Can someone be truly in love at sixteen?

Sure they can be “in love.” That’s not the same as real mature lasting love.

Absolutely you can be in love but it is important to know that by the time you hit 30 you will have changed a lot. I really came into my own from 27–30 as did most of my friends. A long term love will have to weather a lot of changes. For this reason I advise to hold off on a committed relationship (marriage) until at least the mid 20’s.

Nope- don’t think teens can really be in love.

Wish I had a link to the study, but there was one done on teens “in love.” The parts of the brain dealing with obsession were very active… Which makes sense that a high schooler can’t take their mind off their love.

I do think teens can grow to love someone over time, which would be demonstrated in high school loves marrying each other years later.

In your case I think you should tell him how you feel, but take it slow to keep things from being awkward.

It’s possible – heck, I thought I was in love when I was 16. Like @Dog said, though, people change a lot through their teens and twenties. I look back on my teen relationships and think that, yeah, I was in love. But love itself changes as you get older. I wouldn’t be satisfied with the same kind of love these days. I’m sure people older than I could say the same thing about the love they felt at 30 as compared to the love they feel at 50.

In your case, I’d tell him how you feel – but you might want to avoid using the word “love”. It’s a new relationship and you’re both young, so that word might scare him off – it scares off a lot of men who are a lot older than he is, so it might be better not to use that particular word yet.

No. My sixteen year old self was nothing like my 24 year old self, who was nothing like my thirty-something self, which is when I finally started to grow up. At sixteen, you haven’t the life experience, the education, the relationships, to even know what’s out there and what you want. Enjoy it for what it is – infatuation, hormones, affection, whatever, and don’t make the mistake of rushing headlong into tying yourself down.

Of course they can. However, it is important to remember that love is not a static thing. It changes grows and matures over time. Who/what one loves at 16 is highly likely to be quite different from who/what one will love at 40.

I’m going to answer your question with a question. Firstly, can we define love?

Maybe they could, but I won’t be sending in my RSVP for their wedding in 6 years. At least not their wedding to each other.

No.

@littlekori You’ll find there are different types of love as you go along life’s way. Two weeks is still the initial crush type. Enjoy it and talk with your partner, but don’t rush it or push it too fast.

Sure. But it’s really not likely, when I was in my teens I got fooled more than twice, I thinking I was truly in love. Love is just an imaginary thing anyways, a folie a deux if you’re lucky. If you’re truly in love now, I feel sorry for you because it takes maturity to make it work. Aim for true love for your mid to late 20’s.

There’s this feeling of “in-loveness” and it fills you up when you think about your lover. You can’t really see straight. You obsess. Your life revolves around this person. Most people call this a crush, but I think that makes it too much smaller than what it is.

There is in-loveness with experience and there’s in-loveness without experience. When you don’t have experience, you don’t recognize the feeling and you can’t know if it is the kind of in-loveness that will lead to something more or the kind of in-loveness that is mostly fantasy.

You don’t have experience and so, strictly speaking, noone—not you and not us—can tell you what the feeling is. Anyone here who tells you what it is shouldn’t have done that. It’s your feeling; not ours.

I think the thing to do is to not judge it and not name it. I’m sure you have ideas about what happens if you are in love, but I suggest you forget those ideas. Instead, you should focus on this relationship, as it is, now. You should follow your heart, but keep your mind watching over you, too, so you don’t do anything really stupid.

It doesn’t matter whether you are in love or not. Labeling it is for fairy tales and for talking to your girlfriends. But fairy tales and girl friends don’t know you and they don’t know what is happening between you and the person you wonder if you love.

You are there. And all you know is that you are strongly drawn to this boy, and that you think about him all the time, and you daydream and fantasize about a future, maybe even with houses with picket fences and dogs and children. But one this is sure, he’s not your shining prince. He’s just a boy.

And if we were putting on a production of “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” we’d have to add “and you’ve had so many boys before… In very many ways…. he’s just one more.”

Sorry I’m going on for so long. I hope you’re still with me.

What I hope you will do is to enjoy your feeling. Don’t worry if it’s love or not. That really doesn’t matter. You’ll find out in a while what it is. Right now, think about him and day dream about him and date him and feel your feelings. And if you want to say you love him, then say it. I will say one thing—if you tell someone you love him too soon, you run the risk of freaking him out. But you have to make that call. I’m not there. Maybe your boyfriend will understand.

Still, it is incredibly exciting to tell someone you love them. Doing it for the first time is an incredible rush. You may be disappointed in the result, but really, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are being true to your feelings of the moment, and learning the consequences of that truth.

However, love can make you lose your good judgment. If he offers you alcohol or other drugs, I wouldn’t take them and I would seriously revise my view of him. If he wants to have sex with you, I would also say no. Not because I think sex is bad, but because I think it is too soon. You don’t know enough about relationships yet to be able to enter into a sexual relationship. Sex can really change things, and really mess up relationships if it is too soon—before you have established a solid understanding and appreciation for each other. I mean appreciation of personality, not body or looks.

Of course they can. But, as others have pointed out, love changes as you mature and it’s extremely rare for such young love to last into adulthood.

That said, I have a cousin who met and began dating a guy when they were 14 and 16, and now they’re 31 and 33, married, have a house, a baby, a dog and a cat, and are every bit as happily in love as they were as kids. They’re definitely the exception rather than the rule, but… anything’s possible.

I think it depends on the two teens involved and their personalities. If they’re aware of what real love is then YES i think it IS POSSIBLE TOTALLY.
my gran met my grandad when she was 16, they married, had kids and never divorced.gran died a few years ago and she died with gramps holding her hand.As long as two people know the true meaning of love, and the different stuff needed for it, i think age and time doesn’t matter at all.
XXX

When my parents met and married, my dad was 18 and my mother was 16. They were married in Kentucky. Their marriage lasted 54 years, until my dad died.

Is this the exception to every rule in the book? Probably, but it does happen.

Its shear love and dedication on the part of both partners, to make a marriage last.

Theirs did.

@john65pennington sounds a bit like my grandparents… sigh. i hope one day I’ll get to meet someone whom i can spend the rest of my life happily with.
WISHING YOU FELLOW FLUTHERERS THE SAME… MWAH! XXX