Everyone knows what unconditional love is; like the love of a mother for her child, whom despite all his or her wrongdoings she still loves. But this is not the kind of unconditional love that's on my mind right now. You can love unconditionally, but...under what conditions does love exist, especially romantic love? People often say things like, "You're too young to be in love," or, "You don't know what love is." But who is one person to define love? Why does it only apply under certain circumstances? How could I possibly say, "I'm in love with this person", for someone to retort, "Don't say that, there's no way you could love him," and not wonder if they truly know what they're talking about? I realise it is a loaded word. And I realise I am young. But love is universal and ageless. Love is the tears you shed for another human being, and the fireworks that go off in your head when you are kissed, and the light of the late afternoon that falls on a beautiful face. It's complicated, but overanalysed. It's a huge deal, but I wouldn't utter the infamous three-worded phrase unless I knew it was true.
Well I've always been a ginormous skeptic and cynic. But what I'm skeptical about is not what love is, but the qualifications of the people who claim to know what it is...and what it is not. You can't be qualified in love, and you know you're not when you tell somebody, "You're not in love." Anyone can feel it. At any time. Anywhere. Everyone experiences it differently, and just because somebody isn't experiencing it as you have, doesn't mean they aren't. Knowing that I myself can't be qualified, I will now proceed to define love for myself as it is to ME.
1. How can I tell when I'm in love? When I can't seem to remove the person from my mind no matter what I do, when I smile and wonder if my S/O is smiling as well, when I have a funny experience and can't wait to share it with him, when I make this person's happiness as important as my own, when I - typically repulsed by PDA - see a couple sharing an intimate moment and smile whilst imagining myself in their place with my partner, when their every flaw becomes a turn-on in my eyes, when I look into his eyes and become light-headed, when I flush every time he stands close, when our conversations are full of "me toos!" and "I totally know what you means!", when every moment spent together is like a taste of Heaven, when I would rather kiss his lips forever than spend a day with Freddie Mercury - that's when I know it's love.
2. When is it too early to say "I love you"? I don't know when it's "too early", but I know that when I feel the above things, be it after a couple weeks or after five years, the time is right. Love is timeless. It can happen in the blink of an eye, or it can bloom slowly as things happen - you may not be in love now, but the love for the person you haven't yet fallen for is still there. If somebody tells me they love me, I examine the words objectively and wonder about their intentions. I'd be able to tell if they weren't telling the truth and just wanted to get into my pants.
3. Love vs. lust. "It isn't love, it's just infatuation." But don't you get it? Love and lust go hand in hand! Obviously there are times when you look at somebody and they're so hot you want to sex them up no strings attached, but only an idiot would mistake that for love! I am not a believer in love at first sight, because there's no way I could feel everything I described in topic one upon first meeting a person. But once time passes, and my heart begins to beat only for them, I know I'm in love. YEAH, I want to jump their bones. YEAH, I want to violate them in every way imaginable (not right away of course, but someday). But lust is VITAL in a romantic relationship. How is love romantic without lust? It's not infatuation when I want to spend every waking moment in my S/O's arms. Infatuation is short-lived passion and attraction. But what is "short-lived"? The moment before it becomes long-lived, that's what. And long-lived happens when you fall in love, whenever it may occur.
4. Young love. One of the most annoying things ON THE PLANET is somebody telling me that I'm too young to be in love. When does "love" become legitimate? Upon your 18th birthday? When the government says so? When your frontal lobe is fully developed, thus giving you the mind of an adult? Why does it matter the stage of life I'm in? If what I'm experiencing is "teen love", it's still LOVE nonetheless. It grows and buds and flowers just as "mature" love does (also, given a look at the high divorce rate, it doesn't seem like teen love and "mature" love are much different - the same old drama experienced by different generations. People can fall in love and be confused about love at any time in their life). Throw age out the window, folks. Love is an everyone thing.
To make a long story short, "the rules of love" DO NOT EXIST. They are not applicable, because there is nothing to apply except open-mindedness. I've experienced puppy love when I was seven (that one lasted a while, haha), I'm experiencing teen love now, and most likely, I will be experiencing so-called "mature" love when I'm fifty. But trash those damn labels. Love doesn't come in species. It comes with individuality, because it varies from person to person. This is my love. It will be undermined, it will be challenged, it will be scrutinized, but it will be love just the same.
I know it's real.
12 comments:
Older people claim that young people don't understand love because we have a basis for comparison. Most of us were in "teen love" as you describe it and look back upon it and laugh.
I dated a girl in high school for five years. At the time I remember really believing that I loved her - I, like everyone else, had all the feelings you're describing - but when I look back on it, I would use the word infatuation. I was more in love with love itself than I was with the actual person, which I would wager from the subtle undertones of your post is probably the case as well.
I recall one of your older entries tends to rant about the hubris of adults insinuating that they are necessarily smarter than teens by virtue of, as you assess, age alone. I also recall feeling the same way when I was 15. Every teenager does. It's characteristic of the age. It's also characteristic of the age to conveniently forget that everyone who is 30 was also 15, and that one day you'll be 30 too, and I promise that you will look back at how you view the world at 15 and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Unfortunately there's no substitute for time, and since we all have different experiences, our own reflections of those experiences over time shape us - but one of the amazing aspects of this process is even though the details of our individual experiences can vary wildly, we almost always arrive at the same conclusion: teenagers aren't in love. They're in something else.
One of the bigger themes of your post was the fact that love means different things for different people at different times, yada yada, but at the same time you are somehow offended that people want to apply a different word to what teens experience than what adults experience. You're readily admitting that they are different things but applying different words is inappropriate. What's wrong with using different words? Personally I like having a vast vocabularly available to me. It makes communication a lot easier.
Evan, who ARE you?
Also...I have a lot to say to what you just said but all I'm going to say is the following:
If I'm apparently wrong about this among everything else, please tell me what love REALLY is, because I would like to know.
P.S. Infatuation, by the definition of a dictionary, is short-lived passion and attraction...five years isn't short-lived, I'll say. Except for marriage, it's even long for an adult relationship (from all that I have witnessed).
Plus, I had myself convinced that love wasn't really necessary until this person came around, and I forgot about what I said about, "Ahh, who needs love? I'll be single until I have the time to care." A couple months ago, I would cringe at the idea of romance and all that jazz, and even today I find it all extremely cheesy.
But I do think that I love the person I claim to be in love with more than I love love itself. You know, maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't feel that way now, and that's all that matters. I don't say "I love you" loosely, because that's how I truly feel about him.
Maybe I'll chuckle at my ridiculousness later, but this isn't later. It's now. And it's not goofy to me. It feels real, and so it is real.
To me.
Ouch, tough question. It's hard to explain, but I'll try.
Love isn't the euphoric stuff you're hyped up on right now. Love isn't even about feelings.
Love is caring for someone, both emotionally and physically, when you're both at your worst. Love has nothing to do with how someone makes you feel.
I know. Love isn't a feeling? Certainly, love makes us feel things, but its nature is not a feeling, in the same way that we can smell the scent of a rose, but the rose is not the scent - the rose is a flower.
Love is how you treat that person when they make you angry, or when they make you upset, or when they've somehow failed you entirely. When you love someone, you take yourself out of the picture.
This is hard to describe. I'm sure it's harder to understand. I can hear the younger me asking, "but if that's true, then why do we fall in love with specific people? Why don't we love everyone?"
Good question, isn't it?
P.S. - I'm no one, I just stumbled upon your blog from a comment on either TAA's blog or his youtube vids.
I UNDERSTAND that, Evan. I know that that's what love is. But I don't see how a person my age can't experience all that. I would give up my happiness for my boyfriend, and I would love him even if he completely humiliates himself. I wouldn't break up with him if we ever had a big blow out, because I understand that stuff like that happens in relationships. It's a little insulting when adults always assume that we're all incapable of understanding love.
I know love isn't a walk in the park, but it's still the greatest thing you can have with another person. Talk to me in ten years and ask me if I think I was silly. I'll probably have matured, but I probably still wouldn't deny that I understood it.
Because I know I do.
Think about your five year relationship again. Why WASN'T it love?
Everyone experiences it differently. If it wasn't love for you, you can't really tell me that it's not love for me, just because I happen to be the same age you were.
"If it wasn't love for you, you can't really tell me that it's not love for me, just because I happen to be the same age you were."
YES, EXACTLY.
Was that "exactly" for or against my argument?
For.
-Selena (lol)
Yeah, I thought it was you. I wasn't sure though. lol. Yeah I know you agree with me on this one, but that's because you're witnessing it.
"Think about your five year relationship again. Why WASN'T it love?"
Ask yourself that question when the time comes that you break up with this character. When the euphoria wears off (and it will), you'll get a clearer picture of the person you're with. If and when that picture is no longer as pretty as it is right now your assessments will change.
"I would give up my happiness for my boyfriend, and I would love him even if he completely humiliates himself. I wouldn't break up with him if we ever had a big blow out, because I understand that stuff like that happens in relationships."
The operative word is "would" in all of these statements. This is exactly the problem with young people. It's always would or will. The biggest difference between you and me is that all of these situations you've described are not woulds for me anymore, and they won't be for you either.
You think you know yourself, you think you know other people, you think you know what you would and will do in any hypothetical situation, but once you're actually tested in any of these situations you find that your predictions don't always match up.
By the way: don't give up your happiness for anyone, especially given your apparent belief that we only go around once in this world. If that's true, then life's too short to sell yourself out to anyone. You shouldn't love someone who would require that you give up your happiness. To be honest I figured you might draw that out of my feeble attempt to describe love, an endeavor upon which millions of wordsmiths have embarked - and failed - a group of which I am no exception. But it just goes to prove my point, if you can call it that.
Look, I'm not trying to demean what you're experiencing, I'm only trying to explain why older people view teenage relationships the way they do. And in a way all of this is kind of worthless since, as I said, only time will cause you to conclude that which, as time invariably illustrates, all of us who have been there and done that conclude.
"If and when that picture is no longer as pretty as it is right now your assessments will change."
All this sounds like is your own experience talking. I'm not a person who believes in that "there's only one true love for every person" baloney. Just because my tastes change along with everything, doesn't mean that while I DID find him appealing, it wasn't love. I mean, you probably fell out of it once your interests changed. But you have to be in it to fall out.
"It's always would or will. The biggest difference between you and me is that all of these situations you've described are not woulds for me anymore, and they won't be for you either."
My partner HAS embarrassed himself in front of me, and I DO still love him (and vice versa). Besides, my mom still makes hypotheticals about my dad even though SHE'S experienced it. "Would" doesn't say anything about our past. It just talks about the future. Just because I say "if this happens, this would happen", doesn't mean it hasn't happened before.
"You think you know yourself, you think you know other people, you think you know what you would and will do in any hypothetical situation."
I DO know myself. Seriously, I do. I've considered myself to be self-realised for the past month. Also, as I said previously, I have actually been "tested", and my love remains unchanged. In fact, I find myself loving him more after he makes a mistake because it just goes to show how much we have in common.
"By the way: don't give up your happiness for anyone, especially given your apparent belief that we only go around once in this world. If that's true, then life's too short to sell yourself out to anyone. You shouldn't love someone who would require that you give up your happiness."
That didn't come out right, I realised. What I meant was that I wouldn't give up my happiness for him, I would share it with him. Because what the hell's the point of being with someone if you're not happy? I HAVE given up my happiness for a guy before, but I did it because I DIDN'T love him - I just wanted to because I felt terrible that I didn't. But what I have with the guy I'm with now is not selling myself short of anything...my happiness doesn't depend upon him, but my life just rocks a whole lot more with him in it. =D Being with him doesn't require giving up my happiness. It requires bringing my happiness into his own life and letting him have a taste of it.
Evan listen to me for a second. Your a guy. She a girl. A girlfriend at the teen years for a guy is viewed differently then a boyfriend for a girl. While us guys are still trying to get in touch with ourselves, girls understand themselves because they hit their time earlier than us. While we get used to getting erections, etc, they already understand their periods and how to deal with it. kinda like the space race, replacing the Soviets with girls and Americans with guys. To say that they cannot love at their age is stupid. girls go through the time of "inflatuation" during 4-6 grades, something that shows up in guys later. As a guy, you must have had that girl in 5th or 6th grade that was always close to you, not friendly but kinda creepy.
I guess why i'm trying to say is you can't speak if you dont have ovaries in this case. take my word brother, give it up, your not going to win.
Signed, Sergei Dragunov.
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