The forever lessons of first love | Canada Voices

In 1958, John Steinbeck received a letter from his 14-year-old son, who was away at boarding school. Thom had fallen hard for a girl named Susan and sought his father’s advice on what to do about it. Don’t dismiss my feelings as puppy love, he’d written.

Thom need not have worried. His father, the acclaimed author of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, sent a loving reply to his son’s timeless dilemma: how to navigate a gloriously, intoxicating love when you’ve never been in love before.

“First – if you are in love – that’s a good thing – that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone,” Steinbeck wrote. “Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.”

But be mindful, he advised, to distinguish between types of love. There is love that is a “selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing,” employed to make one feel self-important. And love that is “an outpouring of all that is good in you,” the kind that “truly sees another person as unique and valuable.”

The former, father warned son, will make you small and weak. “But the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”

In a few short paragraphs, the master of the great American novel had perfectly distilled the challenge and gift of first love – finding your best, true self when your heart’s been stolen and your brain stops working.

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love,” opines the main character in Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel, Rebecca. “For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”

The poets, however, have always said it best. “I burn and am consumed,” wrote lovesick Catullus of Ancient Rome. “I feel right, I feel wrong, I feel totally insane,” Olivia Rodrigo echoes back across two millennia.

Your oblivious crush grins at you in math class, or clambers onto the raft at your summer swim spot, and a hot blush later, you’re doodling their name, overanalyzing the meaning in every text or biking the long way home for a chance encounter.

You’re Maeghan Jerry, a Grade 9 student in Medicine Hat, Alta., signing up for the yearbook committee, as an excuse to be near your crush. Or Geoff Erskine of Ottawa, navigating the ski hill lineup so he can share the chair lift with the pretty clarinet player he watches from behind his tuba during band.

Or maybe you’ve been Kathryn Kastner, 16, bored on a family holiday, falling for the cute older boy with the motorcycle that you happen to meet at the local pool. Love is an anytime adventure, but summer has a special reputation for peak teenage fever season: You’re free to wander, your parents are distracted and there’s no dress code against bikinis.

And as many loves that follow, we never forget the first kiss, first lover, first heartbreak. Which is why you’ll hear Bryan Adams in the grocery store singing about the summer “we were young and free,” and suddenly you’re right back at the campfire, holding sweaty hands, never wanting to let go.

Love’s falling feeling is evolution’s dramatic way of saving the species. Not that this matters to the romantics among us, but biologically speaking, infatuation is a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters. Norepinephrine stirs up stomach butterflies. Adrenalin makes palms sweat. Oxytocin inspires cuddles.

In lab experiments, love ignites the same parts of the brain that flare when a drug addict yearns for a hit. Quitting is hard, as Rebecca’s narrator proves: Her lover turns out to be a murderer, and she’s still feverish for him.

For the love-drunk teenaged brain still under construction, those cravings are especially strong, and the heartbreak particularly devastating. Love, we quickly learn, is playful and unpredictable and prone to making a mess. However it ends, the memory ages with you. Indeed, much like a puppy.

Steinbeck was right to respond to his son’s infatuation with thoughtful care; studies that survey teenagers over time have found that these early romances are important for defining identities and setting boundaries, and, for better or worse, influence future adult relationships.

When The Globe and Mail asked Canadians to reminisce about their first love stories, we received responses filled with feeling and detailed memory. Almost all of them were positive, even if the relationships ended in tears. We heard about furtive kisses at summer camp, slow burns and grand gestures, romances that defied society’s rules, first loves that became forever ones and reconnections a lifetime later that sparked love anew.

Most of these love stories predated Tinder and TikTok, yet the nervous meet-cutes and wistful regrets felt universal. Some volunteered decades-old stories of interesting first dates, such as Erskine’s decision to take his crush to see the 1974 movie Young Frankenstein, along with five of his male friends. Joe Gubbels, in Edmonton, recalled getting caught making out in a dark corner at the school dance in 1956 with his love-at-first-sight – Maureen Grimmer of the “flaming auburn hair” – and only later finding the manure he’d missed washing off his right arm after milking the family cow.

They all confirmed what the research suggests: Young love is a powerful teaching moment that helps shape all the loves to follow. When asked what they remembered most and what made them first fall, people focused on kindness and character. They expressed gratitude to the person who selflessly supported their ambitions, who introduced them to new experiences, who proved to be a trustworthy confidant.

“Keep an eye out for that truly kind, caring, and compassionate person who might be hiding in plain sight,” Erskine wrote. Don’t let anyone tell you who to love, said Javan Maes, who first dated his future wife in secret. “At the end of the day, you’re the only one who has to live your life.”

Yes, there’s romance and butterflies and oxytocin and feverish feelings. But the beating heart of the most enduring first love stories wasn’t fever. It was friendship.

Ayesha Kumararatne met Nathaniel Vice in 2006 while serving popcorn to customers at an Ottawa movie theatre. He had long hair and rode his longboard to work and introduced her to Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. He was nothing like the kind of suitor her Sri Lankan parents were imagining for their nearly 18-year-old daughter.

Kumararatne’s father, who was in the foreign service, had been posted to Canada when she was 16. Her parents were traditional and her life had always been closely supervised, so her first job, and first love, represented unprecedented freedom.

Nathaniel was fun and respectful. He introduced her to his welcoming family, to backcountry camping and the ham-and-cheese sandwich. “I know that sounds crazy,” she says about getting excited over a regular old sandwich. “But, wow. That sandwich was delicious.” She still remembers the cupboard in his family’s kitchen with cans of Chef Boyardee and every kind of Campbell’s soup, and Nathaniel, always enjoying her delight for new experiences, gesturing grandly. “You can pick any one.”

They dated in secret, until one day, her father passed them in his car on a downtown Ottawa street and caught them holding hands. But Nathaniel managed to charm her parents when they met, Kumararatne recalls, especially through his interest in Sri Lankan culture.

He was her first proper boyfriend. “He was so kind,” she says. “I feel so lucky that was my experience because things can go so wrong. It can really leave a mark.”

They broke up amicably when Kumararatne went to law school; their lives were going in different directions. But they are still friends today. And when Kumararatne became a Canadian citizen in 2014, she wrote to Nathaniel’s family: “When I think about what it means to be Canadian, I think of you.” They accepted her invitation to attend the ceremony.

Her first love, she says, taught her about respect and acceptance and giving space for two cultures within a relationship. “Nathaniel and his family showed me what a true Canadian is: patriotic, always welcoming and just a little bit cheesy.”

Fifteen-year-old Kim Driscoll had no idea, in 1981, that Sadie Hawkins was an unflattering, man-chasing comic book character, when a teacher explained that the tradition for the school dance in her name was that girls were expected to ask for dates. She only knew she was determined to finally speak to a quiet, athletic, red-headed boy named Brian Winslow.

They’d never had a conversation, but sometimes he’d say hi passing her in the hallway at their Brockville, Ont., high school, and her heart would pound. She orchestrated a walk around school until she found him, and went for it with his friends watching.

She recalls the conversations exactly: “‘Do you want to go to the dance with me?’ He said, ‘Yep.’ And I said, ‘Okay, meet you there.’ Can you even imagine? I think of that now and wonder how did I even get through the day?”

They danced to every song that night, she daydreamed about him all weekend, and soon, they were dating. Brian, she says, was the perfect first boyfriend. She spoke to him every night on the kitchen landline, stretching the cord until she was on the floor in the foyer, out of parental hearing distance. He delivered a rose on their one-month anniversary. Seven months in, while kissing good night at her back door, she whispered, “I love you.”

They were together all through high school. He supported her through her parents’ divorce; she encouraged him to visit his grandparents. He never pressured her to have sex, and when they eventually did, she says, he always showed care and respect. Her high school yearbook quote reads: “Twenty-five years from now, Kim hopes to be a success and married with a couple of redhead kids.”

They both went to Trent University, where her world widened and her feelings changed. When she finally told him, she says, it was terrible. They stopped talking afterward.

Later, while dating one dud after another, she realized the gift she’d received from Brian: high standards. “He had integrity and kindness,” she says, and she’d learned what it meant to trust another person. “Everyone after that was such a striking contrast.”

He’d taught her not to settle. To hold out for someone who made her laugh and respected her feelings. So, a few years later, when Barry Driscoll, a close friend, made his move one evening with a grand kiss, she recognized what she’d been waiting for. They’ve been happily married for 31 years. A wonderful first love, she says, led her there.

Of course, not all romances are fairy tales. For Kathryn Kastner, the boy in her summer of ‘74 was older and fun, and the motorcycle was thrilling. He became a notable character in her diary. But when he started making future plans for the two of them, she saw how easy it was for the idea of love to lead a girl to commit too quickly, and ended it. The boy continued his pursuit, refusing to take no for an answer – “Thank goodness,” she says, he couldn’t “torment me through texting.” But she held firm, and eventually, met her husband in university.

“First love can be dangerous,” she said, because it is so all-consuming. Don’t rush in.

And yet, as Kastner and others observed, and researchers suggest, those first relationships help teenagers define their authentic selves, set boundaries and learn what they want – and, as importantly, what they don’t. Navigating romance requires conflict resolution; a healed heart builds resilience.

When young love is ugly and mean, the consequences can be long term, according to recent studies. A 2023 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that aggression and abuse during teen dating years was associated with later domestic violence and poor mental health.

A University of Quebec study published the same year analyzed a longitudinal survey of 255 young adults in the province who’d been queried about their romantic relationships since they were teenagers. Researchers found the quality of those early connections was reflected in their older relationships.

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Psychologists at the University of Virginia also reached similar conclusions in an earlier 2018 paper. According to their findings, teens with troubled relationships reported higher levels of anxiety and sadness, while young adults who experienced supportive teenaged romances were less likely to direct anger or stress at other people.

As Javan Maes would say, the right first love can point you to the life you truly want for yourself.

For years, in Winnipeg, Maes and his wife, Rachel, hid their high school romance. His strict Jehovah’s Witness parents forbade dating entirely – and certainly to a Catholic girl.

When they started dating in 2006, they messaged covertly and were careful about who saw them in public. Rachel lived in the country, and his house was obviously off limits, so they walked and talked, and went to the movies. They were caught when Maes’ parents found a photo scrapbook under his bed.

“It was a really big fight,” he recalls. Ultimately, when he was forced to choose, he chose her.

Today, Maes, 37, is a registered social worker, married with six children to Rachel, a nurse. He’s officially left the church. But they’ve worked hard to restore regular visits with his parents, so that their kids know them.

“We couldn’t be happier,” Maes says. “Love is a really powerful force that can motivate you to become a more authentic version of yourself and do better than past generations.”

“Isn’t it just so pretty,” Taylor Swift sings, “to think all along there was some invisible string tying you to me?”

After signing up for yearbook club in 2006, Maeghan Jerry mostly baked cookies and chatted, and swooned over lanky, frosted-tipped Brennan Letkeman, from afar. They became friends, but she never told him about her feelings.

Finally toward the end of her Grade 12, he returned from university, and, one day, he kissed her in the park while walking her home.

“I’d never kissed anyone before,” she says, and the first kiss was supposed to be a big deal, or so they said. But nice as it was, “there was no big dramatic music and romantic montage.” Looking back, she recommends not putting so much weight into these hyped-up first moments, when better ones lie ahead.

They parted ways that summer, never making anything official. Jerry went on to have two serious relationships – including her first real love.

And then, in 2018, when she was living in Calgary, Brennan e-mailed her out of the blue, with the subject heading “long time.”

“Thank goodness 18-year-old me had the foresight to set up e-mail forwarding,” she says.

The happy ending wasn’t instant: They were friends while dating other people, hooked up, dated for 18 months, and broke up for a summer before agreeing to invest in a long-term relationship. Then one day over breakfast she announced, “I think I’m ready to get married.” And “he said, ‘okay’ and I said ‘okay’ and that was the proposal.”

They plan to say their vows in a hot-air balloon in September. Visiting his family recently, Brennan overheard his soon-to-be-wife confessing her real reason for joining the yearbook club. “I always thought it was weird that you didn’t do any work,” he said. Turns out, “he wasn’t choosing to ignore the signs because he wasn’t interested – he was oblivious,” Jerry says.

It’s fun to think she could go back to her teenage self and say, “We get the guy in the end.” But she doesn’t really believe in soulmates. “I can tell this story in a way that makes it really clear that Brennan was always going to be the person,” she says. “But for five years he wasn’t.”

If Brennan feels like her soulmate now, it’s not because of any “invisible string,” but because they chose each other.

As it happens, Ayesha Kumararatne’s future husband was also a part of her teenaged story. On the first day of school in 2005, the year before Nathaniel, she saw a tall boy sitting at a cafeteria table, wearing a South African shirt. Recognizing it, she approached him. “Are you South African?” she asked. “Are you talking to me?” James replied. And soon, they were best friends.

On Tuesdays, they debated at the coffee shop nearby; coffee became movies; movies became prom. Early on, Kumararatne asked him out, and was turned down. At the prom, she thought he might finally kiss her. Nothing happened. “I guess we’re just going to stay friends,” she thought, and not long after, Nathaniel entered the picture.

Four years later – two months after she and Nathaniel had broken up – James knocked on her apartment door around midnight. He was leaving the country for a year to go to school, and he’d realized the love of his life was in Ottawa.

“The only way I can think about ruining our friendship,” he told her, “is if I could imagine you one day being my wife.”

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They’ve been together 15 years now, married for five and have a four-year-old daughter. Kumararatne, recalling the “cosmic force” energy of their first meeting, feels like they were meant to be. But “I’m so glad he wasn’t my first.” Nathaniel’s love was an outpouring of goodness that made her stronger and wiser. James was her best-friend-to-lover endgame.

Like many first loves, Susan didn’t last; Thom Steinbeck later married a woman named Gail.

But some people really do get lucky the first time. Julius Kalcevich didn’t date as a teenager; he wasn’t out to his friends in high school, and “it was just easier,” he says, “being a good student and bookworm and then focusing on my career.”

At 25, he’d never been in love before – until, while attending a party at a crowded bar, he locked eyes “with the most gorgeous guy that I’d ever seen in my life.”

And that was it. “I was head over heels.” He worked his way across the room until he was close enough for a friend to make official introductions to Sherman Ki.

They’ve been together since that night and married in 2013. “I guess luck was on my side or I just had exquisitely good taste,” says Kalcevich. He credits his female friends at the time who gave him the confidence to recognize what he’d found – someone loving and respectful, who shared his values. To those still looking, he says, “No one meets anyone just sitting at home in front of the TV. You’ve got to get out there and make eye contact.”

Geoff Erskine, as it happens, made up for that overcrowded first date, according to his wife, Barbara Joe, by respecting her ambitions to become a doctor and celebrating her success. He gave her a rose every year they were together and, half jokingly, said that when she had 12, they’d get married.

That promise was kept, even when their parents were slow to endorse their relationship because Barbara is Chinese-Canadian and Erskine is white. Next May, they celebrate their 40th anniversary.

As for Kim Driscoll, she always wanted to tell Brian Winslow what a perfect high school boyfriend he’d been. So this summer, she reached out by e-mail, explaining how, all these decades later, she still credited the love he’d shown for saving her from bad choices.

“I’m flattered and humbled,” he wrote back, “but really it was you whom I was lucky to have met, a gorgeous girl who wanted to hang out with a pasty white ginger.”

Reached in Honeoye Falls, N.Y., where he works as a medical technologist, Winslow, now divorced with two twentysomething daughters, remembered the exhilaration he felt when Driscoll asked him to the dance. Their relationship was fun and comfortable, he says, because “at the core, we were friends.”

In a locked box with his passport, Winslow still has the friendship ring Driscoll gave him; every time he opens the box, he’s rewarded with happy, high school memories. But as he wrote in his e-mail to Driscoll, “If we ever run into each other in person, please don’t tell me what an exceptional first love I was. That would be very awkward.”