I suppose teenagers have been falling in love on holidays ever since families started going on holidays, which is relatively recently in human history. Today, social media must mean that many of these holiday romances continue to flourish after the lovers are separated by the return home.
But wherever they start off, teenage romances have long been seen as times of huge emotional upheaval – look at Romeo and Juliet for instance.
It’s one of mother nature’s cruel tricks that the capacity to fall in love and sexual capacity erupt at a time when the ability to control one’s emotions is still underdeveloped.
Susan Moore, emeritus professor of psychology in Melbourne, Australia, has been studying adolescent experience for 40 years and has summed up some of the research in The Psychologist.
The hormones that hit teenagers when they fall in love make up quite a cocktail. Testosterone and oestrogen ramp up the sexual urges and oxytocin creates rushes of affection and bonding.
And that’s only the start of it. When people are in love, 12 areas of the brain get involved in producing a rush of emotions that can very easily sweep them away. Dopamine and serotonin are big players in creating feelings of desire and happiness and when you’re in love, your brain is ordering up extra quantities of these, mixing them in with a dash of adrenaline and whacking you with the resulting potion. We normally think of adrenaline as related to stress but it’s also what gets your heart thumping when you see your loved one.
Teenagers in love also show increased levels of hypomania which means switching from euphoria to despair and back again rapidly.
Benefits of love
When you put it together like that, this can all look like a recipe for disaster. Yet in one study teenagers in love were better able to concentrate, enjoyed a better quality of sleep and were more positive in their moods than others many times during the day.
When they’re in love, teenagers are learning how to negotiate relationships and even to separate out from their parents.
Having a boyfriend or girlfriend can make them feel better about themselves; conversely not having a boyfriend or girlfriend can make some teens feel bad about themselves.
“Teenage romantic relationships are, in a sense, the training ground for adult intimacy, providing an opportunity for learning to manage strong emotions, to negotiate conflict, to communicate needs and to respond to a partner’s needs,” writes Moore.
Of course it’s not all positive, as most of us know. Unrequited love is a really horrible experience and so, for many, is breaking up. Aggression and sexual coercion are not uncommon in teenage relationships. Aggressive behaviour seems as likely to be reported by boys as by girls.
Good sex education, including a discussion of mutual respect and of consent can help young people to navigate romantic relationships in good shape.
Indeed, learning about healthy relationships has been found to reduce violence in relationships between teenagers.
It is also helpful if teenagers in love can be encouraged to keep up their links with friends and with activities such as sports and other hobbies. This can reduce the danger that they will become overdependent on, or obsessed with, the other person. And it can lower the risk of distress or depression after a breakup.
Teens also need some education on the dangers of sexting – namely, for one, that they have no control over what happens to these images.
I’m talking as though it’s only teenagers who experience the storm of falling in love. But, of course, people can fall in love at any age, even, sometimes, in old age to the approval or the dismay of their onlooking families.
But it’s teenagers who experience the gale force of that mix of emotions that sweeps them off their feet at a time when they are least prepared to handle it. Would you want to go through it again? I wouldn’t. But neither would I want to have not gone through it at all.
Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email. pomorain@yahoo.com @PadraigOMorain