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Young love: Not child's play By Ofri Ilani Tags: psychology, love  Yonatan, 13, entered one of the popular youth Internet forums with an important question: "There's a girl in my class whom I love," he wrote. "I don't know whether she loves me or not. I want to offer to be her boyfriend. How?" Within a few hours the boy received replies from scores of sympathetic youngsters anxious to save him from a grave mistake: "Don't just offer to be her boyfriend," wrote one of them. "That sounds childish!" "Ask her if she has IC [the instant-messaging program ICQ] and ask her to go out on IC." Others suggested a different, more direct strategy. "Listen, there are lots of ways," wrote one. "Take her to a party and kiss her, sit on a bench and kiss her, go to a film ... and kiss her ... Up until two months ago I hadn't had a single kiss all my life. For the past two months I've had a girlfriend and I've gone out to parties and I've kissed loads of girls." Love is apparently a universal emotion, but the way it is expressed is in constant flux. Nowadays children mature at a different pace than their parents. Adults usually believe that they know from their personal experience what adolescent love looks like. But studies are showing that this memory is often distorted, perhaps due to relationships later in life. Advertisement Moreover, adults tend to attribute little importance to adolescent love, and take interest only when it causes problems - such as dropping grades or unwanted pregnancies. And thus, while marriage and relationships between adults nourish an entire industry of research and psychological advice, young love was not researched until recently. "The scientific research on romantic relationships in adolescence is something new," says Professor Shmuel Shulman of Bar-Ilan University, who has been researching romantic relationships in adolescence for a decade now. "Until recently they weren't examining this. They say that it's too short, that it begins and then it is over. They treated this as another teenagers' game: A boy and a girl go out, and maybe they do something. But in recent years a different attitude has developed, an understanding that such relationships can be prolonged and very meaningful." Shulman says relationships between adolescents have been depicted mainly as a "problem," in the context of medical studies seeking to prevent early pregnancies and disease transmission. "Adolescent sexual relations have been studied by epidemiologists," he says. "It's true that there are often sexual relations in these relationships, but it is important to understand the relationships themselves." Shulman, who is currently considered a leading international expert on adolescent romances, is sometimes surprised to discover how strong and committed relationships between adolescents can be. "I have encountered very intense relationships, with a great deal of dependency," he says. "A 15-year-old girl came to me and said she was feeling strangled. It turned out that her boyfriend was dictating her entire life, even which subjects she would study." Smoothing over conflicts Gal, a girl of 17 from Maccabim, agrees. "People I know move quickly. They want to make the relationship into something much more mature than it is. I had a friend whose boyfriend was insanely obsessive and didn't let her breathe." If this is the case, can it be said that 14-year-olds act like adults in relationships? Not necessarily. One of the most interesting findings in Shulman's research is that adolescents hardly have romantic quarrels. "It was interesting to find that adolescents try to smooth over conflict," he says. "We know that in a relationship, conflicts are pretty much inevitable because ultimately they clarify things. But relative to adults, young adolescents have a tendency not to enter conflicts. They resolve the disagreement casually, with some kind of superficial arrangement." Judging by the findings, it appears that adolescents know why they are trying to avoid quarrels. "If there are conflicts, then the relationship ends very quickly," Shulman says. "Relationships are more black and white than they are for adults: Either everything is wonderful and they are always having a fabulous time, or they break up." 'They don't take us seriously' Kerem, 14, from Tel Aviv, has already overcome several quarrels with her boyfriend of half a year. "The adults think that relationships at my age are not anything serious. When I quarrel with my boyfriend and get upset, they don't take it seriously, they tell me that it's silly and that I will have a lot of boyfriends. They don't understand that it isn't like that. Grownups have fears of betrayal, and we do too. We also have serious quarrels, but we sit down and talk about it." One of the difficulties in researching adolescent relationships is that at this age, definitions can change rapidly. Noam Primor, a ninth-grader from Shoham, already has had several girlfriends, the first in fourth grade. However, he knows that this wasn't the same as his relationship with his current girlfriend. "Then it wasn't anything important," he says. "That wasn't serious at all, there was all kinds of shyness and things like that. Now we are going out, going places. This is something else." Kerem holds a similar opinion. "In sixth grade there are couples, but the boy and the girl hardly talk to each other. People say 'we are a couple' only in order to show off." In one of his studies, Shulman found that many 14-year-olds say they have had a romantic relationship. However, among 16-year-olds, the proportion drops. The reason for this is that in this phase, adolescents are already perceiving romantic relationships differently. "A 14-year-old boy is in love with a girl and they go to a movie, so he believes they are a couple. In early adolescence, sometimes one side says he [or she] is in a relationship but the other side doesn't even know about this. Later they perceive this differently. Gradually the emotional system develops and starts playing a very important role." Girls want casual relationships, too While at the start of adolescence most romantic relationships last for a few weeks at most, during the high school years they become more committed and longer. Michal Schlier-Kretzmer studied, along with Professor Shulman, the relationship patterns among adolescents. The common assumption is that girls prefer long-term and stable relationships, whereas boys prefer casual, short relationships. However, Schlier-Kretzmer's study, based on 170 questionnaires filled out by 11th- and 12th-graders at a school in the north, found no differences between boys and girls in that respect. She believes this could indicate a shift toward greater gender equality in recent years: Girls are interested in casual relationships just as much as boys are. "There is no difference between boys and girls in the number of casual relationships reported," Schlier-Kretzmer says. "This doesn't mesh so well with theories that girls are by nature more stable and prefer a higher level of investment in sexual relationships." Nonetheless, the study also shows that casual relationships affect the two sexes in different ways. Among boys a correlation was found between sexual relationships - casual or steady - and a high self-image and a low level of anxiety. The situation is different for girls. "Casual relationships are not beneficial for the girls," Schlier-Kretzmer says. The most meaningful finding, she says, is a correlation between casual relationships, especially casual sex, and depression, a low self-image and flawed overall mental health among girls. "Our hypothesis is that the correlation works in two directions: Girls who are in mental distress and who have a low self-image find it difficult to create lasting relationships. As a result, they turn to casual sex as a way of seeking a meaningful relationship," she says. Bookmark to del.icio.us   WHO knows? The WHO says Israel lets Gazans die in 'avoidable tragedies'. Friendly faces Google, Facebook and Yahoo heads will attend a J'lem technology summit.   1.   even academics seem to have a problem with statistics! 22:07  |  eb 25/03/08   2.   U misunderstood the finding 23:41  |  Haim R. 25/03/08   3.   Romeo and Juliet 08:18  |  Motic 26/03/08   4.   statistics and thinking 09:32  |  David 26/03/08

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