First Love
by Marcia Millman
Part One: Escape
The story of First Love revolves around two basic themes:
separating from our parents and establishing our own identity. These
challenges are never totally resolved, and they affect all our love
choices, but our first experience of romantic love is especially
tied to our need to separate from our parents.
For example, you may choose a lover from a different world, or
one your parents don't approve of, as a way of helping you move away
from your parents' world and their assumptions. just asserting your
sexuality and becoming intimate with someone from outside the family
already moves you some distance away from the confines of your
home.
Some people deal with their fears of separating by finding a
parental substitute: perhaps an older or idealized figure. And
others make a choice that avoids or minimizes the break: they find a
partner who keeps them tied into their childhood worlds -- a person
chosen by their parents or one who grew up in similar
circumstances.
Separating from our parents and finding our own identity are
closely intertwined because the only way to form our own identities
is to question our parents' values. Growth comes from reexamining
the beliefs and behaviors we grew up with. You are not exactly like
your parents, and adolescence is usually the time when young people
need to recognize that difference and become the person they want to
be. If you don't examine the values you grew up with, you lose the
opportunity to grow beyond what you were given by your parents.
If you choose a partner whose childhood was just like yours --
someone your parents might have chosen for you -- you are entering
into something like an old-fashioned arranged marriage. It's
possible that your parents might have chosen someone good for you --
most parents would try. And it's not necessary for you to pick
someone your parents don't like in order to separate from them. But
if you never question their values and assumptions, and you let them
decide (directly or indirectly) who your partner will be, you are
passing up the opportunity to grow and develop your own
identity.
In our culture, which stresses individual freedom, an adolescent
is expected to "find" his or her own identity as part of maturing.
But some adolescents find this frightening, and many others are
inhibited or made to feel guilty by parents who never gave them
permission to grow away.
Permission to Separate
By permission I mean that parents must allow their
children to become independent and different, and eventually to have
a life that does not have their parents at the center of it. It's
painful for most parents to see their babies finally fly away from
the nest. But good parents prepare for this all along -- always
letting their children separate from them when they are ready and
able, always letting their children become their own persons. It
happens right from the start, when the little toddler is taking her
first steps -- which will eventually lead her away.
It's a delicate process, not only because it's painful for the
parents, but also because the child has mixed feelings about
separating as well. But parents who don't allow their children to
separate are giving them the following message: "Your independence
from me and your happiness being away from me, or with somebody
else, hurts me and does me harm." This is not the kind of message
that encourages a child to be happy.
If your parents didn't give you permission to separate, you must
find someone else -- a peer or a parental surrogate -- who will help
you feel that leaving them is allowed.
The Continuous Self
All of this enters into the equation when we pick our first loves
or subsequent loves. And there's an additional element. One of the
reasons we need love is that we need someone to share our lives. We
all need someone not only to feel less alone but also because we
need a sense of continuity -- the feeling that someone has been with
us all of our lives and has shared our experiences. People who
haven't shared their lives with someone often feel a loss of
themselves, because there's no one who reflects their own
existence.
In childhood, we experience that continuity by sharing our lives
with our parents; in adulthood, it is usually a partner who fills
those needs, although it may also be friends or relatives. This is
why people who don't have partners often have a harder time
recovering from the death of their parents. When their parents die,
they have lost the people who remembered them all their lives.
Finally, a first lover and later loves help us to solidify our
identities after childhood because it is now they who reflect our
existence -- apart from our parents -- they are the ones who confirm
what we have experienced. When adolescents have a hard time breaking
away from overpowering parents, they often fall in love with someone
"unsuitable" from their parents' point of view, because they need
support to move offshore. Others pick someone older and more
experienced, in order to feel safe making the break away from home.
What they are really doing is picking a parental substitute -- which
may not be obvious to them because their lover doesn't look or act
at all like their parents.
Making the Break
Breaking away from parents is played out in movies like
Titanic and Dirty Dancing, and in part this is why
adolescent girls watch these movies over and over. The girl is drawn
to the story of a boy from the other side of the tracks who will
rescue her from the control of powerful parents: a boy who will love
and protect her as much as a parent would -- even sacrificing his
own life so she might live.
 This
article was excerpted from the book The Seven
Stories of Love, ©2001,
by Marcia Millman. Reprinted with permission of
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers.
www.harpercollins.com
For
info or to order this book.
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