Teenage Romance

Intensity of Teenage Romance

The defining feature of adolescent romantic relationship ids intensity  .There is a period of three years during adolescence when romantic attachment are often so intense that they are described physically painful. After this period of infatuation the drive to be with targets of one’s amorous desire is still strong .Novelty is the another feature of teenage romantic relationship .You have little experience of love hen you are a teenagers and it can feel delightfully and frighteningly unfamiliar .Romantic Love is entirely outside a teenagers experience, at least the first time because this is one form of social interaction for which platonic friendship do not prepare us.

One question that arises in Readers Mind is, How Secure and Supported Teenagers feel in their romantic Relationships and how they view their friendship?

Maybe friendship and love are simply very different Things and this presumably explains the strong emotional jarring often reported  when a previously platonic friendship  metamorphoses into a romantic one .Surprisingly there is one prior relationship  with our parents :teenagers feeling of security in matters romantic correlate well with how much they  say they are supported by their parents , so this is one of the reason  for parents to try and maintain good relation with teenage children, even when there does not seem to be much reciprocation .

LOVE is tough; it has difficult, painful aspects that can hit inexperienced, vulnerable teenagers hard. The first reason for this is that ‘love’ consumes us and drive us ‘mad ‘or in more scientific terms it subverts our cognitive fuctions.Teenagers sleep less when they are in Love, although they may wake more rested and feel more alert during day, they find it harder to concentrate, certain teenagers develop erroneous convictions that another person loves them _a state that in adults are considered abnormal:’emotional’. Indeed teenage love has even been claimed to resent a state of disordered mood and thought only slightly removed from mental illness. As well as neglecting other aspects of life, the urge for romantic fulfilment can cause all sorts of problem, including unpremeditated infidelity and acquisition of sexually transmitted disease. The thought-altering effects of love are also what make it pleasurable-it is matter of letting yourself go, and falling helplessly into a new mental state.

Another Complication in love is jealousy, romantic love  almost always involves an element of protectiveness  about ones partner, even if it is never articulated, in this racy, fluid teenage world, sexual jealousy often builds to a point where it cause conflict between partners. Teenagers are simply very attractive to each other, so most teenage relationship is continually beset by the predatory interest of others. This is worsened by the widely reported tendency of humans in romantic relationship to retain some interest in the attractiveness and availability of others. In fact jealousy is such an established part of adolescent romantic life that many teenagers report that they worry if their parents are never jealous.

Teenage romantic activities can have direct effect on mental well-being. Just as the first flush of infatuation can be intensely felt, the end of adolescent love affair can be a shattering experience; lost love can trigger clinical anxiety and depression, probably because it is often leads to a period of intense introspection. Most of us find it very difficult to explain the end of a romantic relationship, even when we are the partners who have actively caused split .In the absence of clear reasons for breaking up, many teenagers can direct the blame inwards, assuming the relationship failed because of some intrinsic defect in themselves. Self blame can destroy a teenager’s fragile self-esteem-a – well-trodden path of depression. Many teenagers also respond by learning to tolerate subsequent relationships which, while superficially providing the frame work of a long-term romantic pair-bond, are inherently destructive or abusive and serve only to perpetuate low expectations of how they deserve to be treated.

So what is love?

Is it a feeling , an ambition, a commitment, an internal personal struggle , a social contract or is it a human’ way of coping with the realization of death: that only love makes it possible to temporarily forget the terrible fact of our own morality .But I wonder what is teenage love ? Adolescence is the time we first discoverable all have an uncontrollable drive to seek the affection of strangers. Unlike most drives, which can be satisfied by the acquisition of some goal, be it food, comfort or sex, the drive to love is uniquely unsatisfied , love is an unquenchable thirst-it is the only drive that cannot be calmed by possession of its target, You cannot ‘possess ‘ another person, because they remain an autonomous ,independent ,unpredictable being. Romantic Relationships are often an emotional pendulum swinging between a warm togetherness which can become oppressive, and a refreshing separateness which can become lonely. Love cannot be satisfied because a loved one cannot be fully ‘acquired’. If something is worth having, then it probably cannot truly have. So if love is this tremendous productive –destructive mental force built into teenagers, what are the biological processes which generate it?