The Drama of Love
1 May 2007
Whenever I hear of teens falling in love, I use Romeo and Juliet as a point of reference. It helps me get over my cynicism.
I’m not sure why the story of the sixteenth century lovers who died to be together alleviates my belief that betrothals under the age of forty constitute a starter marriage. Perhaps their drama simply reminds me that people are capable of falling in love - at any age.
As we know, falling in love does not automatically result in happily ever after; again, R&J are an excellent case in point, as are Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
Apparently some people come together in order to live out, not a life of happiness, but a bitter public drama. For couples like A&K, love translates into marriage and divorce as a dance of war ‘till death do us part.’
And just when the ugliness of the A&K battle confirmed my cynicism about starter marriages (A was thirty-five when he met K who was forty), I read that a baby has been born to seventeen year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, the New Zealand star of Whale Rider!
The happy news about the new young mum failed to influence my thinking along lines of a romantic Shakespearean plot - instead, I had a reaction.
She’s too young to be a mum! And certainly too young to be married, I thought, given my thing about betrothals under the age of forty.
However, Keisha and her twenty year-old boyfriend haven’t tied the knot, but presumably they felt deeply enough about one another to want to have a baby together. That of course is conjecture because the details of their relationship have not been made public.
And I hope they’re not made public, whether it’s a blissful story, or not. Since as long as I don’t know the details, I can placate my “they’re too young” cynicism with “people are capable of falling in love - at any age.”
I wish I weren’t a skeptic about love under the age of forty, but I can’t help it. Too many people I know have had a first marriage in the first half of their life that resembles a Shakespearean tragedy.
It’s easy to fall in love, and it’s easy to have a baby. But enduring love is full of twists and turns, and it takes a level of maturity and self-awareness to commit to the challenges of an uncertain path, particularly one that is as changeable as the people involved.
