Among the most important aspects of your life are your relationships with others. Friendship is a relationship in which you can feel relaxed and comfortable. But sometimes a friendship becomes something more. It can be confusing, exciting, frustrating, and complicated. All these feelings can be an important part of love.
Like Greg, you may be finding yourself attracted to a girl whom you have known for a long time. But for reasons that you can’t explain, you now feel there is something different about her. All of a sudden, you want to learn all kinds of things about her that you didn’t care about before, such as her favorite color, TV shows, and movies. You’re curious about what she likes to do in her spare time, what she does with her friends, and just about anything else about her.
Along with these desires of wanting to know her better come fears. You may be afraid of her reaction if she finds out that you feel this way. It can be really embarrassing if she doesn’t feel the same way or if she rejects you. Or maybe you’re scared that she does feel the same way—and you don’t want to mess things up by saying the wrong thing.
When you’re feeling attracted to someone, you can undergo an overload of powerful emotions. And that can be hard to deal with. But try to relax. Keep in mind that your peers—your friends and classmates—are going through the same thing. In fact, most people you know—even your parents—have had similar experiences. They’ve survived and you will, too!
Understanding yourself. Just take a deep breath, and think about what’s going on right now in your life. Things are probably pretty stressful. After all, all kinds of changes are happening to you right now—both in your body and in your mind. You’re about to deal with or may already be dealing with puberty—the stage of life when your body matures and changes into that of an adult.
In boys, puberty occurs between the ages of ten and fifteen. It is a time of rapid growth and physical change. You and other guys grow taller, get heavier, and develop more muscles. Your voice gets deeper, and hair starts sprouting on your chin. These changes take place at different rates for different guys. But it is common for guys to be feeling uncomfortable at times as certain body parts are growing and changing shape.
The rapid growth that occurs during puberty is due to increasing amounts of hormones in your body. Hormones are chemical substances that carry messages regulating the activity of cells. In boys, increased amounts of the hormone testosterone cause changes and growth that are part of becoming a man.
But these changing hormone levels don’t affect just your body. They also affect your emotions. As the amounts of hormones in your body change, you can feel emotional upheavals and experience extreme mood swings. At times, you may be feeling really moody and irritable. But at other times, you may feel excited and thrilled, like you’re on top of the world. That kind of feeling often happens when you feel strongly attracted to someone else. These feelings can be physical, affecting sexual behavior and desire. They can also be emotional, involving a longing for closeness and feeling connected to someone else.
Understanding love. So what exactly are these romantic feelings? What is this thing called love? Trying to understand love can be challenging, but by taking some time to think about what love means to you, you will better understand what is important to you and to the people in your life. You’ll also have a better idea about how to keep your relationships strong.
Simply put, love is hard to define. If you asked people in the street what love is, you would probably not get the same answer from any two people. One generally accepted definition is a strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties. That definition basically covers the love you feel for family members and for your friends.
Love of family and friends. A big part of your life is the bond you have with your parents, your brothers and sisters, and friends. The love that you have for and receive from your family members and friends revolves around caring and support. In families with good relationships, this means parents, brothers, and sisters provide emotional support for each other. They take the time to sit down and listen to each other’s problems and try to help work out solutions.
A similar kind of support can also come from friends. As you’ve grown older, you may have noticed that a special bond has developed among you and your best friends. You enjoy spending a lot of time with them. You all may share secrets or jokes that bring you even closer together. And you probably count on your friends being there for you during rough times, just as you will be there for them.
Romantic love. Although the basic elements of caring and support remain the same, the love you feel for family and friends is very different from romantic love. The person you love is someone you believe you can rely on, who will support and be there for you when you need him or her. But in romantic love there is also a physical attraction and an emotional connection. It is a special bond. When song composers, writers, and filmmakers create songs and stories about love, they are usually referring to this intense attraction and romantic relationship between two people.
How and why romantic love develops between any two people is not known. Someone may say he has never felt “in love” even after dating the same person for several months or even years. Another couple may claim they fell in love the first moment they saw each other. And once established, every loving relationship is different. The two people involved are individuals who bring their own values and expectations to the relationship.
Getting to know someone else through a loving relationship can be an exciting and intense time. Depending upon what’s going on in the relationship, your feelings when in love can range from the high exhilaration of knowing someone really loves you to the depths of despair during a breakup. You have the opportunity to learn a lot about yourself while developing and sustaining a new relationship, as you make decisions while in the midst of managing powerful emotions. The way you relate to someone close to you can help your relationship change and grow, or it can end it.
Being attracted to someone is the first step on your journey toward discovering what love is all about. Your experiences in a loving relationship will shape you into the kind of person you will become in the future.
According to the ancient Greeks, there are three kinds of love:
Phileo—A casual type of love between friends.
Agape—A deeper, unconditional type of love.
Eros—Sexual love.
