Make the woman happy. Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance. Decency demanded that such pain and misery be permitted at least privacy. Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one. You're right, disappointment doesn't kill.
Disappointment only maims.
To love is to be vulnerable. The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. That's the nature of women not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not. Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction. It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.