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Adolescent passions shape our future selves, and can be every bit as powerful – and perilous – as adult relationships
www.theguardian.com
"Adolescent passions shape our future selves, and can be every bit as powerful – and perilous – as adult relationships"
You don't say.
I haven’t kept many things from my teenage years. I have a box of photos – hazy snapshots from holidays and parties, captured on disposable cameras and developed at Boots. I have a stack of A-level psychology notes, kept in homage to my subsequent career. And I have a letter, from a boy called Ben (not his real name), written when we were both 17. We were friends first, and then he was my boyfriend, and then he broke my heart.
In the early years, Ben and I were “just friends”: I had a boyfriend, then he had a girlfriend. But eventually, inevitably, something happened. We were 17, and in the stretched time warp of the teenage years, it truly felt like we had waited for that moment for ever.
The weeks that followed were weightless. I was delighted to be seen with him, for people to know I was his girlfriend. Around that time, he wrote me the letter. It began with the list of things he loved about me. Then he told me he couldn’t believe this was happening, that whatever difficulty we had now or in the future, we would work through it, that he couldn’t believe how lucky he was. He ended with the words: "Sorry for the incoherence of this letter, I want you in my bed.” If I had been on cloud nine before, that letter sent me into space.“
Imagine having this effect on a girl. Was never me, isn't me, and will never be me.
The immediate aftermath was awful. I remember standing in the shower, wondering how long it would take me to stop loving him. Of course, I did stop eventually: I went to university, moved on with my life, and fell in love again. But for years, I would dream about him regularly. The dreams were always the same: we were reunited in some way, and he apologised. Often, my now-partner appeared in the dreams, maybe an attempt from my sleep-addled brain to remind me that things had long moved on, that I was happy now. Until recently, I was truly ashamed of these night-time visits: a woman in her 30s still dreaming about a brief teenage love affair.
The power of Chad is insane. Imagine dating a girl (already impossible for us of course, but still) just for a few weeks, and then have her dream about you for half of her life. THAT's the power of Chad.
Then I started writing a book about adolescence. In doing so, I realised I wasn’t the only one to experience a hugely impactful relationship in my teenage years. I read about a 2003 study, in which adults aged 20 to 94 were asked to recall when in their life they had felt various emotions most strongly. Participants in their 20s tended to report being most in love right now, but for all other age groups, the peak was at age 15. When I read about this it floored me: these are often the most emotionally intense relationships of our lives.
EVERY SINGLE "TEEN LOVE DOESN'T MATTER" COPER ON SUICIDE WATCH RIGHT NOW.
Once you missed it, you will never experience something so intense and pure as it. NEVER.
Yet in society, teenage love is dismissed. The phrase “puppy love” is used, denoting something juvenile: a transient, infantile affection. There seems to be a real appetite and respect for teenage lovers in fiction – from Romeo and Juliet to Normal People’s Connell and Marianne – that is utterly at odds with the attitudes held about teenage love in the real world. It is as though we give ourselves permission to acknowledge the power of adolescent love in stories, but cannot acknowledge it publicly about ourselves.
This dismissal has huge consequences for actual teenagers, from the simple fact of their pain being ignored to something far worse. In 2023, 15-year-old Holly Newton was murdered by her 16-year-old ex-boyfriend, who had obsessively stalked and controlled her. Despite it being obviously relevant that they were once in a romantic relationship, the courts have not officially recorded that Holly was a victim of domestic violence, because she was under 16. But there is ample research evidence that teenagers, particularly boys, can be violent and abusive to their romantic partners, and that the psychological consequences for victims are just as real as they are in adulthood.
Obligatory painting of men as dangerous and abusive and women as victims. Of course. Nothing else to expect from The Guardian after all.
That said, since I have this study which mentions another study on teen boys being victimized by their girlfriends more than teen girls by their boyfriends opened in another tab, why not share it.
More specifically, compared with girls, boys showed higher rates of physical dating violence victimization in 2003, 2008, and 2013 (Shaffer et al., 2021). This finding is contrary to past studies, which found that girls and women are at a higher risk of physical dating violence victimization than boys and men. Nevertheless, the authors concluded that physical TDV remains a significant problem among Canadian adolescents (Schaffer et al., 2021 ), as it is for adolescents in other countries.
That said, even the study she cites is somewhat blackpilling, as it finds that violent teen relationships are longer and more emotionally intensive.
and violent relationships are, on average, characterized by longer duration, more frequent contact, sexual intimacy and higher scores on the provision and receipt of instrumental support.
On top of this, in teenage relationships, developing identities become intertwined. When my own relationship ended at 17, I realised that everything I’d discovered about myself over the preceding years was knotted up with memories of Ben. The only way to extract him from my brain was to destroy pieces of myself, obliterating the nascent identity I thought I liked. Seeing it through this lens, I finally started to understand why the aftermath was so hard.
Yes, that's it. In teen relationships, it's not just a relationship, you two are navigating your changing world as you come of age, you are discovering yourselves and growing up together. That's what makes them so intimate, that's what makes them so pivotal, and that is what the people who have never experienced them will forever miss.
While I was writing about all this, something else happened: I saw Ben again. One of my friends from school had stayed in touch with him, and we were both invited to her wedding. On the day itself, as I got ready in my bedroom in the hotel, my nervousness made me numb. Somehow my legs carried me downstairs, and then there he was: right in front of me, talking to me with his wife by his side.
By seeing Ben as a married man in his 30s, I realised the 17-year-old who broke my heart didn’t exist any more. That boy had been replaced by a stranger who merely looked like him. Finally, the ghost that roamed my nocturnal mind began to fade. But I will always keep his letter. That letter represents a fundamental experience that made me who I am: truly loving someone for their mind, and being loved like that, however briefly, in return. It also represents the fact that I coped with being unloved, at a young and fragile age, and that’s part of who I am as well. The letter was a wound, and then a scar, and now I am finally healed.
They dated for a couple of weeks after being "just friends" for a few years, and this was the effect he had on her. For decades, she kept on thinking about him and had to see him again with his wife to finally let him go.
It can't be stressed just how much this will never be us, and how it could NEVER be us.
Yes, that's it. In teen relationships, it's not just a relationship, you two are navigating your changing world as you come of age, you are discovering yourselves and growing up together. That's what makes them so intimate, that's what makes them so pivotal, and that is what the people who have never experienced them will forever miss.
So he let himself go in his 30's as he also settled down, got fat and maybe lost hair as well, and seeing it cured her decades of lusting for him the power of good personality man
Good post man. Not enough people here seem to grasp how much missing teen love damages you. If you missed this, you will never be right in the head again. The gap between the stunted psyche development and aging body just grows stronger and stronger.
Good post man. Not enough people here seem to grasp how much missing teen love damages you. If you missed this, you will never be right in the head again. The gap between the stunted psyche development and aging body just grows stronger and stronger.
Good post man. Not enough people here seem to grasp how much missing teen love damages you. If you missed this, you will never be right in the head again. The gap between the stunted psyche development and aging body just grows stronger and stronger.
So he let himself go in his 30's as he also settled down, got fat and maybe lost hair as well, and seeing it cured her decades of lusting for him the power of good personality man
Yeah she also probably realised her current guy mogs this ex-bf chad now (since earlier, he was instead competing with the younger mogger version of this chad living rent free in her head), which means her current guy is the best option, so it calmed down her hypergamy, she stopped thinking she settled for less and it gave her peace. My theory
>By seeing Ben as a married man in his 30s, I realised the 17-year-old who broke my heart didn’t exist any more
To me it reads like: "I saw straight away he was not a hot chad anymore. Now fantasizing about him doesn't feel right/feels disgusting (depending on how much he let himself go)"
Boom. Cured. Just like that
And honestly, she really did say it all herself here: >That boy had been replaced by a stranger who merely L O O K E D like him. Finally, the ghost that roamed my nocturnal mind began to fade
and violent relationships are, on average, characterized by longer duration, more frequent contact, sexual intimacy and higher scores on the provision and receipt of instrumental support.
By seeing Ben as a married man in his 30s, I realised the 17-year-old who broke my heart didn’t exist any more. That boy had been replaced by a stranger who merely looked like him. Finally, the ghost that roamed my nocturnal mind began to fade. But I will always keep his letter. That letter represents a fundamental experience that made me who I am: truly loving someone for their mind, and being loved like that, however briefly, in return. It also represents the fact that I coped with being unloved, at a young and fragile age, and that’s part of who I am as well. The letter was a wound, and then a scar, and now I am finally healed..
This is a major black pill/age pill. No matter how bright your emotions and love were, they will remain far in the past along with your youth, all good things come to an end.
i remember reading shakespeare, midsummer nights dream. i imagine some sort of fantastical setting like that, stargazing or something with a teenage foid. no worries, no guilt, no weights of jobs or bills. just blissful love.
instead i rotted alone. and this thing i dream of i will never have. ever. i missed it. i missed something every other man in history has been entitled to. fuck.
I had a crush in highschool on a chick literally named Stacy. She thought I was cool, until she learned I'm not cut and only packing about 5 inches. I was then mocked by her and totally ignored by her. It was fucking cruel.
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www.theguardian.com
