In defense of true love forever in YA

I just want to make a brief vent about this.

It irks me when I see people complaining because all the true love forever in YA isn't realistic. It reminds me of the feeling I would get when I was in a group of girls complaining about how much men suck. Maybe the men they knew sucked. But I knew men, as a whole, did not suck. Maybe not everyone is ready, or should be ready, to enter into a committed relationship as a teenager, but that doesn't mean some people aren't.

I am not defending, mind you, that it is exactly WISE to become a vampire to be with your sexy vampire lover forever. BUT. It also isn't quite fair to say that teenagers can't and don't make wise relationship choices and find their future husband or wife at a young age. In fact, have noticed there is actually a fairly high proportion of stable long-standing relationships among YA writers. Maybe there's something to that! Maybe we write YA together-forever romance well because we've actually lived it.

Not that there is anything at all wrong with having rocky relationships either, as a person, or in a book. Not at all! I just wish people wouldn't knock serious teen love as unrealistic. I got together with my boyfriend at 17 and I was VERY serious about the relationship. Very cautious, but very committed. Cautious, in fact, because I was committed. He was serious too. Of course, he was also 25 at the time. Scandal!! I'm sure to some outsiders I looked like a naive young thing and he seemed like an older dude looking for some hot young geek action, but believe me, it wasn't like that. We were very good friends with a lot of common interests, affection and respect for each other.

I'm sure if I wrote that as a novel everyone would say it was totally unreal, I should make the guy into a jerk and the whole thing into a cautionary tale of sorts, and have it end with the girl wising up and walking away.

The other reason, of course, for all the true love in YA, is that it's told from a teenage POV and even if the relationship would be doomed later, the MC isn't going to think that at the time. Of course, we could all end our books with the breakup instead of the happily ever after, but how much fun would that be? -_-;;

I think some of the source of this ire is actually how many bad, rushed, and even unhealthy true-love-forever relationships are in YA. But that isn't the fault of the basic premise. Just the execution.