First Heartbreak

Recently, through the magic of Facebook, I came across some wedding photos of the first guy that ever really broke my heart.

There are two things that I think I should point out at this point before I take this story any further. The first is that I wasn’t Facebook stalking him – he’s distantly related to one of my friends through a marriage and she was at the wedding, so photos just showed up in my news feed.

The second is that even though he was the first guy who ever really broke my heart and saying that makes this sound like a very old story, it really wasn’t that long ago in the grand scheme of things – maybe 8 or 10 years. I was pretty late into the world of serious relationships, unlike a lot of people who will tell you about their first heartbreak at age 6. My first kiss might have been at age 6, but my first meaningful relationship (and heart break) happened at about age 18.


Yesterday I stumbled across these photos of him, and even though it’s been years since I saw him and I’ve well and truly moved on, I still felt a little of that old sadness.

The story of my heartbreak is reasonably dull, but was painful enough at the time. He was from a country town and was staying with my friend while he worked in Melbourne. We became close, but then after we’d been together for about 6 months or so, he had to move home and we both knew that a long distance thing wouldn’t work out. So he left, and I cried for about a week.

I think that first heartbreak is probably the hardest. I wasn’t prepared for it, so it sort of took me by surprise – hence the week of crying, which was quite unusual for me. It took me a long time to get over, and while other relationships I’ve had after that have sort of slipped into the foggy areas of my memory, I think I’ll always remember him clearly because he was the first.


So yesterday when I saw these photos I felt just a little sad thinking about the whole thing, but also a little weirded-out, because there was something odd about them.

His wife looks a lot like me. Not exactly like me, but similar in a way that made me realise that I must have been exactly his type. Same hair colour, same build, similar facial features. And while that’s kind of weird, because I hate to think that I could be classified as a specific ‘type’ it’s kind of nice to know that even though he broke my heart there’s always this kind of link there – no matter how weird that link might be.

Well, either that or it’s really offensive. I’m yet to decide.