tenses in a sentence - plain/ている/ていた/た

[fiasco]

Hello!

I'm new here.

I have a question about japanese tenses in a sentence.

大人っぽい二人に憧れるだけだった

In the sentence above 憧れる is in plain form, but what if it was 憧れている or 憧れていた or 憧れた? Would it make any difference?


Thank you for any help

[Reft]

Interesting question, I'd also like to know the answer. だった obviously dictates the tense of the sentence I'm unsure what impact if any modifying 憧れる　would have.

Using the present and past tenses seem to scan naturally, and the continuous past and present forms seem less likely - but that's just conjecture based on experience rather than a deep seated knowledge of grammar I'm afraid.

I'd love for someone to give a fully comprehensible explanation as opposed to my inane ramblings.

[fiasco]

Well, personally I thought that 憧れていた would be the most natural out of these four, because I considered the "action of admiring" to be an on-going process that took place in the past (was+~ing).
But it looks like I was wrong.
And I get really confused about all these tenses, especially when I try to write a longer story in japanese.

Anyway, thank you for you reply, I almost thought no one is going to answer my post^^