If you remember your teenage relationships with unparalleled intensity, you're not alone.

There are few periods of my life I remember as vividly as my first serious relationship.

I was 17 and to my mind, completely in love. I remember every intricate detail of his bedroom. I remember the season. I remember how he smelt and the movies we watched. I remember sharing things with each other that we had never told anyone before.

He looked like Hayden Christensen (the hot one from Star Wars) and I was the luckiest girl in the whole world.

But, if I’m honest, the thing I remember most is how I felt when it ended.

Sick.

I was consumed. Suddenly all the lame love songs and romance novels I’d been forced to read at school made sense. I was feeling things that I had absolutely no idea how to explain to anyone else. I felt embarrassed, stupid, worthless and most of all, profoundly rejected. Like any feeling we experience for the first time, I was convinced it would never go away.

If you remember your teenage relationships with unparalleled intensity, you’re not alone.

A few years ago I was interviewing a man in his mid 60s for a research paper. We began talking about his first girlfriend, who he had started seeing when he was about 15. He was absolutely infatuated - until one day, out of the blue, she stopped speaking to him.

As he recounted that time in his life, close to 50 years later, his voice became shaky. He said it was probably the saddest he'd ever felt, and in hindsight, what came after might have been a bout of depression. He took a deep breath and remarked "Ah, still makes me uncomfortable to think about!"

There is a neurological reason my interviewee still felt sick thinking about it.

The limbic area of our nervous system, responsible for the creation of emotion, is in overdrive during adolescence. One study presented a number of pictures of emotionally expressive or neutral faces to men and women of different age groups. They found that the most intense emotional response came from the adolescent group. In the words of Dr. Laura Rocker, a pediatric psychiatrist, "young people feel love very intensely because they feel everything intensely."

Dr. Rocker also refers to a young person's concept of time. She explains "If you are 16 and are in a three-month relationship, that is a big part of your life, much more so than if you are in your 30s or 40s and involved in a three-month relationship."

The other contributing factor is memory. The journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences found that our brains are far more sensitive during adolescence, meaning that we a) better absorb our thoughts and experiences and b) better recall teenage memories. People over the age of 35 remember their teenage years with more clarity than any other period. The research also found that adolescents are "slower to forget frightening or negative memories" which might be why some of us are still haunted by our first heartbreak.

I tested the theory that teenage memories stick with us well into adulthood, by asking women in the office if they could remember any stories of their intense teenage relationships. The question gave way to a flood of not-so-buried memories.

To put is very simply, I learnt that 'denial breeds obsession'. 

I will always remember how intensely I fell for my first boyfriend. I got sweaty when I heard his name. I got butterflies when he spoke to me. Every time MSN made that little 'ding' sound it was like someone was injecting dopamine straight into my brain. - Anna

When we were broken up for a bit he slept with my best friend and neither of them told me for five months after we got back together, and the day I weaseled it out of him is still probably the most heartbreaking day of my whole adolescence. I was basically catatonic. I remember sobbing myself to sleep at my other friend's house and she sung me that Whitlams song "Make The World Safe For You" and patted my head until I fell asleep. - Franca

My first love was a long distance relationship - Aus-NZ. I met him on exchange in Year 10 in this tiny town in NZ. It was life-changing. It was a three year relationship, before Facebook and Skype and Whatsapp existed. I'm kind of amazed looking back. We communicated over email, the occasional phone call (expensive) and Bebo... - Ellie

A couple of months back I went to a wedding - my very first boyfriend ever got married. We were together for about a year when I was 15 and he was 17. And I loved the shit out of him... I don't regret a second of it. - Alex

When I think of teenage love I think of "If You're Not The One" By Daniel Beddingfield. I broke my leg in high school and my boyfriend had broken up with me the week before, but conveniently found himself a new girlfriend a week later. However when I was in hospital he jigged/wagged school to come and see me everyday and told me he would break up with her. Needless to say a week later when I was discharged from hospital, he decided to stay with his girlfriend. Clearly, broken legged, hospitalised girlfriend was more appealing than hobbling around on crutches girlfriend. He was a bit of a drama queen... - Georgia

We confess to the craziest thing we did for love. Post continues below.