DATING
To DATE or NOT to DATE … that is the question.
My first boyfriend.
Prior to seventh grade, I’d had lots of crushes, but they had never been reciprocated in the same way. Or we were too young, and it was just kind of silly, playing on the playground…things like that. But in seventh grade <dramatic pause> that’s when everything changed. That is when, in my school, it appeared that boys started to get a little more brave about telling girls that they liked them. And in our very small town, this is around the age where we started to go to the roller rink together – unsupervised. On Friday night parents would drop off their kids for several house, and there was a lot of “who’s dating who” at the roller rink. So this is when I had my first “boyfriend”.
Based on this experience, as well as several subsequent boyfriends AND the experience of many of my clients and friends… I have the following advice for you.
These are the questions that I want you to ask yourself when you are considering “dating” someone.
DATING Question #1
Can I look this person in the eye while I’m talking to them?
Ah, I know it’s a little scary, right? But in my first “relationship,” I would only sit NEXT to the guy because I was too nervous to actually sit across from him and talk to him. I would hold his hand and we would sit next to each other… but have an ACTUAL conversation where we looked each other in the eye? That was not happening. And I’m telling you THAT is NOT a relationship. You may be thinking…”Oh, we text each other all the time.” Still not the same. Talking on the phone is ALSO not the same. I talked on the phone with boyfriends quite a bit… but when it came face to face, all of a sudden, there was zero communication. We would write notes too, lol. These things are all fun… talking on the phone, texting, writing notes… they’re fun, they’re not bad. But #truthbomb If you cannot sit across from the person and have an intelligent conversation, you are NOT ready to date them.
I guarantee you.
DATING Question #2
Do you feel like you can be yourself around this person?
It’s a tricky time in life. Teens and tweens are still figuring out who they want to be. So much of who we become is influenced by who we hang around. So it is difficult to know… am I becoming a different person because I WANT to become a different person or because I’m hanging around with this person? It’s the chicken or the egg problem right? But you also KNOW when you’re comfortable.
SIDENOTE: If you don’t know – or can’t feel when you are comfortable … or you NEVER feel comfortable … you need to work on that FIRST, before you start dating someone.
Ask yourself “Do I feel like I need to change my personality to be around this person? Do I feel like I can only hang out with them in certain places in certain times with other certain people or otherwise it doesn’t work?”
If you can take them into all areas of your life and still feel comfortable… if you don’t feel like you have to wear certain clothes or look a certain way, or talk a certain way… then maybe there’s somebody that you are ready to date.
But if you feel like ANY of those things have to change because of this person. It’s a no go, it’s not the relationship that you’re ready for at this point in your life, or it’s not the person that you should be hanging out with at this point in your life.
DATING Question #3
Do your family and friends like this person? And do they like who you are with this person?
CAVEAT: If you have a BFF, or a close friend group, and all of a sudden you start spending time with someone else, there will be some jealousy at play. I get that. That’s not what I am referring to.
I’m talking about the fact that objectively, your friends in your family know you the best. If they see you start to become a TOTALLY different person, or they see something in this other person that you can’t see, because you’re blinded by this whole physiological/biological, “I love them” situation. You need to listen to those people because they want what’s best for you.
If you don’t trust your friends and family, to have an honest reaction to the people that you are spending more time with, or dating or in a relationship with, then really what you need to do is rewind back and repair those friends and family relationships before you get involved with someone romantically. Because all the baggage that you have with those friends and family are going to come along and impact this relationship.
Honestly, you’re at a time in your life where you don’t have the extra energy to deal with all that baggage at once. You have school, after school activities, sports, jobs and probably a myriad of other things.
For this reason…if you have some issues with friends or family start there first, before you start getting involved with people romantically.
DATING Question #4
Is it your most pressing desire to be paired with someone romantically? Is it just something that you want so bad that you think about it all the time, and you talk about it with your friends all the time, and you dream about it all the time?
If so, this is NOT the time for you to be getting in a relationship. Sounds a little counterintuitive. I know. Usually I am ENCOURAGING you to go after your biggest dreams. But no.
When you really just want a romantic relationship, you have a high chance of settling for someone that is not a good match for you, because you JUST want to be in a relationship. Another pitfall that comes from this mindset – that I’ve seen in my own life as well as in the life of many clients and friends – is that everything else goes out the window when you start dating someone. You forget your own goals, your own likes and dislikes, and your values. Your time, effort, energy, thoughts…everything just totally revolves around this person 24/7.
And while, for a while that can be a little bit fun… when you are at this stage in your life, you have a lot of other things that you need to be thinking about and doing and working towards.
Quite honestly, you’re just too young to wrap your life around someone else like that even for a short period of time.
PERSONAL STORY
My daughter has had some people romantically interested in her in the past coupled of years (6th/7th grade). She has made it very clear to me based on what she has going on in life that she is not ready to be romantically involved with anyone. She knows that this is not the time for her. That’s not what she wants in life right now. But even navigating how to talk to these people, and how to let them down easily, and navigate around them at school took so much emotional and mental energy.
This is what I am talking about. When you start getting romantically involved with people, the emotional and mental energy that you should be spending on creating something new or fostering life-long friendships is now diverted to this relationship.
Anytime you start with this romantic entanglement, it makes life more complicated. So I would just encourage you to think over those four questions and really make wise decisions at this point in your life as to how you want to proceed with dating.
Regardless of what you do, you have the ability to choose your thoughts. You are the one that gets to create a life you love. And I know when you do those two things, you’re going to go out and change the world. And you’re going to do it in fantastic and amazing ways that I can’t even imagine and I’m so excited to watch you do it.
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