First Love Is Always Unrequited | Stephen Fry | Big Think

First Love Is Always Unrequited
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The “unbelievable hole” of yearning and longing that it creates can never be returned.
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Stephen Fry:

Comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry was born in 1957 in London and brought up in Norfolk. He attended Queen’s College Cambridge from 1979, joining the Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club where he met Hugh Laurie, with whom he forged a highly successful writing partnership. His first play, Latin! or Tobacco and Boys, written for Footlights, won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Festival in 1980. He wrote again for theatre in 1984 when he rewrote Noel Gay’s musical Me and My Girl (1990). This was nominated for a Tony Award in 1987.

He has written for television and screen, and as a newspaper columnist – for the Literary Review, Daily Telegraph and The Listener. Stephen Fry's four novels are The Liar (1991), The Hippopotamus (1994), Making History (1996) and The Stars' Tennis Balls (2000). He has also published a collection of work entitled Paperweight (1992); Moab is My Washpot (1997) - an autobiography; and Rescuing the Spectacled Bear: A Peruvian Journey (2002) – his diary of the making of a documentary on the plight of the spectacled bears of Peru.

His book, Stephen Fry's Incomplete History of Classical Music (2004), written with Tim Lihoreau, is based on his award-winning series on Classic FM and is an irreverent romp through the history of classical music. The Ode Less Travelled - a book about poetry - was published in 2005. His latest book is Stephen Fry in America (Harper Collins 2008).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Who was your first love?

Stephen Fry: Who was my first love? Well I shan’t give you his name because that’s unkind, and he is married and has children and I wouldn’t want to embarrass his children, but I’ve given him various names in novels and in books. Like a lot of first loves, certainly first loves for sensitive people such as I was then, I guess I have what I have is called the primary writer’s arrogance of assuming that my experiences are common to everyone else’s experiences, sometimes it is true, mostly one hopes it’s true and therefore that’s what one likes in a writer. You think oh, I feel that too. Just occasionally you might express a feeling and everyone goes, “What?” Then it’s very embarrassing, but I’m assuming that most people their first love when they’re teenaged that unbelievable hole that opens up inside them of longing and yearning, of pain, of joy, that huge great bundle of toxic emotions and allied to beauty and opening out into nature and to glory and suddenly connecting you with every love poet and every love song ever written, that that explosion in my head and heart will never be matched. You can never hope to recapture the first fine careless rapture as the poet put it, but it stays with you like a good acid trip. You know, you get a little flashback every now and again. It will never leave you and it teaches you to look at things differently and to feel things differently. It educates your soul if you like, and all first love is unrequited ultimately because it’s so huge. It’s such an act of giving and it requires so much back that it can never be given back and in that you wouldn’t necessarily want to give them back. It’s just like a… It is like an atom bomb. It is like… It’s all the energy of who you are and who you want to be and what you love and what you hope to be explodes, and it is impossible for a single human being to offer that back to you in a mutual way. It would be like matter meeting antimatter.

It’s sort of almost important that what you do is worship and yearn and long, but so that was to me of course the single most important thing in my life and occasionally I get dreams and I’m back there again and I’m still as trembly as ever I was and I get… because I’ve written about it I get emails and Twitters, whatever, from people in, you know, in adolescence who are going through the same thing and say, “Oh, I read your book and it was the same for me and it is the same for me and he’ll never look at me, she’ll never look at me.” “What can I do?” “I’ll make a fool of myself.” “Should I write them a poem?” And, “What if they reject me?” And, “oh my God.” And I read that and … You know these vast sagas, these romantic sagas that are played out in every school, in every village and every town and every country in the world. It’s going on. It’s all this massive emotional energy just spreading outwards and some of it is…

[richw]

Today I visited the grave of my first love, I fell for her after we made out at a rave while high on mdma 10 years ago. it was the most powerfully deep experience of my life getting to know her, she was the most beautifully complex person, scatterbrained, but self aware, a deep thinker, but lighthearted, many things about her so unlike myself! we spent hours talking to each other about everything, she even told me she thought she would die young. But it was unrequited love, she was a wonderful drug to me. I nearly lost my mind, trying everything to get her to love me. In the end I realized I was making neither of us happy chasing her, so I let her go over time. I am so thankful to the universe for bringing her to my life and teaching me how much I have to give, and that it is possible to gain a sense of having an empty heart but in the positive sense that it can be filled again. The lesson was so painful but profoundly strengthening too. I will always love you for that Rosie, Rest in peace.

[Omoiyari]

i'm tired of it, it's been years. i wish it would stop.

[UpWithTheBirds]

My first love was unrequited love. I was in love with a man who was also going through unrequited love with an engaged woman. It's an endless cycle.

[poisonedpeanutbutter]

Seven years cursed.
I'm tired
But I still see you in my dreams, and I wake up shaking and smiling.

[dankbudew]

God, First Love sucked.
It's been what, 4 years?
I've forgotten his face and his voice but for some DAMN still there.

[youngprick]

We were both 15, summer of 2011. Hanging around with our friends in the city. Had a perfect, magical summer with her and our friends, best summer of my life. Couldnt believe how beautiful she was and how much i loved her at first sight, we lasted 5 years, im 24 now. Its been 5 years since we broke up but i always love and remember her, and the perfect summer we had together in the summer of 2011.

[mastergwonam]

Did he have the displeasure of never enduring the imperfections of this unrequited first lover? The perfect image of her will always haunt me like a burn that never ceases to sting whenever it is touched upon. It makes it okay for me to die if all else fails in life. Before her, death never crossed my mind. Watching my heart break because of her was like watching a heavenly angel die in a hell where only demons rule.

[Listermintsluesh]

Love listening to Mr fry. He always seems to make sense. Yet comes across humble as well as intelligent. Big fan.

[Nillowo]

I feel and live every word he says. It's been 427 days since I've fallen for him. He may not feel the same, he may not be able to for many reasons, but it could have been. It could have been and knowing that just kills me. I'm sorry for everything I've done, I've tried, everything I didn't try. Everything that we were not. I know you'll go on to be a great person, live a great life, and love another, hopefully as much as I love you. I wish you the best. In the meantime I'll be here, dreaming of you and not being able to do anything about it. I'm sorry it's this way, I can't stop feeling for you. I know it's wrong. And I'm so so sorry.

I'm rambling I know but it's been hurting so much every single day. I just want to atone, I've tried everything and waited for so long for something to change. But it can't, it won't.

I still love you wgs, but I know I shouldn't. I know I can't. But I'll always be here waiting, dreaming, hoping, humoring myself until I die, probably by my own hands. I'm so so sorry

[donnieluc]

Vincent Van Gogh ended his angst from unrequited love. He shot himself in the abdomen; it only took 2 days to die and end his misery, but is he suffering still...? Perhaps for eternity? No person is worth suicide or even pining for; it's simply a temporary form of delusion that will eventually pass..., like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

[snottylottie]

I think I need to love rather than be loved, but the thought of being in love with someone in love with someone else makes me feel sick - of course the ideal is to be balanced

[nem]

"like a good acid trip" lol so unexpected

[optimize.]

I love Stephen. Thank you for being such a wonderful human being and sharing your positivity with all of us.

[coffee_singing]

I love my boyfriend with all my heart and I’m so content and there’s passion and comfort and everything I could ask for. But I fell in love at first sight with my ex at 17. And I still dream about him and I sometimes think of him and can’t push the thought out of my head. I think it’s more what he talks about here, not particularly him, but that all-encompassing feeling of longing and a rush of chemicals never experienced before. We get over that person, but we never get over the feelings associated with that persons presence in our lives. This really put those feelings in perspective for me.

[robertjazz]

It's hard falling for a straight guy knowing that he will never reciprocate the love back. This happened way back in highschool during my senior year, I was in love with my friend he had never known I had feelings for him, the words " I'm in love with you" were always at the tip of my tongue but I could never say those words cause I didn't want to jeopardize our friendship, but long story short he jeopardize it anyways and we no longer speak.

[Songbirdthephoenix]

I cried while watching this,
oh my lord.

[guitar]

Guys and girls, if you are heartbroken the only way to fix it is to let someone else in. It worked for me, you still think of them but you feel nothing painful. You don't deserve to suffer. xxxx

[rumelali]

A very genuine honest Stephen fry on love. ..beautiful and all true

[alicedee]

I hate it. I can’t seem to conquer my thoughts. It never goes away. It shaped everything since and gave me some dangerous coping mechanisms I hate feeling my emotions In such a huge volume. Sometimes it’s comforting to know I’ll be dead some day and nothing will matter anymore.

[PP-nulj]

This moment sucks when you realise, you are not the FIRST love of your First love so he doesn't care that much after it 😭