Falling In Love

A short, incomplete and realistic guide

to being a teenager and

falling in/being in Love

I know that on the inside, in your heart, you know what love is now if you feel it. You know that that this is the real thing.

You might look back on other people you though you might have been in love with and know that this is different. Maybe not. This might be your first time.

Regardless of that, you believe that you are completely in love. You can't stop thinking about them. You want to be with them. You might even think that if they left you, you would want to die.

You have these huge and very real feelings. You have never felt this way before about anyone. You didn't know that you could feel this way about anyone. You feel like your whole world revolves around this one person. they are in your head all the time. Without them you are afraid that you would just want to die.

Reality Check 1 - Being a Teenager

Now I am going to say some things that you probably don't want to hear or listen to, because you might think that I am disrespecting you feelings or saying that they are not real. I am not say thing at all. They are very real.

Yes...you may very well be "in love". It might be the "real thing". But...it is the "real thing" for a person who is your age, not the real thing for an adult person who is ready for marriage and a family. What this "Real Thing" is adn feels like will chang over time as you get more life experience. That does not make what you are feeling any less real right now.

Reality Check 2 - Brand New Emotions

Again I am not saying that your feelings are not real. What I am saying is that they are new. The entire idea of "pairing up" is new to people at first, and the feelings that go with that are brand new as well. When a feeling like this is still new to someone, they have no experience in understanding it, or handling it. New feeling can seem seem really huge. 

If you are a teenager, and you are in love (especially for the first time) thats great and wonderful. Bask in that feeling but look at it for what it really is. This whole new "in love" thing can be overwhelming and even pretty damn bizarre. There a person is just minding their own business and suddenly their body and their mind changes on them, and get to discover a whole new world of emotions and ideas and problems that they could not physically HAVE had before.

It is a bit like waking up one day, after over a decade of life where you thought you understood what food was like, and realizing that you had spent that whole time with very little sense of taste. Then that day BOOM, you have a brand new world of sensation open to you and you suddenly understand the point of "ice cream" for the first time.

Why Not Before?

Because YOU have changed (and are still changing) in a huge and overwhelming way.

You see, you are currently under the influence of very powerful mind altering (and body mutating) substances. They are called sex hormones (yes I know, you probably want to tell me to fuck off now) but it is still the truth.

The truth is that right now you could easily have 2000 or MORE times the amount of these hormones that you will have when you are 30 years old. They are grabbing ahold of the oldest piece of your primate brain (the old lizard brain) and yanking it around like a puppet. To make matters worse, you have no previous life experience to help you deal with them, because when you were younger you could not have had these kinds of feelings in the first place...not for anyone.

The whole world of "falling in love" and that whole "sex" thing just got dropped into you lap (so to speak) all at once. A whole new annoying and wonderful world has opened up for you.

Back when you were a little kid those feeling didn't exist. They were nothing to you. Now they are huge and you cannot escape them. Your body is different, your mind is different and your emotions are completely different.

So you feel something huge for somebody else. You are "in love" and if it i for the first time, or maybe the first time that you have felt that it was really real it is a big deal.



...But, if/when you do break up...

Believe it or not...you are very likely going to fall in love again and again and again...

Pretty much every time that you fall in love, it will feel bigger and more real than it did the last time. This is normal. 

Reality Check 3 - Don't just jump into bed

Especially to avoid a breakup
If the person you are with really cares about you, if THEY love YOU then they will be with you with or without having sex, or oral sex, or anything else you do not like, are uncomfortable with or just are not in the mood for. You do not need to explain yourself. It is your body, not theirs.

No person who loves you will EVER want you to do anything you do not want to do...no matter how good it would feel "for them".

If they love you then the things you do in private will STAY private...not so they an look good to their friends. They also will not be wanting sex just for them". If you lose them for not "putting out" then they were just out for what they could get, they were using you, and you are better off without them.

If a person loves you (hell, even if they are just a decent person, and a decent friend) then they will respect you and your wishes, and respect your wishes about what you want to do with your own body ad your own sexuality.

To the ladies...avoid the !OUCH!

This part is to the women...if your partner is a male (let us not assume anything here) and you still need to use a "slim" tampon, you are not likely to be physically equipped to have penetrative intercourse type sex yet. There are other fun things you can do.

If you rush into this before your body is ready it will not be fun. It will just hurt a lot. If your partner cares about you they will not want you to be in pain. They will want you to have pleasure. That can be easily arranged while still stayng within the boundaries of what your body can cope with.

Regardless of the gender of your lover there are other things you can do that can feel good. There are better ways to share your maturing body with a person when you are not yet physically or emotionally ready to go all the way. AND since lovemaking is about "sharing your bodies" and not just about somebody else getting off with you as their "hand substitute" then your partner will not want to hurt you...they will want to please you.

Reality Check 4 - Sex is not love

1) Do not confuse sex and love. They are not the same thing. 

2) Feeling all hot about a person does not mean you love them. That is attraction not love. It is a nice first step, but only a step.

3) Giving your body to a person will not make them fall in love with you, or save your relationship.

4) Giving your body to a person does not mean that you love them or that they will love you.

5) BUT having an orgasm (regardless of how) with another person will ALWAYS create a wierd sort of bond. Orgasms force the creation of a lot of a substance called oxytocin (known as the cuddle or trust hormone). Women make more of this than men do (especially when they have kids) but both genders make it. The oxytocin from an orgasm forces you to see the world (and your sex partner) differently. It creates a sort of "forced trust and intimacy" in the brain which creates a bond of sorts. This bond is natures way of making it more likely that a pregnant person will have a partner to help provide for the kid (in case that happen)...but that bond is not really "love". Also, selfish sex partners rarely care about giving pleasure to the other person (and in women, especially young women, you have to want to make it happen and give a damn for it to be any good). The oxytocin bond is a totally biochemical creation and it is temporary. This kind of "sex bond" will fade over time.

Reality Check 5 - Age differences DO make a serious difference

No matter what they say, if you are 14 and the other person is 19...it is both gross and NOT love. Real love involves a real mental relationship, a deep friendship where people have things in common, and in that some-day "marriage" type of love people eventually hope to find, the two people are also best friends. That takes knowing something about a person.

People at vastly different ages live in vastly different realities. Babies do not live in the same world as 7 year olds. 12 year olds do not live in the same world as 18 year olds. Keep this in mind.

There are limits to how close people of vastly different ages can be as "equal friends" which is the basis of any real loving relationship. Why? First off you live very different types of lives in very differnt worlds. Second, believe it or not, the brain of a 14 year old is very different from the brain of a 19 year old. A thing called "paring" takes place in the late teens and early twenties. It vastly changes the way the brain works.

If the person you are with has a significant age difference there will be a power imbalance, and love isn't supposed to be about power. Becasue a much older person has a lot more life experience than you, they can easily manipulate you without you firguring it out. This is why teenagers below a certain age are a legally protected class of people, and cannot enter into contracts until they "come of age".

Reality Check 6 - Power and Control

Love is not about power or control of another person. A good relationship MUST have equal power because is not about power at all. 

Worse yet, some people are into intentional control of others. If a person is trying to control you...controllig who you see, where you go, what you wear, what you do (etc) then they do not love you. They are treating you like a thing.

People must freely choose to be together, and that means they have to be able to make those choices. 

If a person you are with is in the business of controlling you, limiting what you get to do...or even worse if they are lashing out and hurting you (emotionally or physically) - they may need some professional help. Maybe after they are "OK" you can have a good relationship, but not while they are busy being "mental" at you.

People who are controlling can be very dangerous, especially if they hurt you.

Reality Check 7 - Having an Anchor

No other person can completely be your world and keep you all anchored and stable and feeling good about yourself. That is not what love and relationships are supposed to be about. Nobody can do that for you and you cannot do that for anybody else either. That isn't a healthy relationship, it is being co-dependent.

There are no "white knights" who will ride in and save you and make your world all perfect. All there are - are people.

No matter how bad your life might be, your relationship can't be totally "real" if it is about "you rescuing them", or "you being needy" or the other way around. There is a whole area of psychology dedicated to that sort of thing. 

People need to learn about each other over time, and develop real feelings over time. Those feelings should not revolve around anybody being rescued. If you want to know more about this, look up "personality disorder" on google.