I know a handful of people who think that teenagers can't be in love, that teenagers don't know what love means. Then I know a few people who think that young love is the only kind of true love there is.
Usually the argument against teenagers being in love goes something like this, "I have a niece and she thinks she's 'in love' with a new boy every week - one week it's Justin Bieber, the next week it's a boy in her class. Teenagers don't know what love is." But isn't that generalizing? Or steriotyping? That's not fair. Two of the relationships I've been in have lasted over a year - the first one lasted fourteen months and the guy I'm with now I've been with for almost a year and a half. I know that's not long compared to the old, happy couples who have been married for forty years. But I don't fall "in love" weekly.
The other argument against young love is that they don't understand all of the responsibilities that come with being in love. The definiton of love from Dictionary.com is "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person". What responsibilties are they talking about? The responsibilty to love one another, to take care of one another? This isn't marriage we're talking about. It's love. Yes, I will admit there are a set of responsibilities that my boyfriend and I have, expecially since we're planning a future together. Like whenever we consider career paths we keep eachother in mind. When I'm with him, my dad expects both of us to be "responsible."
When I asked my dad about this, he said it all depends on the people involved. He said some people who are in their thirties don't know what love is. He explained that he does see teenagers who skip from one relationship to the next and use the word too loosely. But I am not one of those people.I'm almost eighteen years old, I understand I don't know everything. But I get sick of people telling me that I'm not "in love" with my boyfriend soley on the basis of our age.
If my boyfriend and I were in an on-again off-again sort of relationship, I might be able to consider others opinions. And though we've got into one or two bigger arguments we have not broke up once in the time-span we've been together.
I can also tell you that our relationship is not based on infatuation or obsession. I get mad at him and he get's mad at me. I accept that he's not perfect, that no one is perfect and we move on. I don't expect him to read my mind or throw a little fit because he hung out with his guy friends instead of me. I tell him when something is wrong and we calmly discuss it. Oh, and we don't post "lovey-dovey" things back on forth of eachothers facebook walls or change our relationship status to 'engaged' when there's no ring, no official proposal, and we're both still living with our parents.
We're also very serious about eachother. We know eachothers families particularly well and know that we want a future together and have started to plan life together after high school. I'm not saying that we know everything about being in love or could get married today, or even saying that we'll be together forever. But I think this is the start of something great. My parents and his parents also feel the same way.
So whose to say that I don't love my boyfriend? Whose to say I don't know what love is? Maybe I'm still young. But I hate it when people generalize my feelings and my relationship when they don't know a thing about me.
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