New Friends

As long as you hang around with just the old crowd, their sympathy may retard your recovery. They know too much about how hurt you were. They may possibly refer too often to the old days, and to the old lover. But as you get into a new circle of friends who didn’t know you during your infatuation, you can start fresh and build anew.

New friends can be found where your new interests take you. They are probably the ones that are interested in the same things you are. When they recognize that you are available for friendship, they will welcome you.

Facing Facts

There are some happily married couples who proudly report that they never loved anyone but each other. They were childhood sweethearts, dated only each other in high school, went through college together, and then married each other without ever having had eyes for anyone else. This does happen, but it’s not usual. The far more frequent pattern is for a teen-ager to fall in and out of love a number of times before he or she finally settles on the one who becomes the married partner.

The young person who can face the fact that “love” can pass, and who has the courage to recognize that this is part of life as a teen-ager, has won half the battle. It’s the “why did this have to happen to me?” attitude that delays emotional recovery from one of the normal situations of the dating years.

Love is so highly valued in our country that many young people start looking for it very early. They want to believe that each love is IT. Actually, only relatively mature young adults are ready for the kind of love that leads to marriage.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

The grown-up love that leads to the altar can be distinguished from immature infatuations by a number of characteristics. First of all, real love usually comes during the late teens or even later in the life of the individual. Infatuations tend to be an experience of the early teens, lasting love to be characteristic of the more mature young adult.

Share and Share Alike

Love substantial enough to last wants to give and share with the beloved. A person who is really in love enjoys giving gifts to the lover. He or she wants to do things that will bring the loved one pleasure. There is a desire to share not only what one has, but what one is. There is delight in sharing memories, successes and failures, triumphs and disappointments, with the lover who understands. There is joy in sharing dreams of the future together which marks the couple truly in love.

The couple who learns to get through to each other with a full sense of sharing will find their love growing through time, because it is built on a sound foundation of mutual communication.