1. Love: My investigation into "Puppy Love"

Ah, the "Roller-Coaster Ride" of "Puppy Love"...

Being in a profession where I am in constant contact with and proximity of young couples, I often look at them and think back about the "Puppy Love" experiences of my peers and myself.

And we often sigh and marvel at the intensity of experience. So what is it that makes "Puppy Love" such a strong experience?

So whilst I was invigilating, I applied myself again.

I understand "Puppy Love" as the first romantic experience that an individual encounters. Though the contingent variable here is the romantic experience of the individual, the age technically does not factor into the equation. Of course in reality, the age of the individual does play an important factor. This will be extrapolated further upon later. So for working and conceptual simiplicity, I understand an individual who is experiencing "Puppy Love" to be of an adolescent age group and also the romantic experience should be his/her first.

Firstly, I can describe the experience of being in "Puppy Love" as one of "Hypersensitivity". There is a magnificaton of emotions and this is predominantly informed and influenced by the high level of "suffering" involved in the experience.

This high level of "suffering" is in turn caused by "hyper-Confusion" and "hyper-Vulnerability". I will explain more about this later when I explore the subject-object dialectism that young lovers encounter.

Returing to the idea of high levels of "suffering", this in turn leads to corresponding high levels of "pleasure" as the "negation of suffeirng". Thus the "pleasure" that young lovers experience is in correspondence to the
"suffering" that they have to endure.

Now, I am going to apply the Kyoto school's theory of "Subject- Object Dialectism" to analyse the phenomenon.

Firstly, young lovers have little or no comprehension of themselves as objects. They hence do not see/ understand the influence upon themselves by "history". (Here, "History" is understood as the sum total of Mankind's understanding of "love" and "romantic relationships")

Since they do not understand the external influences of "history" upon them as objects, they cannot resist such influences and clearly delineate what is it that they want of a romantic relationship and what it is that "history" has informed them to "want". Thus "hyper-Confusion" ensues.

Yet, as a Subject, young lovers also experience difficulties. They are still in a stage of self-discovery thus they are not true masters of the enactment of thier wills. Also, due to thier age, they may be in underpriviliged positions in society to be enact certain wills. They are bounded then. This leads them to feel "hyper-Vulnerability" and as if they are "Flotsam in a world of Greater Fate".

Hence, the subject-object dialectism confronts young lovers very harshly and they are unable to love and experience love from the standpoint of "I-in-not-I". Due to this, they experience "hyper-Confusion" and "hyper-Vulnerability" and due to a combination of these two factors, they experience "hyper-Sensivity" and hence the Roller-Coaster Ride of "Puppy Love".