Everyone dreads Valentine’s Day. The lonely prepare to ask someone out, and if not, sit and weep, and the couples frenzy to give their significant other something meaningful. It’s a holiday everyone worries over and is either a glorious or a depressing day. Participants of Valentine’s Day range from elementary school children to senior citizens, with millions of Americans across the country falling in love with their supposed “one and only.” However, with such an extensive age range of lovestruck people, what age range is the best for Valentine’s Day?
Right off the bat, we can single out the younger people from having the best relationships, mainly those in school and especially those in middle or elementary school, due to their lack of sexual awareness and the fact that they haven’t even hit puberty yet. According to Brittany Loggins, writer for VeryWellMind, Adolescents of 12-18 years typically cannot develop what is usually classified as a healthy relationship due to their heightened sexual desires and brand-new experiences in this new plane of experiences. This age range also sees an influx in experimenting with one’s interests, and since many adolescents act impulsively, the person they end up asking may not be the best for them. Although relationships tend to stabilize when you enter upperclassmen years of high school and post-secondary education, a fellow student at Quartz Hill High School, Emma Gov, states, “I believe that the best age to start a relationship is when you’re just starting high school so ages 15-16. These ages are the time when you start to mature and realize what you want in a relationship,”. However many experts still agree that the best age for a meaningful relationship starts at the surprising age of 40.
A study by Janina Larissa Bühler, Samantha Krauss, and Ulrich Orth at the National Library of Medicine shows that relationship quality tends to decline overall in the adolescent and young adulthood ranges, and satisfaction usually hits rock bottom at ages 39-40. However, the study reveals that beyond age 40, many participants in Bühler’s study tend to report higher satisfaction with their relationships, peaking at age 65. This could be because those in middle adulthood often have significantly more relationship support and general life satisfaction, as reported by Mercedes Gómez-López, Carmen Viejo, and Rosario Ortega-Ruiz under the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. Since older people generally have more life experience and have a fully developed mental state, it is apparent that they’d have the best relationships.
Love isn’t something that can be separated into right and wrong. It isn’t tangible, and no amount of scientific experimenting will ever create anything concrete that would fit everyone in this world. Love is subjective, and you don’t have to wait til 40 to develop the perfect loving relationship. Go out there and experiment; find your own evidence as to what age is the best on Valentine’s Day!
