The High Comes First, Always
You remember exactly how it felt at the start. He texted back within minutes. He said things that made you feel seen in a way you hadn't been before. He called you remarkable, once, and you turned the word over in your mind for days. That period had a texture to it, warm, close, almost unbearably good. Psychologists call this idealization, but the clinical word doesn't capture what it does to you. It reorganizes your sense of yourself around one person's attention. You stop being someone who existed before him and start being someone who is best understood in relation to him.
