Teenage Love Essay Example

Love for teenagers is undeniably a tricky thing. For decades teenagers have struggled with finding love and the emotions that come with it. But what makes teenage love so complicated? The complication of love in teenagers can be acquitted to many things but narrowed down to three main topics. Love is such a complicated thing for teenagers because of multiple attributes including Challenges in the relationship itself, how being lgbtqia+ impacts finding a relationship, and how teenagers struggle with their own emotions without even adding a relationship to the mix.

There are many challenges in a relationship that teenagers face most of which have to do with pressure. Lots of relationships can have or experience unwanted interactions, “[teenagers] can be exposed to abusive and violent interactions or unwanted or coerced sexual activity with their relationship” (Moore). This causes teens to suffer in their relationships and possibly not want to pursue a future relationship making love a difficult thing. Abuse can cause all sorts of problems in a teens brain because it’s developing so fast. But even worse than that sometimes partners will take things farther when it comes to pressuring, “A national survey of over 2000 Australian secondary students in years 10,11 and 12 found among those who were sexually active, one quarter had experienced unwanted sex” (Moore). All these challenge of pressuring makes love a complicated and difficult thing because it causes issues in the teenager themselves. They are too premature in their brain development to understand the consequences or what pressuring someone or being pressured can do. 

Another thing that makes love complicated is the struggle for identity. Mainly linked with figuring out sexuality or having to hide it. Teenagers feel that they must hide who they are which causes problems in finding someone to date making their love lives complicated. This article on The Record states that “However, even if there are only one or two homophobic people, it turns the school into an environment where gay people feel the need to be careful, … the feel unsafe to come out” (Owen and Sweet). In an unsafe environment, teens could find it hard to find someone like-minded on sexual orientation without outright coming out. This makes love even more complicated for lgbtqia+ youth because they struggle with being able to come out. They also struggle without being able to find someone who falls into the alphabet mafia. As stated in The Record, “Making the first move is also challenging for gay people because it can be embarrassing to ask out someone just to find out they’re straight” (Owen and Sweet). Not only does an unsafe environment make love complicated for lgbtqia+ youth but also, they might get rejected by someone because they are straight, making a mess of love. 

Another thing that makes love complicated is the fact that teenagers already have a hard time juggling their emotions let alone another person's emotions. When a teenager is becoming an adult, their brain is developing faster than it has since they were an infant. With this comes hormones and emotions to decipher and figure out. This article states it best by saying, “Hormonal changes, new experiences with independence, and shifting social relationships combine to create an emotional storm for adolescents” (Matta).  With this emotional storm, teenagers may find it hard to navigate their emotions. When a teen can barely navigate their own emotions how are they supposed to navigate those of their partners.  Teens will eventually come up with coping strategies to figure out their emotions, “as adolescents age, most develop mature skills that help them manage the fury of intense emotions” (Matta). But this can take years and could even not happen until early adulthood. Emotions and the inability to control them make love more complicated especially when everything in a teen's brain is changing. 

With all the evidence that love is complicated. No wonder being a teen makes it even more difficult. Having problems that could scare you for all your life makes love difficult because the teen might fear abuse happening or being forced to do something they don’t want to do. Not being able to figure out your identity or even being able to figure it out makes teenage love more complicated adding to the multiple layers that cause issues in teenage love. Last dealing with emotions adds on an extra layer because many teens can't even navigate their own emotions without having to add on the extra stress of someone else emotions and the new emotions you experience with love. Therefore, love is a complicated thing for teens because of their inability to read their own emotions, find themselves, or come out, and deal with problems in the relationship itself. 

Works Cited

Matta, Christy. “Investigating the Complicated Emotional Life of Adolescents.” Mental Help Investigating the Complicated Emotional Life of Adolescents Comments, https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/investigating-the-complicated-emotional-life-of-adolescents/. 

Moore, susan. “Teenagers in Love.” Teenagers in Love | The Psychologist, 2018, https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/july/teenagers-love. 

Sweet, Natalie. “Navigating Gay Relationships in High School.” The Record, 2019, https://record.horacemann.org/4112/features/navigating-gay-relationships-in-high-school/.