We Loved Too Hard Before We Knew How

Being young and genuinely in love is framed as mesmerizing and magical. Young people start falling in love without a care in the world, and without a vision for the future. Most young people don’t realize love has a price. Young people get carried away in the moment as it costs a lot emotionally and it diverts you from your priorities as it diverts your love and attention from your goals in life. Numerous people fail to understand that love and emotionally investing yourself in someone costs you a lot, since young love is an emotionally taxing and draining experience.

Everyone feels the urgency to love, and to give everything that you have emotionally to that person, because people have not learned that boundaries and limitations are not barriers, they are shields in a sense, and provide you with protection. It is a goal to prove emotion to the person rather than build a relationship with them.

Young love is the manifestation of unrealistic expectations.

That is the fear of feeling like you are in a race to the finish line as if time is not on your side. Young love makes relationships a difficult, emotionally taxing experiment. It requires postponing self worth because loving is a way to survive and the effects of that are usually the result of a young romantic relationship that is emotionally more compatible than mere survival.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much guidance surrounding young love, which makes is extremely risky. Young people are taught how to be in love, but not how to protect themselves from losing their sense of self in a relationship. Young people are taught how to be chosen, but not how to make the hard decision to leave. Young people are taught to internalize their worth, rather than question the value of a relationship, even an unhealthy one. Young people feel guilty for wanting to be in a relationship that is more stable.

Most young people assume that there is a strong correlation between passion and intimacy and that is why many of them make mistakes when they are in a relationship. Passionate relationships typically only end up being short term, while love and intimacy are present in long lasting relationships. A lot of people think young people shouldn’t consider the end of a relationship to be a huge deal, but that impact is superficial. Heartbreak impacts people’s self esteem, trust, and how they interact in their future relationships.

Young love is often seen as foolish, but really it shows the person just how many things they have not gotten the chance to fully experience yet. The lessons taught through heartbreak can be hard, but the lessons are not malicious. Without taking the time to truly understand a relationship as well as setting great barriers for the relationship, the relationship is likely to experience the same consequences as the relationships that came before it.

Young people should not have to feel that they are losing parts of who they are. People look fondly upon the past and remember that love was the one thing that made the lessons seem worth it.

We loved too hard before we knew how — not because love was wrong, but because we were still learning how to hold it without losing ourselves.