After 48 years, a man finally opens a mystery gift given to him by his ex-girlfriend.

Photo via M01229/Flickr

There are few things in life that hurt more than your first break up. Is it because you’re young? Is it because it’s the first time you’ve opened yourself up? Is it because it’s the first time you’ve felt that debilitating combination of rejection and loss?

First breakups are hard to get over and no one ever forgets that feeling.

In 1970, 17-year-old Adrian Pearce was looking forward to Christmas vacation when his first girlfriend, Vicky Allen, dumped him. While she was breaking up with him, she gave him a present which the heartbroken Peace refused to open.

“After my family opened their gifts at Christmas, there was still one Christmas gift left and it’s the gift this girl Vicki had given me,” Pearce told Global News Canada.

“I told my family I’m never going to open that present,” Pearce told Huffington Post. “I kept it initially because I guess I had hopes that we would get back together and open it together.”

Pearce and Allen would never get back together again. but every year, he kept placing the gift beneath his tree. As the years went by, Peace got married and had kids, but he wouldn’t open the gift. His children begged him to do it, but he always refused.

Eventually, Peace’s wife — tired of having the relic of a bygone relationship beneath the tree every Christmas — asked him to stop bringing it out. So every year, Pearce would secretly take the blue package out of storage, reminisce about his days as a teenager in love, and then put it away.

In 2017, Pearce posted a photo of the unopened gift on Facebook and it quickly went viral. He vowed to open it up on Christmas 2020 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his breakup.

But because his story went viral last year, Pearce decided to open it up two years early and sold tickets to the event as a benefit for the Christmas Bureau of Edmonton, a charity that provides holiday meals for families in need.

Pearce and Vicki reunited for the opening of the present. “I think it’s absolutely fantastic that we’re friends,” he said. “We’re in a fantastic place, where all you can feel is love.”

Ironically, the gift she gave him was a small paperback book, “Love Is: New Ways To Spot That Certain Feeling,” containing sayings about love, cartoons, and poems.

So, all in all, maybe it’s good that Pearce waited so long to open that gift. Giving a guy a book about love and then dumping him is a pretty cold-blooded move, especially on Christmas.