Love at second sight: why second love can be stronger and last longer

There is a beautiful and romantic notion that nothing compares to your first great love. And sometimes that is true. But often it’s your second love that really gives you the opportunity to create the relationship you deserve and desire. So what is the secret behind falling in love the second time round…

Second love vs first love

Second love can be the love that triumphs over the challenges and grows into the love of a lifetime. So what gives second love its considerable potentiality? Of course, your rapturous new partner has a big role to play in your flip flop heart beat. But the truth is that when comparing second love vs first love, the most profound changes are the ones that have taken place in you.

The showdown: second love vs first love

• Time: It’s not your first time at the rodeo. Time has its own mystical qualities of a healer and helper, which we don’t always realize until it has already silently bestowed its gifts. In between your first love and the second time around, you are suddenly yet slowly older, bolder, sensibly wary and watchfully worldly wise.

Time gives you the space to foster a new perspective with which to embark on your second love. Armed with a hard-earned but fresh viewpoint, you will invariably find you traded in your telescope for a kaleidoscope, the minutia making way for the magnificent.

• Experience: The experience of your first love gives you an invaluable opportunity. It is the ultimate life lesson in love. If you can learn the lessons on offer about the delicate dynamics between two people navigating life together in the vulnerable and explosive arena of your hearts, you can accrue the invaluable reward of wisdom.

Wisdom is the integration of knowledge, experience, and a deep understanding¹, a form of practical awareness which can’t help but change everything. Some of the beauty of first love is the naivety and innocence with which it stakes its claim. But looking closely it is often immature, like an emotional toddler just learning to walk. Experience gives you the wisdom to, on steady legs, run the marathon of second love.

• Evolution: The first time your heart breaks, it properly breaks into the shards that leave you gasping for breath – you think that you will never recover. But with your second love you have undergone a certain evolutionary development and learned one of the biggest secrets love doesn’t want you to know. But now you do. You now know that you can survive a broken heart.

And in this recovery, your heart rebuilds itself in a different and empowered configuration. Knowing that you can actually withstand and recover from a broken heart gives you a certain power and freedom. Your first loves makes your heart tenacious, resilient and solid in ways it never was before it overcame that heartbreak.

• Confidence: Inevitably as you were wading your way through the loss of your first love and piecing it all back together, buoyed along with the time, experience and love lessons, the brave shoot of confidence started growing in the background. Standing on your own two feet and moving on from your first love, means that when you get to your second love, you have come to know yourself as a renewed version. You know what you want in a relationship, you know you can be overcome a heartbreak, you know that you can put your own life back together and hold your head high.

Being confident in yourself circumvents the emotional games and defenses which are erected in the throes of insecurity. Confidence is a type of relationship capital which qualifies your second love to skip straight ahead and connect on an expanded, authentic and profound level. The security of confidence safeguards your second great love against the dangers of codependency and superficial exchanges.

• Balance: Perhaps your first love shines so bright because it is a little too much of everything you can exude and consume. You give too much of you, you take too much, you lose too much of you, but you also feel the most in those brightest, most breathtaking moments. After burning through your irresistibly flammable first love, when you get to your second love, weighted along with the racing heart, combustible chemistry and insatiable need to always be together, is something a little more solid. On this journey, you discover balance.

You learn what give and take means. The second time around you are much more likely to hold up strong boundaries, not compromising on your values and dreams. You understand the difference between choosing someone and needing someone. You can be in love but also be two independent adults. With your second love you have already learned that you can be with someone without losing yourself, and in this balance, love finds its symmetry.

When looking at second love vs first love, your second love can only but be thankful to your first love for its immersive education. On the foundation of this hero’s journey of discovery, one emerges ready to create the upgraded edition, a relationship designed with the wherewithal to withstand life and love.

Learning from second love

“One’s first love is always perfect, until you meet your second love” Elizabeth Aston

Perhaps we have two hearts to give. The first one is bright and fresh and fiery, and it jumps in head first. No holds barred. But the second one, it has a more deliberate delivery. The balance and boundaries, wisdom and awareness, makes this heart a little more solid, strong and sensitive. And if we can gain from the loss of love, its lessons, then every time we learn to love again, it can expand our hearts rather than contract our worlds. Second love gives you hope and teaches you that you can love again. And perhaps, more importantly, when it comes to love, the risk is always worth the reward.

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About the author: Zoe Coetzee

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