What is love? As per definition, love is an intense feeling of deep affection. In other words, love is what one feels. However, love should be seen not as a feeling but as an enacted emotion. Everyone experiences this in their lifetime as a teenager or as an adult. They say that we can fall in love with someone only once, but in my opinion, we can fall in love several times.
It’s more than just infatuation but also mutual respect, trust and care that you want to show your significant other. It’s not just about physical love for each other but having an emotional connection. If there is physical attraction to each other and no emotional connection, it is not love and the bond will die off.
People often say that they are in a “relationship”. As a strong believer of SadhGuru, perhaps I agree with him that we generally have a relationship with everyone, whether it be with your friend, mother/father/brother, or even acquaintance. One should preferably say romantically involved with them or simply that “we’re in love”.
Sadhguru believes that we focus so much on body-based affairs that we forget how to connect emotionally. Physical intimacy is needed for it to sustain, but emotional intimacy is even more important. If one does not emotionally connect with the other, the physical intimacy will not sustain for long.
As children grow into the teenage phase, raging hormones are active in them, where they experience a lot of emotions and confusion. I have been through it where some of us would end up having crushes on many people, some would date, but honestly, one should not date during this period. If you want to, you have to be very careful with your decisions.
The good part is that you get an early experience of dating and learn a lot about yourself. So, if you currently are a teenager, think before you date anyone.
I want to raise another point about how the current generation is always in a hurry to date or go through the different bases early as though it’s a competition. Social Media is to be completely blamed for this, where the “ideal” type of affair is portrayed, thus, in turn, putting unrealistic pressure on other teens.
I must give you this small piece of advice, don’t ever rush into dating. If you are comfortable, go for it, but ensure you are not making the other person uncomfortable in the process. Please remember that everything in life is not perfect. On the outside, people portray as though everything is amazing, but a lot of conflicts and imperfections are present on the inside.
Imperfection is beautiful in its own way, perfection would be monotonous and one would never grow or learn something new out of it. So stop putting pressure on yourself or the affair; it does not have to be just right.
The same goes with finding your guy; you will never find “the one”. Maybe there is someone out there, but there will be flaws in them too and you just have to accept that and help each other out. Teens, I hope you have learned something from this ideal world vs. the real world (not that it’s a class lesson).
Last but not least, love is an amazing feeling and when you do experience it, you’ll know and you should embrace that feeling with your partner rather than being anxious about the future with that individual that you plan to share your love with.
There’s a very cute quote by Anne Landers, which says, “Love is friendship that has caught on fire.”