I can only agree so much. Those blaming hormones for "young love" going haywire, if they get off the ground at all, doesn't get the whole picture. Even so, hormones are still relevant, even if they don't take up the entirety of the frame.

And yes, you're right, hormones start and stop at different ages for different people, but there's a blanket amount of time where the most people are going through hormone changes, which usually ranges anwhere between 13-19 years of age. It just depends on when you hit those changes, like you said.

So what, it doesn't mean teenagers are high unlikely to love. It just means love has a bigger impact on them.

It's not teen only who have this puppy love, adults as well, and they might have it more. There is an age when you start to look for somebody to create a family. How many people marry without experiencing true love between them? A lot. Same goes for teens. A teen can experience love the same as an adult. Love does not need experience, it's a sudden emotion that affects people. Teenagers hormone level is so high they have a bigger sexual attraction, though love exists in teens too.

At every age love exists imo, it's just that it's experienced in a different way but it has its basic form and feeling.

Love has such a big impact on younger people because they don't know how to interpret their hormones because they're less experienced with dealing with love.

And yeah, we can say that anyone can experience love at any age, but what we're really trying to get at here is if we can actually define young love as actual love, whatever that may be.

We have adult love and teen love. Where do you put actual love? I'd say those are sub-categories of the main one...

So yes young people can love...

If the first poster intended to say if they can experience love like adults, no, absolutely not, if you're an adult and deep in love you probably think of spending your life with this person, while if a teen you think 100 times because you have a long life ahead and you have still to live it (free). I don't think being tied with a person for 60-70 years is a good idea :mtongue:

Baby, don't hurt me.

I believe that maturity is the most important. It can make up for a lack of experience, whereas experience can't make up for a lack of maturity. Experience comes from things other than relationships - if you're mature, you can handle most of what comes your way.

I don't think I was capable of romantic love when I was 13, or at least I certainly wasn't mature enough.

You don't need to be mature for love. Dangerous love is immature :D , but it's still love.

You don't have to be in a relationship to think you are in love with someone. I never said the majority of teenagers try to commit suicide, I said that it is more likely to happen with teens, though, and "smaller" things will trigger it.
My point is that teens are still developing. This is due to biology and due to experience. I am not stating my feelings on the situation, but what is scientific fact. Again, this doesn't make teenagers any less valuable or their feelings any less real (if anything their feelings are MORE "real" because they tend to be more intense).

The reason teenage relationships don't last is because teens don't know themselves well enough to be a reliable partner in a relationship. The reason for this is, again, both developmental and due to experience.

You don't know if you like strawberry ice cream until you have tried it. As you develop, though, you might LOVE strawberry ice cream one day, and a week later it doesn't taste so good. That is normal.

It's funny for me to read about teens that have had "long term relationships" that have lasted 2 years. In the real world 2 years isn't that long a time, and is the minimum amount of time you should be with someone before even considering marriage (in my opinion).

Don't feel attacked, Misa, as I am not attacking you or teenagers. Though if you do feel attacked, just know that makes you a very normal healthy teenager.

[cries for five minutes straight]

[sigh]

Yes, it does exist. It's just that some people feel it more and can commit to it.
To be heartbroken at thirteen, twice within two weeks, a feeling that still exists in her today... To have the friend that saved her turn away, to be left alone as a last resort.

These things do not get better with time; we just get used to them.

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Early marriage is a key predictor of later divorce. Nearly half of people
who marry under age 18 and 40 percent under age 20 end up divorced. It's
only 24 percent for people who marry after age 25.

I agree with your point that the relationships fail because they don't know themselves however doesn't mean they aren't in love, or don't love each other. There's people out there who couldn't handle the relationship in earlier years, and a few years down the road after some growing up, come back together and now it works.

perhaps a lack of experience makes it all the more easier for teenagers to fall in love...

after all....

once bitten twice shy

Agreed. Less jaded people who say "true love doesn't exist"

To answer the topic title: Yes. Young people can love.

I don't care what anyone says. I am in love with my boyfriend. I know it's real love because that's what I feel in my heart. I'm fourteen now; I've been with him since I was twelve. It's a long distance relationship, and before you say it's dangerous to love someone you met on the Internet, I've met him in real life once, so I know he's real. He stayed for two weeks in the summer. Anyway, he and I have been through a lot together, and I hope that our love can continue to develop.

And I don't care what you think. You can tell me all you want that I'm not in real love, and my opinion won't budge. My boyfriend and I know that our love is real, and that's all that matters.

Read the sentence I wrote before the one you quoted:

Again, this doesn't make teenagers any less valuable or their feelings any less real (if anything their feelings are MORE "real" because they tend to be more intense).

Oh lol.
10char

You basically just made my point for me.

innocence is a virtue...

that once lost....is well...lost...

our 14 yr old friend has just that.....

she loves him...and doesnt even for a moment stop to think that a hormonally charged 14yr old boy is gonna be chasing anyything that moves.....

so no one tell her...ooops

This is a seriously messed-up thread.
All I see is a bunch of people trying to prove each other wrong.
You have ~20 minutes to prove me otherwise. (I'll be asleep after that, whether I like it or not.)

Dude. Have you ever, you know, been on the internet before?

My mom says I'm too young to know what love is
U_U
I think it is very possible for young people to love.
I've seen proof

Ha. If you're talking about me well... What an idiot you are. I'll have you know that, first of all, my boyfriend is not fourteen, he's sixteen. And second of all, he won't "chase anything that moves" because he's not like that. O rly? Ya rly. He shares the same feelings as me, if not more so.

Listen, you guys, I don't know what came over me when I posted that. I was so angry when I saw all the other posts saying that young people couldn't love, I went out of my way and posted that. Now I remember why I never talk about my personal life on the Internet.

Maybe someday I will look back at myself and say that I was an idiot. I won't deny that I acted like one just now with posting such a personal topic. But please, lay off the insults. I really don't appreciate it.

Y'all noticed that every high school couple says "we've been through so much together"?

People in relationships usually DO go through a lot of things together.
Don't just pick on the high school couples

Yeah, I had a 14 year old girlfriend at 16 too. Both of us talked the same way you do now... until the day we broke up.

I don't particularly care about what you do, nor do I feel that anything I write will have a measurable impact on you, so I'll forgo writing a detailed treatise and simply state that you're young, you're naive, feelings come and go, try not to get too happy or too depressed at any one time.

Oh, fuck it. You know what? I'm done. This is stupid. Who are you (and by you I mean anybody who's judging me) to be able to give your smartass, matter of fact opinions about somebody else's relationship? No one should judge anybody else's relationship based on their age or any other unimportant factor. It's their business, and no one else's. And no one should generalize all relationships like that. It's unfair.

Oh, but if it's their business, why are they posting about it on the Internet?

Well, I already stated in another post why I posted mine. I was just so angry at the people who were saying that young love isn't real that I snapped and posted that without thinking. I was acting like a typical fourteen year old. (Believe me, I try not to do this too often.) As for anybody else, I don't know.

I AM SORRY. I'M SORRY THAT I POSTED THAT STUPID POST TALKING ABOUT MY BOYFRIEND. I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN. LAY OFF THE FUCKING INSULTS.

Yeah the moving in together and splitting the bills and deciding who cooks and who cleans and what to do if one of them lose their job or if he has a cat and she has a dog and...

sorry, I couldn't resist...

Thank you.

And if anybody saw what this originally said before I edited it, I'm sorry. I'm really stressed out right now, and I take things too personally. I'm too emotional. I'm really sorry.

To be fair, I believe she said that she's met with him once in another post.

I'm really sorry for my angry post. Thanks for editing it for me.

And I have met him. He's just the same in real life as he is on the Internet. He's wonderful... But I won't go into detail. I may embarrass myself again by getting sappy. XD I know he's not cheating on me, because he loves me too much. We talk constantly; often more than six hours a day daily since we met, so we're pretty close with each other. That's how I know he's not cheating. Over the past two years, we really have built a relationship, and it's working out so far. Maybe things will change in the future; who's to say? But for now, I'm happy where I am.

I think it depends on the person. I think some people are able to love at a young age and some aren't. It depends on your maturity level, your emotions..so many things.

I'm 18 years old and I know without a doubt that I love my girlfriend. I can just feel it every time I'm around her. I can honestly say that I know what real love feels like. And like so many people, when I was like 13 or 14 or something I was like "Oh, wahhhh!" and I'd think I was in love with whoever I was dating or liked at the time. But when I fell in love with my current girlfriend I realized that I had no clue back then what real love was. I was just lusting, and like so many people, I confused it with love.

But like I said, it's different person to person. Some people can feel that deeply at a young age, and some can't until they're older.

@MMM, ha ha yeah because it was so many posts to catch up i started scanning quicker, which i know when it comes to discussions probably wrong
anyway my bad for misconstruing your statement
*bows down*

Terrible argument.

You could say the same thing with regard to other emotions. Anger, Happiness, Sadness.

Love is an emotion plain and simple. It's something you feel like other emotions. While the conditions may be different for everyone (just like other emotions) the symptoms are the same which is why we can agree that love, anger, happiness, sadness exist. That you dismiss another persons emotional state on account of their age is kind of arrogant.

And just like other emotions, our ability to manage them as we mature increases.

Sweet Jesus taters.

I come home from work, eat, and log back in, and already this thread has started to disintegrate from an intelligent, well-thought out, harmless, and proper debate into a flame throwing match with, you guessed it, youngsters who are insecure about their relationships to the point where they feel the need to validate themselves to people whom they've never met, will never meet, and who only know each other through the Internet.

To the young lady with the rather explicit posts,
It's great that you feel so strongly about your "other half". Regardless, long distance, Internet based relationships are hard, not because of the distance, but of the trust involved. It's a much longer two way street than if you saw him in person on a regular basis. Those that say those kinds of relationships don't work is because they've been in one that's failed, or seen one go up in flames. Hopefully yours will work out. We're not here to demonstrate how young kids can "validate" their relationship, we're trying to discuss the validity of emotions felt by those with less maturity and less experience in life in comparison to those that have more, with the third factor of hormones also in play. And, in all honesty, if you are hurt by anything I've typed here, you've made mine and MMM's points for us.

To the 18 year old gentleman,
Once again, you're proving mine and MMM's points quite clearly for us. It's great you feel that way, but have you stopped to think about it? Why? What have you experienced in life, besides a few bum girls back when you were younger, that validates the feelings you have? How mature are you to say that? Furthermore, does it count as love, "just because you feel it"? Since we're talking about people like you, it's be an amazing addition to the discussion at hand if you were to give us something more than just, "a feeling". This is not a personal attack against you, because honestly, I could give two licks about the whole ordeal.

I'm going to bed tonight crying myself to sleep knowing that I can't even have a intelligent discussion and debate, even on the Internet of all places. I leave it up to the rest of you to take all the intelligent posts in this thread wildly out of context.
*sob*

I'm not offended whatsoever by what you said. I've been through a lot of things in my life that I won't discuss on a forum like this with a bunch of people I don't know, but the best way for me to describe how I know I'm in love is because my girlfriend is the only one that I want, the only one that I think about, the only one who can make me smile. I click with her better than I've ever clicked with anyone, and she knows me and understands me better than anyone and vise versa. I would die for her. And if that's not enough to know that you love someone than I don't know what is.

But love is a feeling, like a lot of people mentioned. I don't think it matters too much what other people think outside of your feelings because they're not you. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions though and everyone may have a different idea of what love is.