My teenage son (sophomore in high school) is going through his first heartbreak. He's been "courting" this girl since junior high, and she's been a close friend. But last week she and another boy announced they were "going steady" and have become unseparable. My son is crushed. This other boy has never been part of their social scene, and she is thought to have pursued him, rather than the other way around.
So far as I know, my boy and this girl were never sexually active, and I suspect my son is still a virgin, although I doubt if the girl is. He's been a real gentleman, very attentive, and has given her some very thougthful gifts. He feels that she should have at least talked with him about her decision before going public with it. How do I help my son get over this?
What is he getting over? It doesn't sound like the relationship he actually had with her has ended. They're still good friends, presumably, so it's not as though he's mourning the loss of a relationship.
I think he's probably struggling with something else. The first is his personal standing with his peer group. Whether he had an intimate relationship with this girl, if his circle of friends saw them as a "couple", he now feels humiliated and publically rejected. He's probably also feeling somewhat betrayed that his "gentlemanly respect" (the absence of sexual initiative) was not honored. Both of these emotions, while lamentable, are nevertheless misguided.
Despite their long association and undoubted fondness for each other, he and this girl were probably never suited as romantic partners. For one thing, he's been supplying her with all the validation she could want in exchange for nothing but the appearance of a more steadfast commitment. The other boy, by contrast, was desirable precisely because his attention was directed elsewhere. At this age, girls are particularly needful of approval from their female peer group. Your son's continued attention was not validating, inasmuch as it has been constant since before her sexual desirability became a benchmark among her girlfriends. To prove herself sufficiently attractive to her peer group, she needed to land an "unattainable" boyfriend, with an explicitly romantic dimension to it.
And your son is going through similar pressure from his friends; the loss of the girl is a demerit to his virility. That said, he wasn't really fooling anyone, anyway, so its better he's now available to other girls who need to notch their own belts.
My advice to him is to become something of a social butterfly, date outside his regular crowd, and remain as indifferent to outcomes as someone overflowing with testosterone can be. Seriously, he should give his attention to girls he's not particularly interested in; other girls will take notice, and their instinct to capture the flag will assert itself. If he plays his cards right, and withholds the desired validation, he'll regain his stature among his peer group, and make that interloping other boy envious that he isn't free to play the field as adeptly as your son. His childhood girlfriend may also have a care as to how thoughtlessly she treated him, but he really shouldn't do anything to minimize that. He should always be friendly, happy to see her, etc., but otherwise too overcommitted to give her any of the validation she took for granted in years past. If nothing else, it will be good practice for the next object of his affection.
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