Everyone – except those Mid-westerners/Southerners who adorably married their high school sweetheart – has a story about a love lost that could have been the greatest love they’d ever known. Which I think is kind of bullshit.

It’s easy to highly romanticize every relationship you have, because we expect the flowers, the dinners, the gifts and the proposal that can only happen when the producers of the “The Bachelor” orchestrate the whole thing. If we’re being honest with ourselves, the real romance is sitting at home, sharing a box of Trader Joe’s wine and a plastic container of olives, watching “Couples Therapy” on VH1 and getting through an evening without bickering. But just like we strive to create this false sense of elated euphoria in the relationship we have, we create the same gauzy-filtered idea of a lost love.

My “lost love” was my college boyfriend. He was my first real boyfriend (I’m not counting Joey, my 7th grade beau, whom I fell desperately in love with during our run as Mr. and Mrs. Zubritski in a 7th grade production of Neil Simon’s “Fools.” After a double date to see “Titanic,” it somehow all fell apart. It was probably because my boobs hadn’t come in yet and I couldn’t compete “I want you to draw me” Kate Winslet. I was still trying to work up the nerve to kiss him.) We met at the college TV station, where we both spent 5 nights a week pretending we were delivering news that our peers actually watched. We dated for 2 years, then it was that delicate time where he graduated and I had one more year. But obviously, we were meant to be, so he did what every dumb-ass college kid would: he got a job at a sporting goods store to wait for me.

After about 9 months of peddling reasonably priced jockstraps and camping tents, he had enough and started applying for jobs with minor league baseball teams to operate the jumbotron (very flashy, I know). As he applied for jobs, I abandoned all my dreams of becoming a TV personality, and started telling myself I’d be happy being the game-day reporter for whatever team he landed with. I mean…running through the stands asking fans trivia questions and leading “Roll Out The Barrel” is almost as good as being the face of E! News, right? No ma’am. But we had already decided we were going to get married, so what choice did I have? This was my first wifely-duty: stand by your man.

If I may digress for a second and give you youngsters some advice: do not discuss marriage while in college, you are doing both of yourselves a disservice. It not only puts pressure on you to do something that you’re probably not ready for, but forcing yourself to make decisions based on an idea will only lead to resentment. Which leads me to…

He got a job in a small town in Michigan, where the only two things they had were a nuclear power plant, and a minor league baseball team. I visited him a couple times, he came back to Wisconsin to see me. At first, we both believed I would move there to be with him. Then I started applying for internships in New York, and the plan changed to him moving to NY and working for the Mets. I think we both knew at that point no one was going to move. We were both starting out, and both found our own – very different – lives in – very different – separate places. We clung to each other for about 8 months, then had a teary breakup over the phone. At the time, I thought we’d take a few months off to “find ourselves” as adults, then get back together. We still texted often and he echoed my sentiments that we’d get back together eventually. I ate it up, in all of it’s “The Notebook-esque” glory (I guess living in Michigan next to a power plant is kind of like being shipped to WWII?).

Then 2-months later, I saw on Facebook he was dating his chubby, skunk-striped-highlights coworker – even though he had once claimed he “would never” when I expressed concern over his close friendship with a female colleague. He gained about 50 lbs and a year later, they were engaged (which…is really all you hope for when an ex moves on, so that was kinda fun for me). I was on a work trip and my sister called to break the news to me. I immediately burst into tears. He was the one that got away. I would never love again. No one would ever love me the way he did. Then I saw their engagement photos and realized a dodged a horrifying, plus-sized bullet. Choice photos included: them on a bridge…on a children’s playground; frolicking in the leaves; and my personal favorite: them facing each other in 3-point position, like they were 2 offensive linemen facing off.

Was it a good first love? Absolutely. Was he the one that got away? No. In no alternate universe would we have been happy together. We want different lives. He wants to get radiation poisoning while running a giant screen, I want to live in NYC and become a writer and performer. He wanted to flirt with Type II diabetes, I wanted to flirt with handsome men with dreams bigger than mine, and hopefully an apartment bigger than mine.

Maybe the one that got away from you has a glossier life that you think you could fit into. But, in reality, I think there’s a reason they get away. Maybe the love you had was great and right at the time. But you broke up; they didn’t slip away in a “he went to jail for 20 years after he accidentally killed someone while trying to protect you” plot line. You didn’t fit into each other’s lives and that’s okay. I think looking back through that gauzy, romantic filter only makes future relationships harder. You should look back on previous relationships the way they were: flawed. So it’s not “the one that got away,” it’s the one that didn’t work out. To quote my man Jigga, “on to the next one.” Hopefully one that doesn’t go to jail before you can trick him into marrying you.