Love?

[NEVERODDOREVEN]

You’ve all heard the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” right? The song about the person who received a bunch of gifts from their ‘true love’? Have any of those gifts ever struck you as odd? 10 drummers drumming, 8 maids a milking (tsk tsk that is some awful grammar!), a partridge in a pear tree? What would you do with those? and how do you transfer a tree with a bird in it? What about turtledoves? Who the heck gives someone a turtle dove nevermind two! This would be how I see this gift going over:

Person 1: “Hey I got you a gift!”

Person 2: “Oh you are way to nice!” unwraps box to find two birds in a box probably filled with poop as they were proably scared out of their mind trapped in a box “Oh… uh… you shouldn’t have.”

Person 1: “It was no problem!”

Person 2: “No, really, you shouldn’t have” (at this point the birds are proably freaking out and going nutso)

Doesn’t that sound romantic? /sarcasm

So most of us know what love is. We have most likely experienced it- from a friend, family member or someone else. If you really have been so unfortunate to have not, come find me and I’ll love you .

ANYWAYS! I’m not here to talk about how your family loves you or how your friends love you yadda yadda yadda. I’m here to talk to you about love, in today’s world at the highschool level.

For a lot of relationships now love is being left out. I’ve noticed quite a lot of people dating others just for the sake of it or because it’s “cool” to have a boyfriend/girlfriend. The more boyfriends or girlfriends you’ve had the cooler you are right? Or the “more attractive” you are right? Wrong. A few days ago I was sitting not to far away from a group of friends. I didn’t mean to be rude but I could hear their conversation. I noticed they were talking about having boyfriends and girlfriends. Being the observer type I couldn’t help listening in (shame on me!).

At first it was kind of boring. They talked about who liked who, who was dating who and who didn’t belong together. Then it came to break ups and cheating. This is where the conversation got interesting. One of the guys their decided to tell the group something his cousin told him. He said that every guy should cheat on his girlfriend. Everytime. I was appalled at this. He then went on to explain how the reasoning behind this was because if you didnt, you would get to emotionally attached to the girl. When one of the girls asked if that meant girls could cheat on him he said the rule only applied to guys. As if the sexism wasn’t bad enough, all the others in the group agreed with him!

The Guys wanted to cheat so that they wouldn’t get to emotionally attached. Isn’t that was love is about? Caring for someone emotionally? Caring about THEIR emotions? Being happy when they are happy, sad when they are sad? Being empathetic? Apart from cheesy love movies (sorry all you die-hard romance goers) these relationship traits are not often seen in real life.

I bet a big chunk of you have ‘been in love’ before. Now i’m not talking like driving your neighbour around in you electronic jeep when you were 4 or holding hands and giggling on the playground in grade 6. I mean a serious and legit relationship or even if they didn’t want to have a relationship still having an immense love for them. I’m betting half of you who have have then been hurt by that other person or because of the relationship. Again been there, done that, I’m with you on that one. When something happens (they dump you, they cheat on you etc.) it tends to hurt a lot because of the “emotional attachment” you have to them.

A lot of people go into a sort of depression. They don’t want to go out, talk to people or even see that person. On the flip they can rebound and get another ‘significant other’ right away in order to mend that hurt. Neither of these is a good choice. While having some time to recover alone is good, to much of it is bad. You see the problem with rebounding is that you don’t truly care for the second person because you still love the first but were hurt. The problem with the depression is actually the foundation for a lot of problems in our teenage dating world today. In my opinion at least.

You see, people don’t like getting hurt. That’s a given. That’s not a problem. People though are seeing what happens to their friends, parents etc. and how they get hurt and they become afraid. They guard their heart closely and refuse to open it up out of fear they will get hurt. They are afraid they will like the other person more then they are liked, afraid the person will take their heart then crush it for fun etc. It is this fear that causes a disconnect between the couple. Tell me, how can you love someone who you are afraid of?

You can’t. At least not properly. You have to get over this fear. Just like it hurt when you fell riding your bike the first time, you have to give it another go. Accept that everyonce and a while you will fall. You will get hurt. Maybe you will hurt someone. Fact is you have to open yourself up regardless, be open to that love they offer you and offer it back.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous;

love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly;

it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails…But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13

Love is more then an emotion. It is a choice, a gift and a part of life.

 

[CountrySteve]

hmmm makes sense what you said. and as a high school let me say the main reason every one dates (or i should say most people not everyone) is simply just for sex thats all people care about these days. and i agree with you when i go for a relationship its too love and care about that person not for sex God bless you

 

[silicasandra]

Having been a teenager not too long ago, and also a (former) high school teacher, I will say that the biggest problem I’ve seen with high school relationships is that they are way too serious - adolescents acting too adult, too fast, not just in terms of having sex but also being emotionally serious with each other way too soon. I taught ninth grade last year and I had students that had been in relationships for years!

If you let yourself fall hard for someone so quickly, it is really easy to justify moving beyond your maturity level (and even though I was mature at 16 when I started dating, at least for a 16-year-old, in the years since I’ve been astonished at how much growing up I still had to do. I’ll likely feel the same way when I’m 30, 40, etc.) and engaging in sex before you’re married. I did. I was “in love” (I wasn’t but I thought I must be - after all, I had been with the guy for a year already!) and isn’t that people who are “in love” do?

I often find that teenagers are in love with the idea of being in love. There is also a remarkable tendency to not realize one’s own limitations. Sure, when the fairy tales were written it wasn’t unusual for teens to get married. But 16 today isn’t 16 back then, when there was no indoor plumbing and you had four kids by the time you were 25 (and were a grandparent by 40), and many of your childhood friends never made it to adulthood and if you made it past 55 you were considered truly ancient. Life aged people more quickly “back in the day.”

My point, as someone who’s now “saddled” (happily!) with a husband and child in my mid-20s, is ENJOY YOUR CHILDHOOD. I am loving marriage and motherhood, but I spent my whole adolescence waiting for “the next thing” when I would have had a heck of a lot more fun just enjoying who I was. “Real” life, and adult relationships, will happen when they’re supposed to happen.

 

[Poetpeace]

Very well written article - thoroughly enjoyed it and agreed with it too.

I made the mistake of sleeping with my ex. Because we were “in love”, and “nothing was ever going to split us apart”. To say the least we have split and we have both gone to confession feeling like fools to have been so serious when we are both so young.

I heard a conversation from a Uni friend of mine just recently. She has recently acquired a new man in her life, or so I thought, until I found out it was simply a case of having a friend with benefits: so, sex basically. No emotional attachments, just fun and sex. This I was appalled at this.