Love: simply a four letter word with about a billion ways to define it. So cliché, yet so true. With so many definitions, how do we as teenagers perceive such complex emotions, ideas, and behaviors?

Northtown’s definitions of love:

“Love: the feeling when you think you can’t live without someone because you care more for them than you do for yourself,” senior Hanna Anderson said.

“Love is when you want to spend every second of every moment with them… no matter what they’ve done and having that sick feeling in your stomach when you can’t,” senior Tiffany McGaugh said.

We are always told that we are too young to fall in love and that we can’t possibly know what love is. But with so many definitions that are so different, who truly knows what love is? Regardless of age, who can say that they know the true definition of why we feel the way we do about another person.

So what is love? Is love an idea? Is it an emotion? Is love an object? Is there different degrees to love such as infatuation, love, and unconditional love? If so, what are the differences between them? The idea of love has to be one of the world’s most difficult questions to answer.

In my perspective, the teenage perspective, we aren’t truly able to know what love is. What we are sure about is what we like and what we want in a significant other.

Simply put, we look for what we lack. When looking for a relationship, we tend to look for someone who can complement our best qualities and make up for our worst. We look for someone who is passionate about the same things we are, but then again someone who is stronger in areas that we may not be so comfortable with.

Whether or not we would like to admit it, teenagers love the idea of being in love and will go to any measure in order to find what it is we are looking for. We put ourselves out there with high hopes that someone will come along and sweep us off of our feet. We’re actually pretty fearless because when that relationship doesn’t work, we our out on the prowl once again to find our prince or princess.

Why do we feel so obligated to find the “picture perfect” relationship? Why do we, as teenagers, make love so important to obtain? Because for us teenagers, a relationship is a false sense of security.

Being in a relationship makes us feel wanted, appreciated, and accepted on a level different from what our friends and family are able to offer us. And that is what we crave out of every relationship we put ourselves in.

But what signifies true love within a relationship? How do we know when it’s time to tell your significant other those very important three words? And once they’re said, how does that alter the relationship?