Teenage love to maturity

Tuesday, 24 January 2012 21:26

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Some confess, some don’t but sure all will agree that at one point of our teenage life all of us would have had crush on opposite sex. Some crush is nothing but just an attraction to somebody that die away after a while but some last for long and you fall in love with that person. So can someone in their teenage fall in love?

One can never choose to fall in love but sometimes we persuade ourselves to believe we are in love when it’s just the infatuation, in other words “foolish love”. I can relate this to one of my childhood friend. Anita met Harish when she was 13 and he was 17. They became good friends and so did their family. He never really dated anyone sincerely though he was always encircled by girls but Anita was the one his family liked and his father always said he would want to see her marry his son one day. Anita who could hardly understand anything about marriage hoped that, that day would come soon. When we are in our teens don’t we all tend to think any relationship between a guy and girl that is little more than a friendship is “LOVE” but is it true all the time, I doubt.

Love can be perceived differently by different people depending on their individuality. For some Love is the next stage of friendship and I guess that’s what it was for Anita. She was only 17 when his family put forward a marriage proposal, well just proposal. Her parents liked him as well but they wanted her to finish her study first and his family agreed to wait till she finished her study which meant waiting another 3 years before her bachelors. I wanted to see her happy and wished that one day they would marry and stay together forever. But like many other teenage love stories that’s not what was destined for two of them.

Teenage years are the time when we are exploring our self, trying to find our self and locate where we stand in real world. Lots of things that happen during our teenage years are out of our imagination. By the age of 20, Anita knew more about life and herself and even though she “loved” him she kind of felt under pressure to marry him sooner or later and that’s when her mind started playing games. She was uncertain if she wanted to spend rest of her life with him when there was more in life than just marriage. Now when I look back I know she was right but at that time I thought she was making a foolish decision. Her decision revolutionised the things between them forever.

Sometimes in life no matter how much you love that person not knowing when to let go can hold them back forever so she let him go. Not that she no longer loved him, she did, I think she did but she just couldn’t commit she wanted more from life, she wanted to see the world, meet new people and do exciting things and then decide who did she want to marry. It was a brave decision and I know many did put her in negative light without trying to understand her views. Don’t we all know “life is too short and we should make the best out of it” and that’s what Anita wanted so why was she wrong then? How many of us are brave enough to make such decisions?

Harish is married now with 2 kids and Anita is still single and enjoying her life. Even though they lived next door he never spoke to her after his marriage and after a year Anita left that city for further education. I understand Harish was hurt but that was so childish of him, shouldn’t he be glad that once she was part of his life and they both contributed a great deal in making each other’s life beautiful. If whatever was between them that they called “love” then why did he hate her so much now? Isn’t love about loving someone till eternity?

Anita lived with guilt in her heart for putting him through the pain but now almost after 7 years, she realises how little she knew about herself back then. She was so naive that she couldn’t differentiate between friendship and love. She finally decided to take the initiative to confront him; she no longer had the same feeling for him but wanted to be friends again and nothing more. And she realised they could never be the same friends; he was a different person now, he was not the one that once she thought she was in love with. He said he hated her and he did made it very obvious, how could you hate the person that you once loved and claimed could not live without, was that love then? How could you love when you can’t respect?

Now sitting in front of me, Anita admits she was glad for that one decision she made all those years back and has no regret for anything. She could not have lived with him all these years even if they would have married, they were poles apart. What she couldn’t see then she could see now, the dissimilarities between them two. This bitterness hasn’t put her off and she still believes in love but in matured love as William Shakespeare wrote,” Love not looks with eyes but with the mind”.

“Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing”. Anita took that daring adventure and now is a business analyst for one of the leading bank, her dream job. It wouldn’t have been possible if she would have married Harish, if she had she would have ended up being a house wife and Anita was not made for that. Today she is among the most successful people, has a beautiful house, friends and most importantly she is happy and enjoying her singlism and freedom.