To be completely honest, looking back on my one and only serious relationship, I’m noticing that I pretty much went through the years with my head stuck in the sand. He hurt me a lot. He put me through a lot. I would never actually tell him this, but I consider him to have been, to some extent, emotionally abusive. We broke up (he left me) a few times, but I always took him back. A year and a half ago, he destroyed me, and I took him back. A couple months ago, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, and here is what I have since learned. Hopefully some naive 16-year-old girl will read this and not make the same mistakes that I did.
- Do not lie to your parents for him. Do not break the trust you have with your parents, just so you can feel the giddy feeling of a boy looking at you with lust in his eyes. Do not lie about your location, because people are crazy and your safety is what your parents are checking in on. That’s it.
- Do not put him before your friends. If you have 20 hours a week to hang out with people besides your family, you better be giving your friends at least 15 of those 20. I pushed my friends away because I wanted to give him all my time and do you know who was left when he left me high and dry the first time? Nobody. That’s why it was so easy to take him back. He was my somebody, my anybody.
- Do not forget who you are and what you are capable of. When I was younger, I believed I would make it to Harvard. This boy made me feel like I could settle in small town America. Do not let him blur the vision you have of your future. Most importantly, he needs to have a very clear picture of his own future.
I could go on, but I think that those are my three most important lessons. Trust me, I used to pray for the Noah to my Allie. When he came along, I knew for sure that he was it; he was my Noah. He was not. In the words of the great Cristina Yang, “Don’t let what he wants eclipse what you need. He’s very dreamy, but he is not the sun. You are.”
