intense relationships when young causing long term damage?

[locolady]

Had an interesting conversation with a relatively new friend last night and we discussed that we both thought having really intense relationships when young (teens and early twenties) seem to cause some long term damage...in terms of self-esteem, jealousy, fear of rejection etc.

 

Being in that turmoil of love and hate, of dependence and struggling to understand such overwhelming feelings when young seem to have set the patterns for our future relationships and general self-esteem issues.

 

Just two coincidentally similar experiences or perhaps a contributing factor?

 

Thoughts?

[whes]

I think it'd be the same as with any intense experience you might have as a child. Some experiences have a more noticeable effect, like a rotten school experience making you super shy, or an intense/bad relationship making you distrustful of future SOs.

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Anything that has caused major turmoil and distress can have long-term emotional damage, no matter how old you are. Lots of forty-somethings are permanently scarred by the breakdown of their marriage.

[Jelina]

I agree with the original poster but I agree with the above comments also. Any relationship that negatively affects you, no matter what you're age is will leave you scarred. But I do think that a person is more prone to have more negative experiences and deal with worst partners when they are young due to the fact that they are not experienced, don't really know what they want, and will stay in the relationship.

[Notreadyet87]

I think so... Well it's like any traumatic experience that you go through--you always remember it... Some people allow these experiences to have a LARGE effect in their decisions in the future, and in ways they allow these experiences to have a negative affect in how they look at certain things. Others allow these experiences to have a positive affect in how they look at things, and thus they are able to learn from them, and become better...

With relationships it's similar. I know men who always had bad luck with ladies when they were young, and then they became bitter about women when they got older--the bitterness didn't go away. I know other men who had bad luck with ladies when they were young, but as they got older they realized that they were making bad decisions in women and that's why ithappened, and they got older made better decisions and kept a postiive outlook on things.

In other words, it's really YOU. You have to let the damage turn into something good. Learn from relationship mistakes, and instead of letting those mistakes be a barrier for other relationships let those mistakes be a learning guide.

I've made so many mistakes in this relationship. And unfortunately I do think that's it probably caused long term damage for my bf...

But for me, it's made me reevaluate myself, and other things and I now know what I want, what I need to do, and so on...

[enchanted771]

There is also a problem with chosing the right kind of guy. Some guys can have you blind sided thinking they were this nice guy, when all along they were misrepresenting themselves. I tolerate alot. My sister wont tolerate nothing. But I seemed to think alot of stuff that wasnt okay, really was. I should have seen alot of red flags but I didnt. Like the reason women kept bailing??? hmmmm.