Love is THE Fact of Life

Section 1:

Love is a fact of life. For all human beings ,and especially for teenagers, it could be said that love is THE fact of life. It is one thing that is central to all human existence. You might have come to this realization already. Simply by looking into your own mind and noticing how much of your time it spends thinking about people of the opposite sex, fantasizing about people of the opposite sex, dreaming about people of the opposite sex, wondering about people of the opposite sex, feeling depressed about people of the opposite sex and so on, you get a good idea of how important this topic is in the human realm.

Because it is so important and so central to human existence, love is something that can be extremely confusing and frustrating. I know that as a teenager love was extremely confusing and frustrating to me. I had a huge number of questions about the whole space, including (If you are a girl, please replace "girl" with "boy" in the following questions):

• Why do girls hate me?
• Why do I feel so awkward around girls?
• Why is it that I think about girls all the time, despite the fact that I would rather not?
• Why does it hurt so much?
• Why does it seem like a lot of people don’t have these problems? Why does it seem like they are able to walk up to girls, talk to them and the next minute they are going out together and having a really great time? Why are a lot of those people athletes?
• Why are pretty girls like they are?
  
• • Why do a lot of girls seem attracted to guys who are obviously idiots and who treat them badly? I would treat a girl great, but that seems to make no difference. Why?
  • What is jealousy, and why do I get so angry about it?
  • Will I ever find someone who I can marry?
  • When?
  • Why can’t it be now?
  • How will I know when I have found the girl I should marry?
  • Now that I think about it, what is marriage again? Why do we have marriage? Why don’t we all just go around having sex with whoever we feel like all the time?
  • For that matter, what is love? I mean, what the heck is going on here to begin with?
  • Why does it seem like adults don’t have these problems?
  • Why do my parents say they are "in love," but it looks so different from what I mean when I say I am "in love"? In other words, why does their love seem so boring, why do they have fights and why do they never hold hands?
  • And so on.

You might have asked one or two of these questions yourself. Obviously, this is a pretty big and complicated space.

One way to begin to get a handle on love and to begin to understand it better is to try to tackle it one piece at a time. We will start with the fundamental facts of life concerning love. Once you understand these facts you have a foundation. Then you can move on to other areas.

THE FACTS OF LIFE CONCERNING LOVE

The first and most fundamental fact of life about love is: love is something that is fundamentally wired into the human brain. There is nothing that you can do about it. You cannot turn it on and off. It is there, it is active and that’s the end of it. In fact, it is nearly impossible to separate love from human existence. Especially as a teenager, they are one and the same.

The second fact of life is that there are different kinds of love, and we need to agree on what we are talking about when we say the word "love." Here are some of the different kinds of love that you might be familiar with:

• Parental love—Parents love their children, and this sort of love, devotion and caring is different from all other types of love. When done well, parental love could be called perfect.
• Christian love—Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and many people are able to do that. They love and care about those around them because they are fellow human beings.
• Friendship love—A deep friendship between two people often involves a level of trust, devotion, commitment and caring that is love. So two women or two men or a man and a woman who have known each other for 20 years and have been through a lot together can say they love one another. There is not a bit of romantic or sexual attraction involved.
• Material love—You might hear someone say, "I love that car!" or "I love that movie!" It is love applied to an object. In this case the word "love" can mean a range of things from "I really like it" to "I must have it" all the way up to, in extreme cases, "I will (literally) kill myself if I don’t get it." Another word for this is infatuation.
• Lustful love—To some extent lustful love is a form of material love, but it is applied to another person and tied almost completely to a sexual infatuation. So a girl might say, "I love Tom Cruise!" Or a guy might say, strictly on the basis of a girl’s looks, "I love that girl!" This is lust.
• Romantic love—When most teenagers think of "love", this is what they are talking about. It is the combination of friendship, sexual attraction and the search for someone to marry. It is the search for the one person with whom you can raise your family and spend the rest of your life.

This chapter is about "Love," and you understood it to mean "romantic love." That was a correct assumption, and in the rest of this chapter the word "love" implies the romantic meaning. However, it is good to recognize that there are all these other forms as well. Sometimes people get confused between them, and that can cause problems.

Love is tied to sexual attraction, especially at the teenage level. That is the third fact of life about love. The link between love and sexual attraction is strong and important. Many people will tell you that love and sexual attraction can be separated. And that is true. But when you separate them you have friendship love, not romantic love. Or you get lust—the sexual attraction without the friendship.

Which leads you to a fourth fact of life; sexual attraction is a fact of life. There are four important facts about sex that are easy to miss:

1. Both men and women have entire sections of their anatomy devoted to sex and reproduction. This should come as no surprise to you. You have feet. Feet are a part of your anatomy devoted to walking. You have ears. Ears are a part of your anatomy devoted to hearing. You have a part of your anatomy devoted to sex and reproduction as well. Just to get it out in the open here so there is no confusion: In males it is the penis and testicles, and in females it is the vagina and female reproductive system, including the uterus, fallopian tubes, etc. In men the sexual organs produce sperm and provide a delivery mechanism, and in women the sexual organs accept sperm, produce eggs and provide an environment in which a baby can develop. When sperm and egg meet in a woman, a child is formed. Simple as that. Miraculous and totally mystifying, but simple.
2. The sex organs produce sex hormones, which flow through the blood stream and affect certain parts of the brain as well as the sex organs themselves. In women the hormonal part is quite complicated because the female reproductive system is quite complicated and amazing. You can learn a lot by looking all of this up in a good book or encyclopedia.
3. The brain has physical structures and systems specifically devoted to sex. Certain components in this system respond to the sex hormones flowing in the blood stream. Other parts respond to visual or tactile stimulation.
4. There is a biological desire to reproduce that, if you feel like thinking about it this way, can be considered to be the core of human existence. You could say, "Humans exist in order to give birth to other humans," and that is true in a biological sense. You can get a better handle on this by thinking along these lines. Why do bacteria exist and do the things they do? To create other bacteria. No one would argue with you on that. Why do fruit flies exist and do the things they do? To produce other fruit flies. Plants? Fish? Mice? Dogs? Chimps? Same thing. And thus humans. Humans exist to produce other humans. Of course humans are wildly complicated and interesting, especially when compared to a simple bacteria. We do lots of other things besides reproducing. But we are still living things and living things live, fundamentally, to reproduce.

When you take all four of these things together—the sex organs, the hormonal system, the brain structures and the biological imperative to reproduce—you can see why sex is so important to people. You can also see another thing: Sex is not like anything else. Let me say that again because it is an important fact of life:

SEX IS NOT LIKE ANYTHING ELSE

When you find yourself asking things like, "Why do I think about Christina all the time?" this is the reason why. Sex simply is not like anything else. It is absolutely fundamental to human existence.

A lot of people simply do not understand that sex is different from everything else. They will say things like, "Eating is completely natural and you do it every day without thinking about it. Sex is the same way! It’s just like every thing else! Do it and have fun and don’t worry about it!" That is an approach to life, but it is not true. Sex is not like everything else. Eating, for example, cannot create a new human life. Sex can. When someone tries to equate sex and eating, it is impossible to take them seriously.

Having said all of that, there is a fifth fact of life that people often completely ignore. It is funny that people ignore it, because it is so simple and obvious. It is this: The purpose of sex is to create a baby. That is another thing that needs emphasis:

THE PURPOSE OF SEX IS TO CREATE A BABY

You cannot separate sex from babies. The reason our bodies are equipped with sexual apparatus is to have babies and reproduce. If you try to separate sex from babies you are ignoring the obvious, because they cannot be separated. A lot of the "problems in today’s society" are caused by the fact that people forget this linkage.

It is the baby part of sex that leads to love and marriage. Babies link sex, love and marriage together.

The sixth fact of life is fairly simple: Love is a mechanism in our brains that encourages coupling. We "fall in love" to form a strong couple. "Falling in love" is another thing that is wired into our brains. It is a mechanism that ensures the survival of the species. You can now see that we have made a full circle, back to the first fact of love at the beginning of this section.

One of the more frustrating things about love is that it is a fairly messy emotion that has a number of rather strong psychological side effects. In order to form a strong coupling, the love mechanism seems to disconnect a variety of normal mental functions. "Falling in love" often means a loss of perspective and a focusing of attention that can drive those around you crazy. Everyone has heard the expression "Love is blind." It is also true that love is irrational at times. You cannot afford to be irrational, and yet a part of your brain is hooked up to make you that way. You need to take that into account in your own life.

The seventh fact of life is marriage. Our society (you can think of the word "society" to mean "the group of people we live in") has taken our natural coupling tendency and formalized it into a thing called marriage. A man and woman marry with the intention of staying together for life. Within that bond they have children and raise them.

Finally, here is the eighth fact of life. Sex feels good. You may be aware of this fact already. Part of the wiring between the sex organs and the sexual parts of the brain is a direct connection to the brain’s "pleasure center" (time to pull out the psychology book). This connection is no doubt designed to further encourage the reproductive urge by providing direct positive stimulation for reproductive behavior. Many people (both teenagers and adults) seem to miss three important facts about the pleasure of sex:

• Much of the pleasure of sex is psychological.
• It is possible for sex to feel bad.
• The fact that sex is pleasurable doesn’t mean that it is always appropriate.

All three of these facts are important. Inside a loving relationship between a husband and wife who care deeply about one another, for example, the pleasure of sex is highly magnified. By the same token, having sex with a prostitute is degrading and can actually feel bad. Ask anyone who has tried it. "Cheap sex" and "one-night stands" and "sex on the first date" all tend to fall into that same category. It often feels bad. It is inappropriate. It is also dangerous because of the disease problem [AIDS, herpes, syphilis, gonorrhea, clamydia and so on (all good things to look up in an encyclopedia)]. Teenagers today know all about these diseases.

The fact that something is pleasurable does not necessarily make it good. Many people live many years before they realize this simple fact.

So, here you were looking for an answer to questions like, "What is love?" and you get a six-page answer. That is why love is complicated, by the way. Love is important as far as our bodies, our brains, our biology and our evolution is concerned. There is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Look at all of the different topics discussed in this chapter:

• Reproduction
• The definition of love
• Sexual attraction
• Sex organs
• Hormones
• Babies
• Brain structures, like the pleasure center
• Marriage
• Sexually transmitted diseases

These are all facts of life. The thing you will notice is that they are all intertwined, and that makes everything complicated. Love and marriage and sex and babies all go together. As a teenager it is at first difficult to see all the interconnections. Teenagers get into problems in the love/marriage/sex/babies arena because they do not understand the interconnections. Or they happen because teenagers (and adults, for that matter) purposefully ignore them. For example, why does society frown, in general, on premarital sex? Because the purpose of sex is to have a baby, and a baby needs a stable family to raise it. Teenagers, because they have never had a baby, miss the connection between sex and babies. Your parents are saying, "Wait! Wait! Wait!" because they understand the baby part (they had you, for example). They understand the need for a strong, life-long couple to take care of the baby and to provide it with a stable family. Marriage is the mechanism to provide that coupling and stability. Your parents also understand that babies represent a huge financial commitment. The hospital bill alone for a normal childbirth is 2,50,000 Rupees to 5,00,000 Rupees. Do you have that money (along with the money to cover all the other expenses associated with a new child) in the bank? If not, then you are not ready to have a baby.

Can you separate sex and babies? Can you separate sex and love? Can you separate sex and marriage? These are good questions. The answer is "Yes." But consider the following:

• When you separate sex from love, babies and marriage, you get prostitution. Sex without love is meaningless.
• When you separate sex and babies from love and marriage, you get unwed, teenage mothers. This creates problems for the mother, the child and the people who end up supporting the mother because she cannot support herself.
• When you separate sex and love from babies and marriage, you get premarital sex, recreational sex and people living together. None of this seems bad on the surface, and many teenagers you ask will say, "Go for it!" Find a person, fall in love and have sex. Adults would say there are reasons to wait, and we will talk about them in Section 2 and Section 3

It is only when you put love, marriage, sex and babies together that you have something complete and whole and beautiful. It is pretty deep, I know. Think about it for awhile and then come back and read through this section again.

Marriage is Forever

Section 2:

In our society marriage is the structure people use to create a stable family unit. A man and woman marry with the intention of staying together for life. Within that bond they usually have children and raise them. This arrangement is good for the children. It guarantees that the two parents are totally committed to the children and to each other.

I can remember thinking as a teenager that marriage would be natural and easy. You fall in love and then you get married and you live happily ever after. Right? It turns out that that view of the world is a little naïve because it leaves out the most important part. To my teenage mind marriage was about love. To an adult, marriage is about commitment. It is about staying in love and staying together for a lifetime despite the fact that both partners are individuals who change over time. Marriage itself is easy. Two people can get married any time they want. The challenge of marriage is making it work for a lifetime.

The question you might have as a teenager is, "What could possibly be hard about being married? What could possibly be ‘challenging’ about it? Once I find a person who I am madly in love with and who is madly in love with me, marriage will be easy. Our love will keep us together no matter what happens." What I would like to do in this chapter is suggest to you several reasons why marriage can be challenging, and show you why marriage is a big step that should not be taken lightly.

Understanding the Challenge of Marriage

The first few months of most marriages is easy. This phase is called the "honeymoon phase" and may last up to a year. The honeymoon phase exists because the couple is enjoying the significant advantages of being married: living together, being together constantly, looking toward the future as a team, planning a family, sexual intimacy, trust, closeness and so on. The honeymoon phase is also aided by the effects of romantic love, which tend to mask problems and differences. The honeymoon period starts to end as the couple comes to the realization that marriage lasts a lifetime. Let’s look at some of the things that make a life-long marriage interesting:

• Marriage is a lifetime commitment. This commitment can have a tremendous number of advantages: stability, financial strength and unity, infinite trust, etc. However, it can have a paralyzing disadvantage if one or both parties decides to abuse the commitment. Imagine a person who is told, "We are giving you your job for life—you can never be fired." Most people will continue to do a good job, but a few people would take that message as a cue to become extremely lazy. Marriage can cause the same effect. Both partners have to work hard to avoid complacency.
• Marriage means that everything is shared. Sharing means that every major decision involves a team decision. If both parties do not agree, then conflict arises. Most people enjoy having a certain amount of freedom in their lives. Marriage instead forces a great deal of compromise. If two people have different spending habits (i.e., one likes saving money and the other likes spending it), it can cause immense strain.
• Marriage involves being with the same person for long periods of time. While the couple is still "in love," this is easy. Once romantic love’s effects wear off and the relationship is driven more by friendship than sexual attraction, however, little habits can become irritating. Imagine living in an RV with your best friend for 10 years. After awhile even your best friend can become annoying. Countering this natural effect requires skill and creativity.

Marriage is something like a big amplifier. When things are going well, the team effect of marriage makes them go very well. When a marriage works it is a source of infinite peace and joy. However, when things are not working marriage tends to amplify things in a negative direction. It can make bad things worse because it can create a trap.

Have you ever noticed that many married couples spend a lot of time fighting? Have you ever wondered why that happens? It happens because at any given moment the two people in the marriage may want to do two different things that are mutually exclusive. For example:

• You want to go to your best friend’s wedding while your spouse wants to go to "the big game" on the same day.
• You want to go to church but your spouse wants to stay home on Sunday morning.
• You want the house to be neat but your spouse does not care.
• You want to buy a new car but your spouse wants to save the money and continue fixing the old one.
• You want to live close to your family but so does your spouse, and the families live 1,000 miles apart.
• You want to buy a new riding lawn mower but your spouse wants a new sofa.
• You want to paint the house blue but your spouse prefers yellow.
• You want to spend extra time at work but your spouse wants you to be home for dinner.

Imagine facing one or two situations like this every day, day in and day out, for 50 years. That is what makes marriage challenging. That is why you want to pick a good marriage partner. If you can find someone who will work with you daily and love you enough to solve all of the "little problems" that arise naturally in a marriage, then you will have a successful marriage that brings you joy throughout your life.

Finding a Good Partner

Because marriage is so strongly tied to family, because it is so permanent, because it is such a big step and because the cost of entry and exit is so high, adults put a lot of emphasis on it. So does the community. When you and your spouse get married, you are both proclaiming to the community your lifetime commitment together. You also are declaring, to some extent, your adulthood, your independence and the start of your household. The community understands how big this step is and responds with wedding gifts intended to make it easier to start the new household. You can imagine a young couple getting married in a small town 100 years ago. The couple starts its household and its family, and the community of adults chips in with wedding gifts to make the startup easier. Wedding presents help you get over the hump.

You can now see that marriage is a big deal. It is not a party one weekend—it is a lifetime commitment to your spouse. Your parents want you to choose the "right" person:

• A person who will help you to make the marriage work
• A person who is stable and kind
• A person who is slow to anger
• A person who is a good worker and who has a good job
• A person who will be a good mother or father

These qualities are universal. Here are some of the attributes of a good marriage partner:

• Trust—When both partners trust each other implicitly, they are able to go through life with a tremendous amount of confidence and freedom.
• Loyalty and commitment—Trust is built on a foundation of loyalty and commitment between the two partners. Many people get married with the concept that, "If I don’t like it, I’ll sleep around or get divorced." This is a recipe for disaster in any marriage. Marriage is about total commitment to your partner.
• Helpfulness—Partners in a good marriage help each other constantly and accelerate their lives that way. Married life can be much easier than single life if both partners work together.
• Friendship—Partners in a good marriage are good friends and gather strength and joy from that friendship.
• Kindness—Partners in a good marriage are kind to one another out of love and friendship.
• Patience and understanding—Partners in a good marriage understand and forgive each other for the mistakes that come from being human.
• Acceptance and support—Partners in a good marriage accept one another and support each other constantly.

If a couple can maintain these qualities within the marriage, then success is much easier. Maintaining those qualities, it turns out, takes quite a bit of discipline. If one or more of these fundamental qualities is missing, then you can say with some certainly that the marriage will fail.

There are quite a few things that can cause a marriage to fail:

• Disagreements over money—If one person is frugal and the other is free-spending, the conflict that arises can be extremely difficult to manage.
• Laziness—If one partner is not willing to put in the effort required to make a marriage work or keep the household functioning (financially or operationally), then the conflict that arises can cause a lot of stress.
• Stubbornness—If one or both spouses refuse to compromise, then the marriage likely will not survive. Marriage depends on compromise.
• Infidelity—The fundamental contract in marriage is "lifetime commitment to a single partner." If one partner breaks this contract, the marriage is over.
• Disagreements over children—If one spouse wants children and the other does not, you simply should not be married. It is impossible to reconcile this difference because one partner is guaranteed to be dissatisfied.
• Physical or mental abuse—The partner being abused should leave to maintain his or her own health and safety.
• Addiction—Alcohol or drug addiction will destroy any marriage.

As a teenager thinking about marriage you probably do not have all of this complexity in mind. How could you? However, it is important that you come to this level of understanding and take marriage seriously. When you get married you are committing to your chosen spouse for the rest of your life. You are making that commitment, generally, in order to start a family. Keep that in mind and you can understand why your parents see dating and marriage as such a big deal.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Marriage Having discussed all of this, you can see that there are advantages and disadvantages to being married. The advantages include: Unconditional love, stability and consistency—You don’t have to worry about dating, breaking up, etc. There is one person you love and will love you for the rest of your life. Lower cost of living—A married couple tends to have more free time and/or more money because the cost and work of a household are shared by two. Confidence—It is very reassuring to know that there is a person who loves you and only you no matter what and who lives to be with you. That sort of commitment can give you a tremendous comfort and confidence. The potential for children—Inside a stable marriage it is possible and extremely easy to have and raise children. There are also disadvantages: You are locked in with a single person—If you like to be with a different person every week, marriage is not for you. You give up a great deal of freedom—Every decision will now be a compromise between two people. You are going to have to work to maintain and build your human qualities—Trust, loyalty, commitment, kindness, patience, etc. are not easy. You have to work at these skills every day in a marriage to become better at them. If you are not willing to put in the effort, you will fail in the marriage. If you find that you cannot deal with one or more or the disadvantages, then that tells you that you should not get married.

Teenage Sex is an Option

Section 3:

Should you pursue or have sex as a teenager? This is an option, and you get to make the decision. Like any other decision, however, there are things you should keep in mind. Here are three of the more important:

• Fact #1: If two people have unprotected sex long enough, they will get pregnant.
• Fact #2: This comes from the October 1996 issue of Scientific American magazine: "Six out of 10 women having abortions used protection." What that says is two people who have protected sex have a pretty good chance of pregnancy as well.
• Fact #3: If two people have sex and one of them is carrying a sexually transmitted disease, then the other person has some probability of getting the disease, even when the couple uses protection.

Think of these three facts as "disadvantages." They tend to be good reasons not to have sex as a teenager. None have them have ever stopped anyone from having sex, however. You can look at the rate of infection for STDs, the number of abortions performed every year and the number of unwed teenage mothers to see that.

To any adult the three disadvantages make it "obvious" that teenagers should not have sex. What adults generally forget is that for many teens the brain and body are sending signals that indicate otherwise. The question for you as a teenager is, "Should logic win this one?" Your body has a desire to reproduce. To your body sex is important. Can you discipline yourself enough to live with the urges and wait until you get married? That is the question.

Here are two things to keep in mind as you are making that decision:

• By having sex you are making a hidden commitment to the child that results. The purpose of sex is to create a baby. Therefore, by having sex you are saying, "I am willing to care for the baby."
• Babies carry with them a lot of baggage. They need constant attention, they cost a lot and they require two people. Therefore, once you and your friend create a baby you will need to get married, and then the two of you will need to care for the child for the next 20 years. That means you will give up a tremendous amount of personal and financial freedom. Spend some time with someone who has a baby and see how much work is involved before you underestimate the amount of care a baby requires.

If you decide to have pre-marital sex, do it with the understanding that once a child is conceived you are responsible for the care and well-being of your mate and the child for the next 20 years. The hospital bill alone for a normal childbirth is 2,50,000 Rupees to 5,00,000 Rupees. Do you have that money? If not, then why would you have sex? Never mind the cost of housing, feeding, clothing your spouse and the child .

The correct path is to find someone you are madly in love with and want to spend the rest of your life with, then decide that the two of you want to have a child, then get married, then save up enough money to provide a stable environment for a baby and then conceive a baby. Have a baby within a strong marriage that is ready to support the child: It is best for the baby and best for the parents.

As an unmarried teenager there is one other fact that you should keep in mind. You generally don’t hear much about this fact, but it is important. You are doing your thing right now. You are meeting people, going out, having fun. That is all fine. You have this vague notion in your head that one day you will get married. That is also fine. But eventually you will find someone who you want to marry, and it will become much less vague. You are going to be deeply in love with this person. You are going to be with this person for the rest of your life. That is a fact.

On the night of your wedding you are going to be with that person in bed. There are two options on that first night you are together. Either it will be the first time for you, and therefore it is going to be special. Or it will not. If both of you are able to come to bed and learn about sex with each other and share that throughout your lives, it is a good thing. It is an incredible gift to give to someone. Maybe your partner cannot give it to you. That is OK. You can still give it to him or her.

In general, teenage sex is like drugs . It seems like it should feel good when you do it, but longer term it often feels bad. It is a "cheap thrill" that has little or no value. It also tries to separate sex from babies, which is impossible. Keep in mind that the purpose of sex is to create a baby, and that a baby is an incredible long-term commitment. You should not be attempting to create a baby unless you are willing to make that commitment. If you want to make that commitment, you should be getting married first for the sake of the baby. That is a fact of life.