Melly, you are a young woman with amazing wisdom. Even asking this question shows the quality of the inner voice with which you have been gifted. If it all seems more complicated than you thought it was when you were a young teenager, that might be because it really is.
The hard part about this is that you will, throughout your lifetime, experience this feeling of caring deeply for another person (love), and you will also experience the feeling of very strong physical attraction to another person (lust or sex). You have been taught that love is good and sex is (at least in most circumstances) bad. That is simply wrong. You might love the way your mother's spaghetti sauce fills the house with wonderful smells, and also feel terribly hungry if you haven't eaten in awhile. The two responses are both parts of the same thing, and neither of them is good or bad.
You will, for the next several decades, experience physical drives that are, at their root, part of our natural drive to reproduce as a species. You will run into some attractive person, and you will be strongly drawn to them. You may call this set of feelings, "falling in love," and it may be the beginnings of that. However, it may also be quite simply that the person in your view is HOT. You won't think about it. In fact, thinking about it may just make it all worse. In the throes of sexual attraction, your thinking skills are not at their best. Your entire body is wired to respond sexually. Every muscle, nerve, and skin cell is going to pull you toward the object of attraction. Your body is going to be flooded with hormones, all priming you for the act of reproduction. You are going to want that other person every minute of every day with every fiber of your being. It is the way that it is supposed to work. It is not a bad thing. It is what keeps our species going; the same exact force that keeps all species going on this planet. And if the other half of the equation sees you as attractive too, then those same drives are going to be at work for him as well.
We tend, as adults, to protect children and young adolescents from the realities of sex. Oh, we put it on display everywhere -- movies, music, advertising, but we send our children the message that they are not inherently sexual beings, and we tell them that sex is only acceptable inside of very carefully defined and restrictive parameters. We've gotten to be a very modern and free-thinking people except when it comes to sex, and especially when it comes to women and sex. There, we still insist that the only right way to enjoy sex is inside of the ceremonial, legal, social institution of marriage, and then, only in very limited and constrained ways. We lie to our young people, and especially our daughters, and tell them that sex is bad, and that the only reason to have sex is to have children. It isn't so. There are plenty of humans, and it is likely that there will be plenty of humans going forward. Like your mother's spaghetti sauce, there are many levels of enjoyment to be had from your capacity to be sexual.
The princess paradigms; fairy tale stories of white knights and charming princes who will one day ride into your life with roses and chocolates and make everything magically wonderful are lies. Melly, in the realm of human relatedness, there are no princes or knights, and you are only partly the princess aspect of yourself. Do not fall for the fairy tale. Live your life as fully as you may, and that includes the sexual part of your life. No less than any young man, you are entitled to explore and enjoy your sexuality. When you believe you are falling in love, and when that overwhelming urge to give yourself fully to someone leads you to want to be sexual, it is fine. Explore. Protect yourself as necessary. Avoid diseases and abusers and unwanted pregnancies, but explore. You need not make a lifetime commitment in order to enjoy your own sexual nature. You do not have to bear a child because you chose to indulge that part of your humanness. You do not have to choose only those partners that fit the stereotypical Barbie and Ken models we set before you.
Falling in love, happens when it does. Better to have met lots of people and discovered what you like and don't like. When we wrap love and sex up together, as if they were one thing, we up the ante terribly. We force choices that may not be good for the long haul. We encourage early pairing before people have had a chance to learn and grow and discern their own natures and their own desires. "Saving it for marriage," may sound like a wholesome idea, but the fact is that your sexual drives will make that very difficult. And if that social rule, and all that goes with it, creates needless pressure to choose a mate before you are ready, there is a very real chance that you will choose badly.
Be brave and strong. Know your own heart and your own mind. The world is not always kind to women who choose paths different from the accepted norms. You will find that some will judge you harshly. Do not listen to them. You are good and whole and beautiful. Your body is your possession, as is your heart. You do not apologize for eating or sleeping or dancing or breathing. Neither should you apologize for the sensual pleasures that you allow yourself, or for enjoying a wide and varied world of those pleasures. There is no right or wrong way to be a sexual being. Do not harm yourself, and do not harm others. That should be your guiding principle. It is as simple as that. Really live.
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