If you’ve seen The Summer I Turned Pretty, you’ve likely found yourself screaming at your television, angry with Belly Conklin as she oscillates between Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher. Regardless of how hard she tries to leave him behind, there is something about Conrad, her first love, that continues to draw her back in. It’s messy, it’s confusing, and it’s painfully real. Why is it that, whether time has passed or how many individuals we end up dating, we can’t help but think about that one individual who caused our heart to flutter for the very first time?
First Love Isn’t Just a Feeling, It’s a Full-Body Experience
Our initial love is not so much about reason; it’s about chemistry, emotion, and novelty. In a report by Bustle, an expert explains, your initial experience of being in love triggers a flood of potent brain chemicals: the pleasure hormone dopamine, the bonding hormone oxytocin, and the mood-regulating hormone serotonin. These neurotransmitters produce profound emotional highs that are euphoric, even addictive.
And not just emotional; physical, too. When you hug, kiss, or make love with someone, particularly for the first time, your body and brain form a memory of the person that is inextricably linked to feelings of comfort and togetherness. This is particularly increased during our teenage years, when the brain is most attuned to emotional highs and rewards.
The report further explains, these initial experiences of love fire up the brain’s reward centre, producing a sort of emotional imprint. It’s like pursuing the first high; our brain remembers how it felt, and it wants to experience it again.
One of the reasons that first love packs such a wallop is because it tends to occur at a critical stage of development — your teenage years or early 20s, when you’re in the process of discovering who you are. That individual doesn’t just get into your heart; they become part of your personal history.
You link them to so many firsts: first kiss, first heartbreak, first late-night talks about dreams, identity, or fears. These are the things that define you, and because your first love is inextricable from that self-discovery, they’re difficult to disentangle from your sense of self.
That’s why Conrad’s attraction to Belly is so real. He wasn’t simply her crush; he was part of every summer that shaped her childhood, part of her emotional map. To give him up would be to give up the person she was at the time.
You Weren’t Just In Love With Them, You Were in Love With the Story
First love is always accompanied by idealism. We idealise the whole saga: the butterflies, the stares, the lengthy conversations. For most of us, first love transcends into a person; it becomes a representation of youth, innocence, and emotional potential. That’s why we always relive it in our heads, even if life has progressed.
We compare every new relationship to it. This is where it gets complicated. If you have had deep feelings before, that establishes a mental baseline. Every new person you encounter is, knowingly or unknowingly, compared to that level of intensity. You wonder: Does this feel like it did with them? But no two relationships are the same and that is confusing or disappointing.
You might not even wish your first love to return. But in the event that they happened to be your emotional template, it is hard to relate to someone else fully without recognising the differences. In Belly’s case, even when she’s comforted and entertained by Jeremiah, there’s this aching feeling that something’s missing. That ache in her heart, that yearning, that belongs to Conrad. Because it was him who first made her feel that part of herself come alive.
This is the reality: you might never truly move on from your first love. But that does not make you broken, stuck, or unable to love again. Think of it like a scar, not an ache that throbs all the time, but one that reminds you of something true. You can grow around it after a while. You’ll find others who’ll teach you other forms of love, new things, and aid you in healing. But first love? It remains. It’s part of your narrative.
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You may not wish to return, but you can glance back and feel something and that is alright.
Because first love is strong. It’s psychological, emotional, physical and very personal. It’s linked to who we were, what we felt, and who we dreamed we could be. And even if you fall in love again (and you will), that first time stays with you forever, not because of who they were, but because of what it was.
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