Is it possible to be in actual, committed, 100 percent true love as a teenager? Or are couples in high school who “love” one another lost in an infatuation, with no actual concept of the connection’s reality?
Love is a unique thing that forms between two people and those two people alone. It’s undefinable, because it’s adaptable to each pair showing diversity and making it perfectly unrepeatable.
When Etched In Stone compared statements on love and commitment between a high school couple and an adult couple, realization hit. What was revealed was that is all around, but also the understanding that true love is a hard thing to grasp and a rare thing to come by. We may have even found that it’s undefinable.
Love is completely unique to each and every couple who share it. Whether it is romance or infatuation, love is love, but it’s never the same. All people are different, and the love they offer is different as well. It seems that love is everywhere, and all of it resides in an individual’s perception. The social norm which states love is something one obtains is correct, but not in the sense that it’s just lying there in front of you.
Before we tackle anything else, what exactly is love? True love? “Love is the ability to trust in being vulnerable with someone you care about,” 42-year-old Shelley Davis said.
Davis’ boyfriend of two and a half years, 50-year-old Wentzel Hamner, agreed. “It’s strongly believing in something, being loyal to it, and sticking with it.”
When high school couple Paul Merrik and Megan Dietchler were asked the same question, the 15-year-olds answered differently than the adults. “Love is the feeling you get when something feels so perfect that it’s unreal,” Merrik said.
Dietchler has been dating her boyfriend for 11 months, and she knows its love. “Love is when you see someone for all their faults and still love them because of it.”
Adults may define love differently. “The moment you realize you’re in love with someone is when that the person is the first thing on your mind in the morning, and you smile when you recognize their number lit up on your phone,” Hamner said. “You want to spend time with that person, and involve them in your life,” continued Davis. Similar views seem to be at the helm of true love. “Being in love is realizing how scared you are to lose that person,” Meg said. Her boyfriend agreed. “I knew I loved her when I realized that I was actually scared to lose her.”
The question remains, though: are couples who claim to be in love just solidly infatuated with each other? “An infatuation is almost like an obsession; something you can’t get enough of,” Davis said. “You have to realize that [infatuation] doesn’t last forever. It has to be deeper.”
So could Merrik and Dietchler just be infatuated? “After [eleven] months, infatuation would have ended,” Dietchler says confidently about her relationship.
Maybe because love is so dissimilar for different people and different couples is the reason why it’s such a social norm to believe that teenagers are too young and naïve to be in love. “I don’t know if it’s an age thing… It’s rather a maturity thing,” Davis said.
Hamner agreed. “I mean, some 16-year-olds are more mature than 30-year-olds.”
