#i have many many personal little bones to pick with wayhaven. my own hills to privately die on. and this is one of them

[carriehobbs]

if i can be honest here this is really one of my least favourite parts of the way the romances are written. the idea that you can only really fall in love once (and both the related ideas that, if this love is real, then every other relationship you've had must not have really been love and that, if you have been in love before, your previous love somehow cheapens the current love) is so completely juvenile. it's the kind of line of thought you'd expect to see in a young adult novel marketed exclusively to 12- to 16-year-olds for whom every emotion feels like the most intense, ultimate feeling they could ever have, and who do not yet have the life experiences to understand (or appreciate) the complexities of love. "i've only ever loved this one person this way, every other feeling i've thought was love has just been a poor imitation" is a pretty thought but is ultimately a fantasy (and one that i, personally, find incredibly disrespectful towards people who have been in love and then fall in love again).

it would be one thing if this idea was espoused by only one of the characters. if only n (just as an example) bought into the idea that only one love can be your true love, then that would say something about n's character, their romantic and life history, the way they view and interpret the world, etc. but instead all of the ros seem to follow this line of thought - they've all never been in real love before, if they and the detective broke up they'd never experience this kind of love again, they're all soulmates, etc. and in that way this idea is not a characterization choice for particular characters, but an idea perpetuated by the work as a whole. and in my (biased and personal) opinion, it's a childish and unrealistic idea.