template for what love should feel like. And with every new person you fall in love with, you get a new template of how love should feel. But every time we go seeking for someone to love, we always search for that feeling and connection we had with the first person we fell in love with because that’s what our minds and hearts have accepted as what it means to be “in love”.

But let’s go back to that first heartache you ever experienced: when you and your first love split up. You likely sought out a “rebound” partner or hopped into a bad relationship because your body was craving the intimacy it just lost. It’s comforting and makes you feel like you don’t have to suffer alone.

But if this person is simply a rebound, which, most of the time, they are, they are catching you at your lowest point. Chances are, this relationship will only lead to sadness and even deeper heartbreak. You will continue jumping from relationship to relationship in search of what you had with the original person who broke your heart.

At this point, you’ve probably experienced so much heartbreak that you’ve come to hate the idea of love, or it scares you. For most people, this stage of heartbreak allows you to finally learn to love yourself. It allows you to have tunnel vision and live your life for YOU, do what is best for YOU, figure out what YOU like to do and what YOU want out of life.

Essentially, the first person who caused you to go down this chain of relationships and heartbreaks was what motivated you to step on the path of finding yourself. It may have taken a while, but eventually, you took the steps in the right direction.

True love, and I mean finding your honest soulmate, takes some time to discover. Usually, this person will walk into your life when you have figured out who you are as an individual, when you have developed the capacity to love yourself and be fine on your own, and when you have determined what you want out of life and the other person shares a similar vision.

On the other hand, some people are perfectly fine strolling through life on their own. And that’s okay, too. Love is a dangerous game we play. That’s why it is called “falling in love” not “rising up to love”.

But whenever we experience that first heartbreak or finally hit rock bottom, WE decide if that bottom is the greatest starting point or the worst. The choice is yours, so choose wisely.