Love, Middle School Style

So, Jacob has his first middle school crush situation.  I'll spare you the details, but I need to work through this a bit, so bear with me.  Jacob has had a couple "girlfriends" over the years, including the girl he gave a Christmas gift to in second grade, and a girl he was sort of with in fourth grade.  But middle school is the real deal, and he's been hoping to find a girlfriend for a bit now.  I keep telling him there should be no rush because it's not that great at his age anyway (I mean, who wants their parents to drive them to a date?).  But there's this girl...and she likes basketball.

Long story short, modern middle school love isn't that much different than old school middle school love.  There's still the go-between friend, and instead of the note with the "Check yes or no", it's awkward text messages.  In the end, while this girl admitted she likes him, she's not allowed to date.  He's aiming to be more than friends but not "boyfriend-girlfriend", but then he's so nervous about the whole thing he could barely talk to her after all the text messages went down.  So, it's definitely not smooth sailing.  Ironically, he's telling me how he doesn't know what he's doing with all of this stuff, and I'm trying to give him advice that he's not listening to.  Ahh, typical.

It's definitely made me think a lot about being in sixth grade and how young love felt back then.  I had crushes on boys--most especially one boy--from the time I was in Kindergarten.  It never really went beyond a couple kisses on the cheek behind the bookshelf (haha) but by fifth grade we did end up being "official", with sitting next to each other at lunch, hand grazes in the pew during chapel, and one surprise kiss on the cheek that I can recall.  When I was in sixth grade, we almost got to the point of going on a date (to a Milli Vanilli concert, of all things!), but he broke up with me partway through the year to go out with a new girl in the class, who also happened to be quite developed (and I found out later, quite advanced in the physical realm)!  I'm not sure if he was the beneficiary of any of that, mind you, but it didn't last long and we did sort of get back together at some point, for a while at least.  I continued to have a crush on him at various times right through ninth grade, when we happened to share an earth science class.

When I think back on it now, it all seems a little silly, but those feelings were very real back then.  The getting together was euphoric and the breakup was crushing.  I'm trying to keep that in mind before I dismiss Jacob and his situation.  At the same time, I'm trying to keep him level-headed about it--that yes, it's cool, but you need to take it slow and keep things chill.  There's no need to rush the physical stuff (and I feel like there's more pressure for that now), and without the actual clearance to "date", there's only so much that goes into a relationship.  I warned him to not get too pushy in getting her to commit, because that could turn her off.  Just get to know her better and see where it goes.  In the end, I guess I'm just happy he's still willing to talk to me about it, so I'm trying to be as careful with what I say as I can.

I had this realization the other night that watching your child go through relationships is complicated.  On one hand, you don't want to see them get hurt, so you could hope that their sixth grade love is THE one.  They'll never know heartbreak, and they'll have one heck of a love story.  But when you think about it, so much learning and even fun happens through the dating process.  Yes, there's heartbreak, and it sucks.  But even that is a learning experience.  What kind of adult would you be, and how unprepared for life, if you never feel the hurt caused by losing love?  Whether you're the one causing the loss, or someone else is, there are learning experiences on either side.  And in between heartbreaks, there can be a lot of fun!  Not just the physical stuff, but the carefree dates and the excitement of new love.  You learn so much about thoughtfulness and caring for someone else more than yourself.  You learn how to get close to someone emotionally, and how to work through disagreements.  You make mistakes and do it better next time.  You learn what you like and don't like in a partner.  For all of the "I kissed dating goodbye" stuff I read in college (and that guy came out and said he was wrong, by the way), I strongly feel that dating teaches you a ton.  I'm not saying it should be taken lightly or done frivolously--I think if both parties are at the same level, maybe some of that is okay, particularly at Jacob's age--but if you do it as a conscious journey to find your way to forever, it's a valuable experience.  And I'd hate to see Jacob deprived of that by finding his true love at age 11.  Maybe the perfect scenario is to find your true love early, separate and see the world, then find your way back to each other as older, wiser humans.  Who knows?

Tweenhood and teenhood are no joke.  We're going to be doing a lot of learning together as we go through this process, and I'm admittedly terrified.  But for all the fighting we do, I think there's still a degree of trust there, and I hope he'll continue to talk to us (though based on recent experiences,  probably me) about the tough stuff as he goes through this process.  No one loves him more than us, so if he needs an advocate, we're here for him.  We're getting closer to the "spectator" role in parenthood, and it's not easy, but for now we'll be as helpful as we can with guiding him without depriving him of the very important learning experiences he'll need as he gets older.  I can't say we'll do it well, but we'll sure as heck try.