A first romantic relationship has one critical novel element: "It's the only time you're ever in love where you've never had your heart broken," says Laura Carpenter, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University and author of Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences. "You can have better relationships after that, but there's never again one where you've never been hurt ."
"Powerful first relationships can stamp a template in your mind that gets activated in later interactions,"says Susan Andersen, a psychologist at NYU who studies mental representations of significant others. If you meet someone who reminds you even a little of an ex—whether it's a physical resemblance or a similarity in attitudes, gestures, voice, word choice, or interests—it may engage the representation you have in your memory, says Andersen. The effect is called transference. And since your first love, by virtue of its novelty and emotional significance, is potentially your most salient, it may well be the representation that's summoned when you meet someone new, forging the lens through which you see new relationships.
