Teenagers in love?
Nonsense! Gross! It’s nothing more than infatuation. All of those statements are common thoughts
about high school relationships (HSRs), but where does the truth really
lie? As usual, it is somewhere in the
middle.
There
are many positives about high school romances, and at least as many
negatives. It’s a difficult subject to
evaluate while still remaining objective.
Adults tend to undervalue them, and teens have a tendency to overvalue
them, so how can we assess them sensibly?
HSRs
are a key stage of our development into functioning adults. We learn a lot about commitment, fidelity,
trust, and consideration for others from our HSR. That’s the main reason adults should not
minimize the romances their teenagers are experiencing. As teens, we really don’t want it to be an educational experience,
but we do learn many valuable lessons about how to be a good partner to another
person. We put aside some of our selfish
desires in order to commit ourselves to another’s well-being. We practice our capacity for devotion to one
person through the exclusion of others.
We learn how to trust another person with our most intimate secrets and
goals while being trustworthy with their confidences. We learn to place another person’s happiness
above our own. While it is likely that
we will fail in these tasks to some extent, we will also hopefully learn how to
be more reliable in our next relationship.
Students
often ask, “Why don’t people treat my feelings as real?” Perhaps it comes from the statistical reality
that very few HSRs eventually mature into life-long relationships, but it is
essential that we recognize that while the connection may not last, the
feelings definitely do. HSRs are an important
way for us to learn to distinguish love from infatuation and lust from a
genuine bond. Just as it is difficult
for adults to recognize the deep emotions that teens feel in their
relationships, it is equally difficult for teens to recognize the long-term
value of what they are feeling. Sadly,
many teens invest so much of their personal well-being in their romance that
they fail to realize that it is inhibiting them from growing further. By treating this particular HSR as the
ultimate union, teens often sacrifice their own integrity and self-worth to the
relationship. This is nearly always an
indication that the relationship will fail.