Dialectic Essay: Are Teenagers Capable of Loving Intensely?

IntroductionLove between two teenagers refers to the chemical, emotional and psychological phenomena commonly described as love, but also that is overused to the point of lacking a truly definitive definition. Intense love is nothing more than a prolonged feeling of love that adds a whiff of compulsion into the mix. Compulsion is what skewers what would otherwise be known as sound common sense.Thesis & ArgumentTeenagers are unable to feel real love because they are not emotionally mature enough to feel it.

Objection to argumentEmotional maturity does not have a done-by date, and many people are never emotionally mature. Many people have multiple partners and feel love intensely for all of them. Others have trouble mustering love for just one partner and go through their life without ever feeling that they have had love. How could a person with no experience of love ever compare to a teenager who feels it? Love is also not something that is specifically guided by emotional maturity. It is true that an emotionally mature person may not be so swept along by emotion and will be better equipped to deal with intense love, but emotional maturity is not a prerequisite for love.Counter argument to the objectionEmotional immaturity is more common in younger people and so the feeling of real love is impossible.

There may be older people who are emotionally immature, but that does not mean that all or most teenagers are emotionally mature. It actually agrees with the idea that emotional maturity within younger people is less likely. A teenager may grow into a person who is emotionally mature, but an emotionally mature older person is not going to grow into a love struck teenager.Counter argument to the counter argumentPeople often realize their own opinion on love through what they learn from the first time they have their heart broken. Many people meet their first love in their teens and do not feel heartbreak until their late twenties and thirties.

This would make love a situational-specific endeavor and not age-specific. Therefore, even though there are more emotionally immature teenagers, this does not mean that they cannot truly feel love. There is nothing that says their first impression with love is the one that they keep throughout their lives (even if they do not stay with the same partner all their lives).Final and resounding argumentGeneralization such as this is always flawed because there are too many factors at play. A person with Aspergers may become emotionally mature at the age of ten, and there are plenty of people who are emotionally immature up into their sixties.

There are some people who appreciate love the first time they have it, whether they are in their teens or not, and there are people who never truly understand the meaning of love and that may be due to their first experience (or lack of), or they may even have come from a very unloving family. Generalization is the biggest flaw in this argument.