When Your Adolescent First Falls in Love

Source: Carl Pickhardt

Romantic love: What is it?

Perhaps this: some compelling mix of emotional attraction, affection, and attachment in a relationship that becomes positively consuming at the time. Nothing else feels like it matters so much, or is as painful as losing what one has found. It’s a thrilling and scary experience—so much to gain and so much to lose.

While I believe most adolescents do not have this romantic love experience during the high school years, some of them do. And although most of these do not mature into enduring love, the experience still has much to teach for the conduct of committed relationships later on, when "in-love" opens the door to love of lasting long-term value.

At the time, for parents to keep in mind, is how in-love gives the infatuated relationship ultimate value. "This is what matters most!"

Love lessons

Among the hard lessons learned from romantic love can be these:

• There is no pleasure—only love because love takes work to sustain it. Now the romantic relationship requires ongoing caring and sharing effort to grow.
• There is no unrestricted love because commitment limits individual freedom. Now self-interest must consider each other and the relationship.
• There is no hurt-free love because love increases emotional vulnerability. Now the loved one can, through accident or intention, wound one the worst.
• There is no ideal love because both have flaws and failings. Now intimacy exposes imperfections in each other and with each other.

Welcome to the complexity of romantic love! On all four counts, in-love proves to be a challenge—wonderful to experience, but complicated to manage. Why so?

In-love lies

The excitement of romantic love falsifies the relationship by idealizing the other person. “She’s just wonderful!” “He’s perfect!” Committed love accepts the reality of each other’s peculiarities and limitations, and cherishes the other person for all the human being they are.

So, when their older teenager is in a struggle with a romantic attachment, parents might want to explain how there’s nothing necessarily “wrong” with a relationship that is punctuated by moments of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. These are not a problem to avoid, but an operating reality to accept and profit by. Discord and discontents create the opportunity to communicate, understand, and adjust the relationship for the better.

To this end, parents might want to offer an oversimplified explanation about how all love relationships are necessarily mixed. They can do so by describing the necessary compromises of love.

The compromise of love

Consider three factors that young love at any age must manage—a complicated compromise of rewards, responsibilities, and risks. Perhaps explain them this way:

1. Rewards come from what one positively gives and gets from the relationship. These are benefits of pleasure and fulfillment that feel affirming: “I like enjoying what we each have to say.”
2. Responsibilities come from caring and caretaking for each other. Some personal freedom is sacrificed to sustain their relationship: “I am mindful of you, you are of me, and we are for us.”
3. Risks come from how one can accidentally or insensitively injure the intimate other, by omission and commission: “Because our relationship matters so much, we are more easily hurt by each other.”

Bad bargain complaints

When any of three R’s gets out of individual or mutual balance for a painful time, "bad bargain" complaints can arise, as the working compromise is not working for one or both parties.

• Insufficient rewards: “We don’t have good times anymore!” Disinterest grows: “I need more satisfaction!”
• Excessive responsibilities: “I am giving up too much!” Sacrifice is resented: “I want more freedom!”
• Harmful risks: “You keep hurting! me” Emotional injury is sustained: "I won't be mistreated!"

Now the mix has to be discussed and maybe adjusted so the relationship works well enough for both parties concerned.

Because individual and circumstantial life change keeps upsetting and resetting the terms of everyone’s existence all the time, this mix, the compromise of the three R’s, must be constantly monitored, managed, and discussed.

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Goals of love

The lesson of romantic love is that it becomes more complicated as caring grows. By respecting, listening, and suggesting, parents can help their adolescent learn how to manage the complexity of first love. In simplest terms, parents might suggest that what it takes to support a romantic relationship might be the following:

• Keep the mutual rewards high enough to sustain satisfaction.
• Keep the mutual responsibilities moderate enough to avoid undue sacrifice;
• Keep the mutual risks of hurt low enough to avoid sustaining intimate injury.

And when any of the three factors feel in need of change, commit to talking out what adjustments can be made.

Even though romance in adolescence may not last, what it teaches about managing significant loving relationships can have lasting value. And since romantic attraction increases emotional caring that encourages sexual arousal, when romance takes hold, it is definitely a time for parents to talk with their teenager about how to keep this valued relationship sexually safe.