I'm Almost Twenty And I've Never Been In A Serious Relationship

I bet I know what your first thought was. "Wow, I wonder what must be wrong with her." Truth is, I've been wondering that for the past, I don't know, five or six years now. And it's taken me the past two-ish years to start to realize that there actually isn't anything wrong with me. I'm actually still trying to work through that realization to this day. If you can even remotely relate to me, this is for you.

I've never really dabbled in the whole dating thing. I didn't go on my first, actual date with a boy until halfway through my senior year in high school, and I only went on three dates with him. After him, I didn't go on another date until the end of my freshman year of college, and I only went on three dates with him as well. Neither situation-ship ended the way I wanted them to, but hey, that's life. But because of this, I felt like I wasn't good enough. Girls, I know I'm not the only one who has ever felt this way. It's taken me a whole lot of tears, time, and best friend talk to make me realize that my worth isn't dependent on whether or not I'm with a guy.

Here's the thing: I like to say that the reason I didn't date much in high school was because I was too focused on school. Truth is, boys just didn't ask me out. Like, I get it, and it didn't really bother me all that much because none of my other girl friends were dating either. Still, I felt like I put the "hopeless" in "hopeless romantic". I can't really complain all that much though; not dating really did allow me to focus on my grades. I go to the ~best~ university in the nation, after all.

Ladies, it took me a while to realize my happiness and my worth didn't have anything to do with my relationship status. As mentioned before, I'm still working that mindset into my head. I spent a lot of time wondering what I'm missing, and what's wrong with me. I started with finding the things I loved about myself, and worked on loving them harder. Then I looked at what I mildly disliked about myself, and asked myself why. Nine time outs of ten, I realized it was all a mental thing. I needed to change the way I thought about myself, not ACTUALLY change myself. The hardest part was looking at the things I hated about myself and forcing myself to learn to love them. I'm still very much working on that to this day.

I thought I was missing out on life because I wasn't loved, romantically. But that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm loved by my friends and family. Not having a boy allows me more time for family nights and best friend dates. Not having a boy allows me the time and freedom to go and do whatever I want, whenever I want. Not having a boy is allowing me to love myself before I begin to love someone else. Not having a boy is allowing me to work on being the me that I can be proud of.