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There are a lot of misconceptions about young people and love. No matter what society says, your feelings and experiences of love in romantic relationships are valid and important.
Look through the flip cards below to see how we bust a whole heap of myths about young people and love:
Not true.
When you experience love as a young person, you learn about your desires and your capacity for intimacy. You are learning what it means to care very deeply for someone in a whole new way. This period of openness and discovery is why many people still think about their first loves decades later.
Not true.
Some people will be in love for a lifetime, while others may only be in love for a few months. There’s certainly no rule for how long romantic love should last for it to be considered important or special. As we grow and change, sometimes our relationships and our feelings towards them will too and that’s okay.
Not true.
People often remember their first love as this relationship symbolises a really important time in their lives when they experienced new emotions and ways of feeling, as well as discovering new things about themselves. They learnt what it was like to care deeply for another person. People will often hold on to these experiences and lessons and use them to inform their future relationships.
Firstly, what is ‘real’ love anyway? We all have different ideas about love so what’s considered ‘real’ love for one person, may not be considered the same for another.
You may be told by adults around you that your brain is still developing, and that’s true. However, the more instinctive, basic emotions are already there - this includes love. While you may not know what to do with these kinds of emotions, or may find it tricky to fully understand them, the love you feel for others is still real and important. Don’t listen to people when they try to brush it off as “puppy love”.
Today, it’s really common for young people to have romantic relationships with people online. They will talk to their online partners about stuff that’s really important to them and will spend a lot of time video calling or facetiming them. It’s possible to develop strong feelings for someone you’ve met online, and these feelings may involve romantic love. So, there’s no reason why we can’t still call love “love” when it’s passing through a screen.
Some people choose to be in monogamous relationships (a romantic relationship with only one other person), while others prefer to have consensual non-monogamous relationships.
This can mean: