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Teen Love: Real or Puppy?

How many times have your parents (or other adults) told you that the strong feeling you have for your boyfriend or girlfriend is just "puppy" love and not REAL love, which can only be felt when you become an "adult?" Yet, the definition of adulthood varies depending on how far removed a person is from their teen years. Typically, the older one is, the higher the age believed to experience "real" love.

Most people will have several love relationships over the course of their lifetimes; some statistics suggest each person experiences three to five serious relationships. Nowadays, many people are expected to marry more than once in their lifetime and the average length of a marriage tends to hover between five to eight years with fewer and fewer lasting past the fifteen year mark. Recent statistics suggest that 24-56% of marriages end in divorce within 30 years (Statistics Canada, 1996). If adults can feel "real" love, then why do they seem to go through so many relationships?

With the sudden surge of hormones beginning in junior high school and lasting throughout senior high school, the majority of teens start dating. Some teenagers change boyfriends or girlfriends more often than they change their underwear! A rare few stay dating the same person throughout their senior high school years. However, such relationships rarely last much beyond senior high school graduation as many go in different directions.

When asked, most "adults" will reminisce fondly about their first love (who was often someone they dated in senior high school). They can talk at length about how they first met, what sorts of things they did together, how they felt, and how devastated they were when the relationship ended. Chances are they've never seen each other since high school and have each continued dating other people and have perhaps even married. Adults can usually recount images of all of their significant love relationships beginning in senior high school. So, why do they insist that teen love is simply "puppy" love suggesting it's just a passing fancy without any substance or base?

The majority of grandparents today have been married for close to or beyond fifty years, meaning they married when they were teenagers or shortly thereafter. Many will say they first met in junior or senior high school and dated very few other people. If their feelings for each other was just "puppy" love, how did their marriage last for so long and why are they so happy together?

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