To young to know what love is?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve heard this sermon preached a many a time and while I agree with it to an extent I find it rather rude to assume that someone doesn’t know how to love at a certain age. I won’t deny that ‘love’ is probably the most often abused word in the language, 'specially by kids in high school and such but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be in love at 16 does it?

So what do you all think, is teenager really to young to know what ‘love’ is? I’ve had it told to me a few times but I most certainly believe that I love my boyfriend with all my heart. I made sure that I was before I said it, otherwise I never would have told him that I loved him so I take offense when my dad says I don’t know what love is.

I think it all depends on the person is all. Not what their parents felt when they were young and foolish.
crosses her fingers and hopes she’s posted this in the right forum

2

Okay, since you’re the same age as my sons, I guess that gives me the right to respond.

Trying to be as non-judgmental as possible here, I’d say the context that you use in defining the word “love” is different than the context your father uses.

In the context I’d use (and I think he’d probably agree with me) I think love is based on more than chemistry and more than even a great emotional connection. Shared values, shared outlook, common goals and tastes are all a part of it.

When we old people say you’re “too young” it’s a shorthand way of saying you haven’t had time to develop your own values, outlook, goals, and tastes. You’re still forming them, so how can you possibly know that you share them with someone else?

Granted, you may hit that perfect connection with someone else for a day, week, or month. That’s what “falling in love” is all about. But for the two of you to develop similar values, outlooks, goals and tastes over a long period of time would be more luck than love.

Then there are people like the 16-year old who married my 18-year old nephew. I have no doubt that she was in love with him. They’d been going together for two years, and didn’t want to wait anymore. But literally within weeks, she realized she didn’t want to be tied down permanently to the same person, and the marriage fell apart within a few months.

3

I agree with you, fizz. I know that I am in love with my boyfriend. I can’t really explain why (I would try…but that’s not really relevant), but I know this. We are in love. And yes, we are young. I do think that at the early teenage years, I was too young to be in love. And maybe, for some people, my age, 16, is too young to be in love.

I don’t think anyone can determine whether you are truly in love except for yourself. It is something one feels, and knows, something that deepens and evolves in ways that can’t be explained.

And, by saying I am in love with my boyfriend, I am of course not saying that we’re going to get married and live happily ever after. But that doesn’t mean we are not capable of being in love.

I think somewhere around the-mid teenage years many people become capable of being in love. This topic really interests me, because I get told I am too young quite often.

4

I think this is the right forum.

In principle, I agree with you. There’s no reason that a teenager is “too young” to love. There’s no minimum age for it. But also, there is quite a bit that life experience can tell you.

On the one hand, your parents are not you, and so they don’t know whether or not you are in love. On the other hand, your parents are not you, so they can look on objectively and see whether you are acting like someone genuinely in love.

5

Love has too many definitions to list.

Even within the confines of a human-to-human relationship, love ebbs and flows in so many directions…early lusting love, long standing honest love, physical love, long suffering love…the list goes on. And all this can be experienced within the same relationship, as it goes on.

I assume your parents are using a definition of love as, “all encompassing”, and forever, and ever, amen". Tell them love has to grow and start somewhere. And for you, this is just the beginning of your adventure in it. But shy away from too many arguements with them. Your parents have parental, and family, love for you. And I’m sure they are only looking out for your best interests, despite what it may look like. Also, love is too subjective, thus it can’t be defined from one moment to the next. It’s like art, everyone has a different view on it.

I feel, making mistakes is also part of being in love. In my opinion, learning how to get past the errors, that love creates, gets you to the next level in love (and that’s different for each and every individual).

Jet Black

6

Then you are not “in love”. You can love him. Until you are willing to spend the rest of your life with him, do everything to ensure his happend, and even be willing to die for him then you are not “in love”.

I don’t think this has an age limit to it, but most people don’t know what they want until they are older. Until you know what you want, you cannot determine if the person is right to spend the rest of your life with. This is why I’m relatively sure my sisters marriage will not last, she has not grown up yet. She does not know what she wants, and that includes her husband.

It is nothing derogatory. The feelings I felt as a teenager were wonderful, but they weren’t the stuff that marriage is made of.

So don’t worry about being in love, and enjoy the experience that you do have. You’ll know when you’ve found it.

7

I think what is meant when people say you’re “too young” is that it’s likely that your outlook on love will change as you grow and mature. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not in love now. Young love is generally quite different than the love you experience when you get older. Only you can determine what you feel. When people say you’re too young to know what “real” love is, that’s wrong, IMHO. The feelings I personally had as a teenager were VERY real. But “love” also became very different as I grew older. I’m sure I loved the guy I was dating when I was your age, but not in the same manner as I love my husband now.

Long story short…no, you’re not too young, IMO

8

Dilbert, I am not in disagreement with you…love over a longer period of one’s lifetime does lend to a greater understanding of love…as felt between likeminded people, of the same maturity.

However, if fizzestothetop were to die tomorrow (lord forbid) I would not say she had never experienced personal, and/or romantic love, as SHE knew it. Thus, I would extend her the benefit of the doubt, and suggest she is experienceing love, as ONLY she can.

I find it impractical to preach the wisdom of love from a viewpoint unreachable by time and maturity. Though if one is guaranteed to live long enough to reap this wisdom, then I’d agree 100%. But we all know there are NO guarantees. I feel life, and especially love, is lived in the moment, not banked on for future reference, and experience points. Though…that is what happens when we are alloewed to live and accumilate it. Lucky for us who live long enough. Hah!
Jet Black

9

My first love was when I was fourteen years old. No one could tell me I was too young to know what love is. We ended up going our sepprate ways. Now I’m thirty and I married her two years ago. We each had our lives and our kids and got back together. I have a seven year old son, she has a six year old son, and we have a one year old daughter. Now I’m in love. We both agree that if we had stayed together at her-13 me-14, it would not have lasted to this day. However, I do not recomend this aproach to life/love to anyone. It just means fifteen years or so of trouble. --Wait, our daughter is only one, no- the trouble has only just started…

10

-Loopus

11

Okielady…sometimes I just talk too much. You summed up my intentions quite well. With less words, and with a clear fashion, to boot.

There was also a time with betrothed marriages were quite acceptable in certain countries. And this often resulted in true love, not because of individual love, but of society, church, and family love. Often, as recorded, love was a community thang. Of course, the notion of romantic love ONLY sanctified by the church was doomed from the start…but my wandering point is, love can be found in many forms, and sometimes the environment and society can help shape it. I don’t think we have such a society in North America anymore.

Still…thank the goddess for the 13th century troubadours.

Jet Black

12

Excellent point. Love is perception. It can also be fleeting. I have to greatly disagree with Dilbert there, because by his definition a person should only fall in love once in their life, and stay with that person forever. If they don’t get married and live happily ever after, well, you weren’t in love to begin with. That ain’t the way it works, honey. Just because you fall out of love with a person doesn’t mean that it never was love in the first place. You don’t have to be a certain age to be in love, but you do have to have a certain maturity about you to be able to handle it or even recognize it. Young love is the most precious of all, because it is truly innocent. To say that the reason adult love is more valid than young love because they have “similar priorities” is simply outrageous. Love isn’t about a balanced checkbook or having the same idea of a perfect family. It’s like fire, passionate and unyielding, never boring and it burns within you. If you think you’re in love, then you are, because you don’t need anyone else to tell you that it is. Who cares if they think you are or aren’t, it doesn’t affect them, it affects you.
In short, no, you don’t have to be a certain age to know what romantic love is. But you do have to be mature enough to accept the emotional responsibility that comes with it,
IMHO.

13

Well done Ladyfoxfyre!!! My hat goes off to you.

14

The value of an emotion has nothing to do with the intensity of feeling.

Repeat that until you believe it.

First, just some advice, overall it is not healthy to worry about whether or not your emotions are “real” by other people’s standards, although we all do at 16, God knows. Nobody has the slightest idea what “real” love is, and there is no pissing contest to decide who has “really” experienced it. This is the result of too much TV and too many movies that make us wonder “Gee, have I felt what Buffy is feeling right now? (If not, is there a product to fix that?)” Don’t worry about what you might be “missing out on” or whether or not your life is following the same emotional path as “Cosmo” assumes. Whatever you feel, whatever you experience in life is “real”–how could it not be? The idea that there is this one, and only one type of special love that is the same for everybody and it’s like an insider’s club is a ridiculous Hollywood construct designed to sell you products. I am not exaggerating. When you get to the end of your life, you will feel that everything you did was exactly right, because it made you into the person you are, and none of us realy wish we could kill the person we are now so htat some other us could exisit.

Second, No one is doubting the strengh of your emotions–the emotions are the easiest, most instinctive part of a relationship, and they may well never be as strong again asthey are right now. However, insofar as “love” is the stuff that binds two people together, there is so much more to it than feelings–there’s shared memories, there’s sacrificing for each other (real sacrifices, like compromising on a hundred little things, not easy sacrifices, like dying), there’s accepting sacrifices from the other person, there’s the trust you build up only after it’s been tested, there’s learning to work with someone, there’s learning to get over resentment and learning to recognize the other person’s resentment is justified. All these things have very little to do with that heart-thumping, gut-churning, heavenly-choirs singing glorious feeling of rightness you have when you are together–that’s just a small part of love. And I don’t think that you can really understand all the rest until you have mutually depended upon each other for a good while–I’ve lived with my husband for four years and I am learning about love every day.
I saw a lot of relationships in high school, and have watched them since, and there is no relationship between the intensity of feeling in the first year and the long term sucess of that relationship–either in duration or in the overall effect it had on the people involved. Note, I did not say that there was a negitive relationship, but no relationship at all. It is completely random, near as I can tell, and in fact, I think that many of those relationships that did last lasted because people got lucky–they picked a partner for all the wrong reasons (looks, hormones, feeling lonely) and ended up with a great guy/gal by accident. Which is why you can’t point to successful relationships that had rocky starts as examples.

Lastly, I want to say that the duration of a relationship dosen’t really say much about its quality. Don’t feel like the way to prove you know what love is is to stay with this guy forever–sometimes two people come together, teach each other some important things, and then move on. That is an important relationship, with all the emotional “realness” of a 50 year marriage.

15

Forgot the most important part:

**Don’t get Pregnant! You have no idea how easy it is to get pregnant! Merely having good intentions about birth control do not stop babies. **
Just in case.

16

Though I am a fellow teenager, I would have to agree with your parents in saying that you probally don’t know what love is. I would like to also point out that neither do most adults. Love is way too objective for anyone to know what it is. It’s like god, most people think they know what it is, but chances are, they’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg (or a mirage).

17

:Bows gracefully:… Thank you. Just expressing my thoughts, because I have experienced the same line of questions from people who think that they know better than I do about my own emotions.

18

Wowie, I’ve gotten great answers. (sorry, I’m still a giddy little newbie)

Manda Jo Nothing to worry about, that’s taken care of. This girl knows love does not equal babies. :slight_smile:

I’ve had two ‘boyfriends’ before this one and I don’t much count them since 1 - the first was in Kindergarten and it lasted all but a whole day and 2 - was a long distance relationship over the phone that lasted about 2 months and I never met the boy in person. We said the L word but I know good and well that we weren’t in love.

So my current is basically my first boyfriend and maybe that makes me naieve and silly to some people but I didn’t get into this without a lot of thinking and watching. I’ve seen the high school relationships and silly kids can be. I went a lot time without having a boyfriend so I became real objective and questioning about relationships and I knew that I didn’t want those sort of ‘boyfriend of the week’ relationships. Then Mike comes along out of the blue (this is seriously the last guy I ever thought I’d have as a boyfriend, simply because we never knew each other until one night in a chat with a mutal friend) and we became friends. And now we’ve been dating for 6 months and are very much in love. We don’t kid ourselves and talk about when I turn 18 we’ll get married and stuff. We’re smart enough to know we gotta plan a future first, go to college and get our lives together before talking about that. The thing is, is that we’re mature about it. I’ve always been mature for my age so this doesn’t surprise me in the least that I know I’m in love. But of course since I’m only 17 I don’t know any better. Maybe not but I’d rather stick this out and see where it goes than to believe it every time somebody tells me I’m not really in love.

Mike and I make compromises all the time, we take care of each other we pick each other’s noses and see who can burp the loudest. He’s even pluked little chin hairs off my chin when he noticed them. (TMI maybe?) But the point is, we’re comfortable together, we’re friends, we have a strong connection and we’ve taught each other a lot in the last 6 months so who are my parents to say we’re not in love? We don’t know everything there is to know about love, but we’re willing to learn together.

Yeah, so there ya have it, a first hand account of a teenager in love and I’d like to think I’m handling it quiet nicely.:slight_smile:

19

I’m not really sure what love is, I myself am only 16. However, I think that some people my age do truly know what love is, and may have experienced it. There really is no set "age’ where one is capable of really knowing what love is, IMHO. However, as many others said in this thread, 16 or so is too young to really know what you want out of life and where you are going. People this age are usually a bit impulsive and it is difficult to commit to one person for the rest of your life.

20

Oh, honey, print that out and stick it in a book oyu’ll have in a quarter century. Not because there’s anything wrong with it–it’s sweet and endearing–but you’ll treasure it when you reread it.

No one is saying that oyur emotions and your relationship is bad–but I do hope you understand that the nature of the emotions between you will change and evolve–and if it evolves itself into the point where it is better to be apart than together. If that happens–and whether or not it does has nothing to do with age–all ages have this happen)it doesn’t change the past, or devalue what you have together right now.