Garfield, much of what Matt_mcl had to say I agree with. I want to add a couple of thoughts to the mix.
First, I implore you not to take this next paragraph as “talking down to a teen;” it’s one poster with intentions of friendship who happens to be significantly older, and therefore has the advantage of perceptions from a wider range of ages, commenting to someone younger and therefore with fewer age-ranges under his belt. Cool with that?
Maturation is a process. The few times I’ve noticed serious posts from you, I’ve taken them as reasonable adult views, so I suspect you’re very well along in that process. You aren’t all the way there yet. Really, none of us is; I sometimes joke that “I don’t know yet what I want to do when I grow up” and even at age 52 that’s only partly a joke. You keep on learning more about how to live and love as you get older. And even if you’re reasonably certain about how you feel – enough so to feel you can honor a commitment for a lifetime – she, at 14 years and some months, is demonstrably unlikely to be able to do so yet. No matter how mature she seems, she has a lot of growing up to do yet.
And her parents are, quite reasonably, likely to be concerned about her getting in too deep too soon – because many teens, particularly girls but guys too, do this, out of certitude that they’ve found the love of a lifetime, when what they have actually found is a compatible opposite-sex person who desires them as much as they desire him/her. Mentally putting yourself in their shoes and keeping in mind that you do love her and so do they, I suspect you can see how they are very concerned that some guy – you, so far as they know – could use her youth and innocence to hurt her badly. And just as you would not want another guy to do so, you need to accept that they can feel you might. And, of course, disprove it to them, by word and deed. And by considering and understanding their qualms and responding honestly.
Finally, something every teen knows intellectually and fails to feel as a gut reaction – there are a lot of kinds of love: self-sacrificing Christlike love, the love of parents for children, close-friendship love, the sort of love that has a couple toasting marshmallows over the warmly glowing embers of what was their passionate affair 40 years ago and smiling at each other in remembrance and affection… The list is as endless as people are different.
Where you are at is a stage technically called limerence. This is the falling-in-love, can’t-live-without-her state celebrated in song and story. (Everybody expects Poly to say next that this ain’t love. Wrong.) This is stage one of a lifelong love. You need to grow into a couple who cherishes each other, faults and all, feels each other’s pain, celebrates each other’s joy, and so on. And then get to the point where you’re comfortable with each other. If, right now, you observed her hanging a kiss on a guy, you’d be stressed. You will, God willing, get to the point where you’re so sure of her love that you know she’s showing warm, close friendship to him and would never forsake you for him.
Some romances end with stage one. It’s heartbreaking for the participants, and for onlookers who care deeply about either of them, but it happens. Others move on into the other stages, and end up toasting those marshmallows.
Here’s hoping you two get to the marshmallow stage. But think about what I’ve had to say is needed to get there. And be honest with yourself.
[sub]BTW, Ender, I saw that “almost-15” as, not Garfield’s attempt to justify something to himself, but his awareness that 17 vs. 14 is something most people are going to question, and consequent clarification that it’s not a full three-year gap between them.[/sub]
