I was thinking the same thing.

I fell madly in love when I was 16 and gave my virginity to a very shy, quite, loving young man of 19.
It was his first time, but I didn't know it at the time.
He came back into my life via email about 20 months ago.
I'm now wondering if I was right to start writing to him.
It's a work in progress.
Lynne

I had my first real love at 17 instead of 16. That's when Brad and I started dating. And we've been together ever since!

I was 18 not 16 when I had my first "love" experience.....and a couple of years later we got married. It lasted 17 years and had a lot of ups and downs that's for sure. I remarried in my late 30s and have been married this time around for 15 years; falling in love in my late 30s was such a different feeling - I knew who I was, what I wanted and expected, and most of all what to really look for in a husband!

I really thought I knew it all when I was 18 - and I realize now I just had no clue.

Danita, I've been where your friend's sweetheart is - at least on some levels. After two bad marriages, when I fell in love the next time, both he and I decided why mess it up by getting married. I loved him. He loved me. We were committed to each other. That's what's important, at least to me. Then he died suddenly, so I don't know what we would have done had he lived. But I really don't think we would have married.

I grew up near a small town in western Oregon. When I was 16 I went to L.A. with my brother's wife to stay with her family for a couple of weeks. There, I met Leon. He had soft eyes and wavy dark hair. He played the guitar, sang ballads and was oh so sexy. I was in love. The music that was popular at the time was, "I can't get no satisfaction." Boy, was that predictive. After fruitlessly begging my parents to let me stay there for the summer, I came home. I pined for him. We wrote. He was drafted and went to Viet Nam. He asked me to marry him in a letter, and soon I was wearing his ring. When he got home a year later, I learned he had been living with a Vietnamese hooker while he was over there. (He and I never had sex.) I was crushed. I gave him back his ring.

At the time I bought into the idea that happily ever after was an automatic, if you were in love. I listened to all the love songs. I read love stories. I watched romantic movies. I KNEW what love was. Yeah, right. I, too, was in love with love. It was all fantasy.

Since then I learned the difference between daydream decisions, having the hots for someone and the real thing. I've learned that love includes respect, honor, consideration and compassion. I've realized that while passion can be important, if suddenly for whatever reason my husband and I can no longer engage in intimate activities, we will still love and be faithful to each other. He's proven this to me already by riding out my hot flashes with me when I can hardly tolerate being touched. I learned the value in being with someone who allows me to be myself, someone I allow to be himself. And I've learned the value of not saddling someone with "honey dos."

[ December 16, 2005, 06:57 PM: Message edited by: Vi ]

It seems like the real meaning of love eludes most of us when we are young. Some of you were blessed to get it right the first time around. The rest of us had to wallow in the mud for a while to figure it out. But the learning was good, wasn't it?

Pam, as I recall, your first marriage ended tragically. As you pulled yourself out of that, the lessons of love must have been very difficult.

I truly doubt what was felt at 16 was truly love even though to our young hearts it seemed we would just die if our feeling were not reciprecated. I was married at 18 and am not sure I knew what love really meant then either....My first husband passed awy after only three short years and it was during that difficult time in my life when I truly grew up brushed the make believe from my eyes and learned what true love really was and is still today...but before then I had some cripplng puppy love crushes going on and now my 15 year old grandson is having his firsr big crush, it is so cute to watch and enjoy it with him.

[ December 16, 2005, 08:42 PM: Message edited by: chatty lady ]

I have a little story too!

(you are saying, "right. A LITTLE story. Not from her....) But I'll try you guys...to ;make it short, I mean.

I was in 7th grade. He was in 8th. He was the new kid on the block, and I thought he was so cute...We began talking at recess. (still had those back in the day - even in 7th and 8th grade) And soon, my father was driving us to the bowling alley, and often to the Paramount Theater in Aurora. Picking us up hours later. (what a dad!!!). We went on this way for 4 years...Then I had the stupidist idea I have ever had in my entire life. At 17, it began to scare me that he would be the only one in my life for my entire life. We broke up....He cried and cried. My mother was mad at ME!!! This young man was the sweetest person, handsome, an athlete, smart, and would run from his house to mine in freezing weather along the railroad tracks for 3 miles, just to see me. He called me one night (he called EVERY night and we would talk for ever and ever - me under the covers in my bed, so my parents couldn't hear - they did anyway as my dad would say, "Jo!!! Your voice carries, I can hear every word you say! Knock it off and go to sleep!) (same dad that would come into my room in the morning and say "ROLL Out JO! Time to get crackin!!! ooohhhhh, how I hated that!!) to have me hear a new Christmas carol he had just heard....He just loved it and wanted to share it with me - "The Little Drummer Boy" Later, he went to Viet Nam. Our little town always had news about our soldiers in the front window of a store downtown....I always stopped at that window.

The last time I saw Dan, my Nichole was about 14 months old - he thought she was so cute....

Then when my mother died in 1989, Dan saw her obit in the paper and called me clear out in North Dakota - this was 16 years later. We have not stopped talking since. He has two wonderful boys by a marriage to a girl in my younger brother's class. They married about a year after I did. 1970. He now owns a couple or more of moving companies, (pretty large ones)and is still an athlete and a wonderful friend.

OOPS....BIG MISTAKE....BIG ONE!!!! Who says young love is foolish? I was foolish then and later!!!

Danita - I say - it isn't about whether they marry or not, but how they solve their conficts...Do they hit below the belt? Take cheap shots at one another? Or sit down, talk it out, and come to a reasonable conclusion? Would he run down railroad tracks for 3 miles in freezing weather? Would she? When he's down, can she bring him up? When she's down, can he bring her up? There's the test, I think.

when our oldest daughter was 16, she was a bouncy, happy go lucky honour roll student.
Then she fell 'in love' with a boy who came from a very difficult and troubled background.
And she became pregnant....

Three months after their little boy was born, they got married. And eventually through connections he got a good paying job and they had two more children, bought a house, car etc .. But they had some big difficulties to cope with because of other issues.

Then he had found a girlfriend ... and they split up. Our daughter was 22, with 3 small children, her life had to completely change again.

Nobody seen or heard from him until ten years later.

It was just after new year's, when our daughter had a phone call from one of her former in laws, saying that her former husband was in the hospital dying of pancreatic cancer.

Immediatedly she contacted him, and within the week had taken her children to meet their dad, ... she wanted healing between her two sons, daughter and their dad while there was still time. And deep hurts were healed....

Both these grandsons are excellent soccer players, i call the second one 'the dancer' when he is on the field. Through the workings of God, his soccer team had a rep. game to play, in the city where his father was in hospice care. Somebody bundled up his dad, got a wheelchair and took him to see his son dance and dance during that game. Six days later his father died....
It was our daughter who helped make his funeral arrangements....

At 16 this girl fell in love, which caused many heartaches and troubles .... on the other hand it also brought joy and an incrediable strengthening to all in our family....

[ December 17, 2005, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: norma ]

I don't have a story to add, but I couldn't resist saying to Norma that your daughter warms my heart. She is truly a wonderful person and I don't have to know her personally to make that statement. I admire her strength of character and the compassion and love she showed to this man. I know you must be very proud of her, and I bet her children are too. What a good heart!

JJ