Science of first love: Why It feels so permanent
By Cynthia Lodite, June 20, 2026First love has a strange way of staying with people long after it ends. Years may pass; new relationships may come and go; life may change completely, but that first emotional connection often remains unusually vivid.
It is not just nostalgia or sentimentality. There is science behind why first love feels so permanent, even when it was brief, messy, or long over.
According to Better Help, a company that offers therapy services, a first relationship often carries significant emotional weight due to the brain’s chemical connections and significant hormonal shifts associated with early attachment.
“If you find that a first love is shaping your present relationships or thoughts of future ones a bit too much, you may begin to feel stuck. Understanding the impact of a first love and finding productive ways to move forward can help you develop healthy, fulfilling relationships,” Better Help states.
Different experiences of young love
When it comes to the first time you fall in love, feelings and memories tend to be very personal. For instance, some people might have first fallen in love when they were in their teenage years, while others have their first experience with romantic love in later decades.
Some people might even insist that they fell in love for the first time when they were as young as five or six years old.
Some may recall the initial stages of “puppy love” a youthful, intense feeling of romantic love sometimes full of movie-worthy love letters, poetry, roses, or heart-shaped boxes of chocolate that can change your whole world.
Some may even say they experience “love at first sight,” described by researcher Helen Fischer as the attraction we may feel within the first three minutes of meeting someone hough she notes that this initial attraction fizzles quickly without a strong emotional connection to follow it.
Some may have stayed with their first love for a long period, while it was a short time for others. Some may never have been in an official relationship with the first person they loved, but the memories can be strong nevertheless.