ROMANCING the POTENTIAL

In my honest opinion, one factor which is wreaking havoc on "life these days" is the misuse of the English language; it can cause numerous difficulties in addition to the obvious problem of miscommunication.

You may "love" your sister, your cat, and pizza; if you are an average, intelligent person, you do not need to put time into analyzing the differences-- how you apply the word to each of those different situations. When it comes to people, the meaning of the word should be equally obvious; unfortunately, often it is not.

Pick somebody-- your friend, your child, anyone who is very important in your life. Love is: "the deep appreciation of another person's goodness;" Love is: unconditional acceptance; Love is: cherishing the other person's differences; Love is: considering the other person's needs and feelings as being at least equal to, and often more important than your own.

I've seen and heard the word tossed around in entirely different contexts. One, which covers the more outrageous fraction, is a "12-Step Program" called "Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous." Instead of helping people who have a real problem, the very name of this program makes even more problems with its misconception. Fact: a person cannot be 'addicted' to "love;" one may be 'addicted' to the wish for it, the need for it, the lack of it; but claiming that one can be 'addicted' to "love" means one has no true concept of what the word means.

There is a popular book with the title "Obsessive Love." It's a fairly good book-- except for the concept shown by the title. One can certainly have the "obsession" that is spelled out quite clearly in this book; but it does not have anything to do with "love" either.

In hearing this word so frequently misused, what came to mind was many years ago an older cousin was talking about her teenaged niece. "She says she's 'madly in love' with this one, then she's 'madly in love' with another one, then 'madly in love' with somebody else-- all it is, is puppy-crushes!" she scoffed. But she missed a point: while she, as an adult, had the experience and maturity to realize what a "puppy crush" was, her fourteen-year-old niece did not yet have that degree of maturity and experience; thus, to the young girl, each of her teenage experiences really was "true love."

In ideal circumstances, a situation like that would change due to little more than time; a person such as my cousin's niece would grow up, and, in doing so, gain the maturity and experience to be able to put her youthful feelings into perspective. However, in many cases it does not happen that way-- many people do not gain that perspective, continue to never learn the difference between "puppy crushes" and "real love," and it can become quite a disaster. I personally know people in their forties and fifties who have never been able to form and develop "love," because they have never been able to gain that perspective-- continuing to hold onto their adolescent crushes, still believing it was "the real thing."

Why do some people find it impossible to differentiate between "puppy crushes" and "love"? In an ideal situation, a young person has the opportunity to grow out of, and let go of, the boyfriends and girlfriends of their early years, because they are not encouraged to make more of it than it actually is. For a normal, average young person, the fondness is very real, the heartbreak is very real, and it is certainly not something to scoff at or make light of. But too many adults are blocking young people's ability to develop; and whether it is a matter of those who have never "outgrown" their own adolescence or those who know little about young people, encouraging youngsters to think of crushes in such terms as "relationships" does indeed hinder their ability to develop a sensible perspective about such experiences.

If you would not give your car keys to your middle-schooler and tell him to go drive on the freeway, consider that you are also courting disaster if you give him or her birth control with the message to follow his hormones wherever they happen to lead, or that he is "in a relationship." Pointing kids to something that they are not prepared for is almost a guarantee that they will never be prepared for it, for they are being denied the maturing process needed to know the difference.

When you hold out adolescent crushes as not being much different from a relationship in adult age, with all of the emotional entanglements and intimacies that are intended to be reserved for adults, it's quite likely that you are molding that youngster into a state of "perpetual adolescence" in which he or she will never be prepared for the real thing. And then you will have middle-agers who continue to hold the adolescent characteristics of confusing hormones with emotions, seek partners to meet his needs rather than be who they are, and all of the other confusion and self-seeking that is acceptable and quite normal in a teenager but far from a good way of life for those who are middle-aged.

Adult life can be difficult enough; it is nothing short of unfair to lead a youngster to believe that an adolescent crush is the same as an adult relationship, for it makes it quite likely that he will never be able to move from one to the other. And, on the worst end of the spectrum, then you may end up with people like those described in "Obsessive Love"-- those who obsess, harass, and make someone's life a living hell, yet call it 'love;' or those who seek help in 12-Step Programs for being a 'Love Addict.'