SECOND LOVES ARE BEST.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21019, 7 May 1930, Page 14

SECOND LOVES ARE BEST.

You’re broken-hearted. You’v# never loved before, you’ll never love sgain. (Never! Sighing, you .think of all the poets who ' have sung of the beauty, of first love, “first, fine careless rapture” that will never be yours again. Those, poets knew a thing or two. At 18 your heart is broken, your very first love affair gone awry, -Personally, I don’t, believe the poets did know. I prefer to trust the truth of a plain, prose statement to the effect that: , “First loves, what are they! Merely the shots to get the range. A good gunner is supposed to attain it in three.” But Gupid’ is admittedly a blind % gunner, and though you won’t believe it, the man you loved iso madly at 18, is very often not the man you’d choose at 28. r Love’s young dream can so easily become a, nightmare, and the fairy prince over whom you sobbed yourself to sleep at 19 may look like a double order of nothing to the more discriminating eyes of 29, Has it ever occurred to you, in the midst of your unhappiness that the reason why your first love affair went wrong was simply because it was your first? You did not know enough about men,- you probably did not even know enough about yourself ’ to make it a success, but you will have learnt wisdom, acquired poise, for “next time.” Remember, we all have to cut our emotional teeth to gain experience, to • find our range, so don’t be too heartbroken if your first love doesn’t prove your last love after all. First loves frequently lack the rosy rapture, or come to the happy ending that poets sing of. First love may have all the fragrance of lilac in spring, but second love often possesses the more lasting sweetness of summer roses. Ask any happily-married woman if she has ever loved anyone before her husband, and she will probably tell you, if she’s honest: . * “Yes, I thought at the time it was love; but I suppose it wasn’t, really.” There are a few lucky people whose first choice is also their last, but they are few and far between. This isn’t cynical, or disillusioning, or unroraantih. It’s just common sense, really. Most people will admit that a girl is more capable of choosing a hat to suit her at the age of 28 than at 18, say; yet the same people who agree to this are reluctant to apply the argument to choosing a'man. “ Dreadfully unromantic,” you cry in- . dignantly, yet remember that the world’s most romantic lover, Romeo, was in love with Rosaline before he met Juliet. Nobody has ever suggested that their romance was the less splendid and glamorous because of it. So don’t be downhearted if your first love has gone wrong, for so often, second loves, like second thoughts, are best!—Women’s Weekly. I