Image: Hannah Busing
You’ll have to define “bad”.
Bad = not thinking things through, operating on emotion alone, allowing oneself to be in situations where one could make bad decisions that one will most likely regret later, e.g., think sex or drugs or alcohol.
Learning to love is a lifetime thing. It is a lesson that is learned first at home, within the family. Not everyone has a good experience with what love is at home, so not everyone knows how to navigate relationships outside of the family.
Teens are known (scientifically speaking) to exercise bad judgment and make bad choices, not because they’re stupid, but because the teen years are still formative years. They are still developing mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually (if you’re a person of faith). These things come into play when they get into relationships. So a 25-year-old, getting in a relationship for the first time will usually make different choices, communicate differently, will usually have a more mature world view that allows him or her to make good decisions for himself/herself as well as the other person…. as opposed to a 15-year-old getting into a relationship for the first time.
Young people tend to be more self-centered, as they are still learning that love is more about giving than it is about receiving. People need to grow in selflessness as they get older — the ability to put someone else’s needs, someone else’s ultimate good, before your own, is a LEARNED thing. And learning takes time.
It is the rare young person who knows what delayed gratification is; teens often want something or someone right here right now. Many have not developed the ability yet to distinguish between want and need. Many young people also get into relationships not because they actually fell in love, but because of peer pressure (everyone has a bf/gf, I should have one too — not a very good reason to begin with). Not to mention many teens get into the physical part of the relationship much too early, which clouds their judgment about right and wrong, and puts them (usually the young ladies) into a position where they’re usually taken advantage of and they don’t know how to get out of it.
Put all of that together and it’s not that falling in love in and of itself is bad, it’s that a high schooler will typically be more selfish, more immature, prone to bad choices, than an older person. I’m not saying high schoolers are incapable of loving or that all older people are better at falling in love — we have enough evidence to show that is not the case.
But when immature people (no matter the age) get together, what you usually end up with is a couple where one person is the giver and the other one is the taker. Because of the imbalance in the relationship, you get resentment and disillusionment instead. Repeat this scenario over and over in high school, and instead of developing into a confident young adult who can handle mature relationships, now you’ve got young people who have so many scars and hangups to overcome.
It is best if young people are given the time and the space first to develop into well-adjusted young adults, confident in their skills, their abilities, their intellect, their reasoning, their capability to give of themselves wholeheartedly, young adults who have grown to self-reliant and independent, who don’t easily give in to peer pressure, who can handle a job, money, finances… at that point, relationships can be very rewarding because 1) you don’t have all that negative baggage from failed relationships in the past, and 2) you know that you’re not dependent on another human being for your happiness and well-being. You know you have something beautiful and unique and concrete to offer, you’re not still floundering wondering what life is all about. This is a generalization of course, but it’s a pattern that I’ve seen work over and over, and the results are usually happy ones.
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