“I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
This is the famous line from the famous scene in the famous film When Harry Met Sally. (A film that if you haven’t see you should see. Right now. Stop reading this and go see it, I don’t care how, just do it. Yes, it’s that good.) It is the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies. Yes, dear readers, I’m here to discuss that hideous word which causes all the pain in the world and all the happiness: love.
If we look at the dictionary definition we see that love can be a noun (“an intense feeling of deep affection”) or a verb (“to feel a deep romantic or sexual attachment”), neither of which definitions really even scratch the surface of what love is, but, that’s the way it should be. Love isn’t something any of us should really understand. At our age, love is less a factor in relationships, it’s more a matter of lust. We’re a horny generation, I’ll admit. Everything’s about the breasts, the bum, the torso, the legs, the general ‘cor’ factor of your possible mates. We, as that free-wheeling, crazy young teens look for a good time and a bit of fun. But, could it be that in fact, us teenagers have the best grasp of love out of everyone?
We can breakdown teenager relationships into five easy to define categories:
The Innocents - Usually the younger teens fall into this category, but sometimes some of the older ones, those that perhaps haven’t faced troubles, can be listed as ‘innocents’ as well. The Innocents are the ones who think love is still the airy-fairy, beautiful red hearts, chocolates and magic that you get thrust upon you as little children. Their relationships are often sickening and disturbing to behold (oh god I’m such a cynic) as they just act so unbearably sweet.
The Awkward - Sometimes confused with the Innocents, due to a general “deer-caught-in-headlights” expression when confronted with the word sex. But, where the Innocents actually venture into their bubble of childish love, the awkward find themselves completely unable to integrate themselves in teenage relationships in any way, shape or form.
The ‘old-married-couple’ - These are the relationships that last the longest. We all know that couple who got together in secondary school and are still going right through to college. The only problem is that they lack that spark of fun and enjoyment which should come with being a teenager, they’ve effectively turned into their parents. But with less arguing about the family car or some such.
The Horny/Fun-Loving - This is where the majority of teenagers fall. They want sex, they want to make out, they want to squeeze bottoms in that provocative way which somehow becomes sexual. They have no control, their relationships pass in a whirlwind of lips and tongues and they’re the ones who appear to have all the fun. This category is for both the sexually rampant teens and the ones who are constantly in and out of relationships, just ones which aren’t stable enough to be declared “old-married-couple” worthy.
The Romantics - Now this is the category I myself fall in, much to my own misfortune. Romantics are foolish idiots who aren’t old-fashioned as such, but more, believe in the love we see in movies. The Romantics want the Harry Met Sally ending, they want someone to bring them the moon and the stars, they want Dustin Hoffman to run after them and rescue them from their very sexual mother... I do hope you’re all getting these pop culture references. And, because of this, because these poor deluded fools are so in love with the theatrical and the cinematic they tend to never really find a relationship they’re happy in.
Now I personally have one of the poorest love lives I know of but, as a Romantic, I hold out hope that someone’s eventually going to chase after me at the airport a la Love Actually. Others of my friends have perfectly normal and long-lasting relationships (the old-married couples and the Innocents), others swap partners constantly and have as much fun as possible as often as possible, being perfectly comfortable with the idea of the teenage relationship (The Horny/Fun-Loving) and then there’s friends who view love like a VIP room and just can’t figure out how to get into it all (the Awkward).
The truth about love which no one really likes to face is that we can’t define it. We can’t look at the dictionary definition and say it’s one certain thing and we certainly won’t ever understand it. But, us teenagers have the best advantage when it comes to love. Because we experience it in its fullest. Love’s confusing and scary, but the best way to come close to even understand love is to be a teenager. The entire spectrum of human affection can be seen by simply walking into a college canteen and looking around.
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