Mistakes Youth Makes About Love/Romantic Relationship (Conclusion)

Last week I spoke about some of the mistakes youths make concerning love/romantic relationship and I promise to bring you more today. Well without any further ado let me give you the concluding part of the Mistakes Youth Make About Love/Romantic

SEXUAL BENEFIT AND PRESSURE

Another mistake youths make when they go into a love relationship is feeling that they must engage in sexual activities or bowing down to sexual pressure.  I think I would be correct if I say that youths nowadays go into a love relationship because they want to engage in sexual activities or probably because they need a reason to justify why they are already involve in sexual activities. Some of you might not believe this but let me ask you these few questions just to prove my point.

1. How does a person between the ages of 14 to 17 years understand what romantic relationship entails?

2. At the age stated above how well can we understand and interpret our feelings?

3.At what age should we get involved in a romantic love relationship?

As we you read further I will try to help you answer those questions even though I know some of you are already answering them.

Well I am open to corrections but I don’t know if it is written down any where that at a certain age someone should start dating, I think it all depends on the society we find ourselves and even at that I still don’t think there is an age bracket to when you should start dating. Some people will argue that it is a matter of choice while some will say it is about maturity. 

As a teenager I think the kind of love relationship you should be involved with is the spiritual, family, platonic (friendship) love. I mean let be factual do you really think a teenager in the age bracket that I mention above can possibly understand and interpret his/her feelings well enough to know the difference between falling in love and been in lust? at this age there is a lot of love around you either from your parent or your friends which is what you need at that moment. Teenagers tend to misunderstand and misinterpret so many things even academic-wise so who says feelings can’t be misunderstood and misinterpreted?

They say every problem has a root and that is why some of the problem you encounter in your love relationship starts from when you were a teenager and as a teenager whatever you learn at that stage most likely stays with you. So as teenagers once you get to misinterpret your feelings towards someone you might not be able to get it right again with that person. Remember when I first mentioned Romantic love I said it wasn’t what you were thinking, the reason why I said so is because  most youth have this misconception about romantic love, they see it as an avenue that makes having sex at a tender age arguable or not shameful. In most love relationship today, sex has become a big issue, as big as some people end their relationship over it. Remember I also said romantic love isn’t something you go into probably because you feel need a boyfriend/girlfriend, the reason for this is simply because most tines you tend not to understand what romantic love really entails and sometimes you just completely misinterpret your feelings.

I once asked a 17-year-old boy who was in SS3 why he had a girlfriend and he said “why won’t I have a girlfriend at this stage when most of my friends are already having? plus how do I have sex if I don’t have a girlfriend?”. I didn’t want to sound weird so I shook my head in agreement to what the boy had said before I asked him another question, I said “do you have a girlfriend because your friends are having one or is it because you just want to have sex or is it because you love her?” the boy didn’t want to reply me at first but after I persuaded him a little bit he replied me by saying “ it will look somehow if only me amongst my friends doesn't have a girlfriend and when they talk about sex I have nothing so say and yes I love the girl I am dating and she loves me too”. Just to make him answer my next question I teased him a little by calling him big boy and asked if he could teach me how to woo a girl. After that I then asked him my last question which was “how sure are you that you love the girl and that she loves you too plus how old is she? His reply was this “she will be 16 next year and I know she love me because she likes me very well and she always thinks about me and I also think about her most of the time too”.

After my conversation with this boy I was forced to carry out a small research travelling to three states and I discovered that what the boy told me was true concerning people around his age. I even did a little research on some social media and the results were closely related to what the boy said. Teenagers between the age of 14 to 18, are already getting involve in romantic love and their reason mostly is because they don’t want to be seen as “omo mummy” or because they think romantic love is all about sex. This made it clear to me that most teenagers get it all wrong when it comes to romantic love because they really don’t understand what it entails and this get to affect some of them as they grow older. There is something about what the boy told me I hope you noticed and that was when he said “she likes me very well and she always thinks about me and I also think about her most of the time too”. If you remember I said as teenagers, it is normal for you to misunderstand your feelings and I also said the fact that you think about someone or probably you like someone so much doesn’t mean you are romantically in love with that person. From his answer you can see that the boy had  misunderstood his feelings and also the girl too had a misinterpretation of her feeling because what they felt was Likeness for each other and not love but they thought it was love and they acted on it.

While I was conducting my research I discovered that most teenagers, just like the boy I spoke with, have a misconception about what romantic love is all about, they only see it as the next line of action once you like someone and also as an avenue to engage in sexual activities. Unless we want to deny it if we take a good look around us we will see that what am saying is true and if you still doubt me you can engage five different teenagers within the age bracket that I mentioned that you know have a boyfriend/girlfriend and ask them some of the questions that I asked the boy and see if three out of those five will give you a similar answer to what the boy gave me.

Romantic love is not something you go into because of peer pressure or because you want to have sex, it is a feeling that is suppose to grow within you and it involves a lot of sacrifice that most of you might not even understand at this stage. At this point I will like to advice parents to always try and talk to their children about romantic love and sexual education because teenagers tend to change both physically and emotional and at that point they will need someone to guide them through those changes most especially their emotional changes. Parents should be able to teach their children about sexual education and what love relationships is in general so as to make them understand some of the choices they might be faced with later on. Truly no age limit is set for someone to fall in love because some people fall in love as early as ten or eleven but understanding that feeling is always where the problem comes from but if parents can be there to talk with them and guide them through it then they should be able to deal with it better.

EGO AND PRIDE

NOTE love is not about power and pride instead it is about respect and appreciation.

This is another point where we make mistakes in our love relationship, we tend to always want to be the head most especially the guys and sometimes the ladies too. You find it difficult to use words like “I am sorry” when it turns out that you are actually the person at fault. Sometimes saying the word “please” might just be what you find difficult to say. In a love relationship it is advisable that you learn to appreciate and respect your partner and you should learn to drop your pride and ego because most times this two feelings are barriers to a healthy love relationship.