[ciyobtmb] Bonding relationship age

At what age does someone become psychologically and biologically capable of bonding to another person in the bonding of "love" as between two consenting adults?  We assume that other forms of bonding, such parent-child bonding, are psychologically or biologically distinguishable from the bonding between lovers.

The inspiration is a hypothetical scenario of child molestation in which both involved parties claim -- despite one being underage -- that the relationship is consensual and "loving".  Society typically dismisses such claims as illusions, that the molester exploited a power difference to induce a form of bonding perhaps analogous to parent-child that presents an illusion to the younger participant of bonding between lovers.  Is there scientific validity of this dismissal? Is it scientifically testable whether a given relationship is the bonding between lovers as opposed to some other form of bonding?

Tangentially, if such a test exists, it would be interesting to see the results of that test on adult couples.  I cynically hypothesize that the bonding in many marriages is that of significant power difference, indistinguishable from bonding between parent and child, or even Stockholm syndrome.

Hypothesize that the ability to love, indistinguishable from the love practiced by consenting adults, can occur younger than the age of consent.  If true, this forces a difficult question: why should a society, by the letter of laws prohibiting child molestation, prohibit someone from being in a loving relationship?  What underlying principles support such laws?

The cynical explanation is that laws prohibiting child molestation are not about preventing harm to the child, but to give certain people "official" power and influence over a child's mating decisions.  This helps maintain social structures, especially social barriers, from one generation to the next.

Another reasonable explanation is that while a child may be psychologically capable of participating in a loving relationship, relationships often do end very painfully, and a child is not yet psychologically capable of enduring a break-up, which will cause a trauma of a different and more harmful nature than that experienced by an adult experiencing a similar break-up.  At what age does someone become psychologically capable of recovering from a painful break-up?

Tangentially, I cynically hypothesize that if there is a test to determine if someone is mature enough to recover from a break-up, many adults will fail that test, so legally ought not be allowed to be in relationships for the same reason a child isn't: a nanny state protecting its citizens from harm.

Whether a person is able to recover from a break-up might have nothing to do with psychological maturity but instead the psychological support structures around the person.  A child's psychological support structures are dominated by the parents and others with "official" power and influence, people whom the child had no choice in selecting.  In contrast, an adult's psychological support structure is dominated by friends, people of the adult's choosing, people that the adult can choose to disassociate from if the adult feels they are not helpful.

If a child is in a relationship that his or her support structure disapproves of, the child may receive poor psychological support in the event of a break-up because the support structure has been treating with contempt the child's rebellion against their "official" control and influence over the child's mating decisions.  Thus, it is the support structure that exacerbates, even arguably causes, the harm of the break-up, which is hugely ironic given that the harm of an child-molestation relationship is typically pinned on the molester.

Nevertheless, despite this irony, it does remain logical for a nanny state protecting its residents from harm to disallow people locked into support structures which have too much power to harm them from participating in relationships.