What It Takes for High School In-Love Relationships to Last

"Would I lie to you, my own parents?"

It was a good question. “You say that most in-love high school relationships do not survive. From your experience, what is the most common cause of this?”

My short answer to this question was this.

"Although a powerfully exciting experience, in-love can only turn into lasting love if a commitment to grow the relationship into the future is jointly made.  Once the romantic infatuation and idealization of in-love wears off for one or both parties, then the commitment to build lasting love on realistic terms through dedication and hard work can be difficult to keep. So I think it is the loss of “in-love” and the work it takes to grow lasting love are what cause most in-love high school relationships to end."

Responding to this question caused me to think further about the challenging issues raised.

FALLING IN-LOVE

Falling in-love feels accidental (“falling” for each other) because it usually is. In a very few cases, eyes meet across a crowded room, and both parties feel instantly smitten; but in most cases falling in-love takes more time. Some occasion puts two young people in contact, some interest in each other is aroused, some attraction draws them together, some liking develops, some infatuation strikes, and finally romantic feelings bloom as each becomes idealized in the other’s adoring eyes.

It’s an intense awakening, alive with the mutual delight of each other’s company and causing hunger for more. The initial sense is how much they share in common, how they are so compatible, how powerful the attraction is, and how much happiness depends on being together. 

Yet there are times of worry too when something happens to get in the way of their getting smoothly along. Now some unwelcome difference arises and threatens the harmony between them.  “He didn’t listen when we disagreed.” “She didn’t remember what she promised.” 

Now there can be fear that the relationship is no longer perfectly wonderful and the love they loved so much is gone. That’s the painful lesson that in-love has to teach: perfectly wonderful relationships don’t stay that way for long. To some degree, in-love is destined to be disenchanted by reality. Why?

In-love can distort reality in two common ways. Each can project upon the other how they ideally wish that person to be. “I’ve always wanted to be with someone who is happy all the time and looks on the bright side.” And each can strive to measure up to what is the other person ideally wants. “I just want to act content and communicate the positive attitude that my love desires.” This is not so much dishonesty as it is playing out wishful thinking to perpetuate the heightened pleasure in-love brings.

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It’s when in-love is lost for one or both parties in high school and the “real” is revealed, that a decision can be made to end the relationship. “She’s not as great as I first believed.” “He’s not everything I thought he was.” In-love has lost some luster as the initial infatuation wears off, loss of infatuation identified with loss of love.

This said, in-love can also respond to qualities and characteristics in each other that are worth the price of accepting imperfections. “We don’t always hold the same values, but I am listened to and respected when we disagree.” “I feel like I’m told the truth, even when I know it must be hard to tell what I find hard to hear.”

The beginning of lasting love starts with a mutual sense of belonging together in a relationship that is worth building their future upon. To do so, there seems to be awareness that all three interests in the relationship – of Me, of You, and of Us -- deserve ongoing attention. The implicit understanding might read like this. 

“In this relationship, I want to feel good about My Self, I want you to feel good about Your Self, and I want the relationship to feel good for Our Selves. If it doesn’t feel good for Me, or for You, or for Us, then we agree to discuss and deal what is going on.” And that’s the point: the young couple understands that when it comes to maintaining their ongoing relationship, there is no “free love” because lasting love is expensive. It requires a personal commitment of constant attention, time, energy, and work. 

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LASTING LOVE

The goal of lasting love is not maintaining infatuation (which is the immediate objective of staying in-love), but in deepening sense of intimacy and mutual knowing as the relationship grows. For young people busy with all the demands of high school, establishing and maintaining a committed, exclusive relationship, which is hard at any age, is very complicated to do.

For the sake of each other they must give up some personal freedom, take on certain obligations to the partner, share more decision-making, provide some measure of emotional support, run increased risk of hurt because love increases vulnerability, and take the time to communicate to keep each other adequately informed so the relationship is kept in good working order.

And now the hard work of building lasting love begins: managing inevitable human differences that are the building blocks of further intimacy -- learning which can be worked through and resolved (like differences in chosen individual wants), and which must be worked around and accepted (like differences in un-chosen personal characteristics.)

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Then there are tensions from normal oppositions in their love relationship which will never go away, but must be addressed when they arise and get in the way of harmony they seek. Consider just a few: Togetherness and Separateness; Similarity and Differentness; Dependency and Independence; Privacy and Confiding; Trust and Questioning; Accepting and Objecting; Equity and Inequality; Work and Play; Honesty and Tact; Speaking Up and Shutting Up; Continuity and Change, Control and Compromise.

For romantically attached couples in high school, turning in-love into lasting love is very complicated and challenging to do. This is why, as I replied at the outset, from what I’ve seen being able to do so has been the exception rather than the rule. However, it definitely can be done. For example, over the years I’ve counseled with a number of families in which parents who were high school sweethearts turned that young attachment into lasting adult love.

So to high school couples who are in-love, just because developing lasting love is difficult doesn’t mean the challenge is not worth a try. And even if love does not survive, the skills and understandings learned are likely to be beneficial in a later caring relationship.

For more about parenting adolescents, see my book, “SURVIVING YOUR CHILD’S ADOLESCENCE,” (Wiley, 2013.)

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Next week’s entry: Room Rights in Adolescence