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,
by Marcia Millman.
Reprinted with
permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, ©2001. www.harpercollins.com
For info or to order this
book.
About The
Author
Marcia Millman is a professor of
sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She received her Ph.D.
in sociology from Brandeis University. She is the author of The Unkindest Cut: Life in the Backrooms of
Medicine, Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in
America, Warm Hearts and Cold Cash: The Intimate Dynamics of Families and
Money, as well as The Seven Stories of Love. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area and New York.
| Comments () >> |
 |
 |
