Having only been in love once in my life, I know there is so much I have to learn for future relationships. However, the first person I dated taught me a lot about love, myself, what I want in a relationship and which values I think are most important for two people to share. What I learned most was that as a girl who grew up with slightly old-fashioned parents, my beliefs and morals are much more traditional than many other people.

Today, people believe in one night stands, hooking up and in dating multiple people at once (whether this means cheating or just not being exclusive with anyone). While I am not against any of these perspectives on relationships and dating, I would much rather have one person to confide in with everything than someone just to be physical with. I am proud to feel this way about relationships, but it can sometimes be tricky because it oftentimes can lead to mixed and/or hurt feelings. I’ll be honest – I’m writing this after catching “the feels” for a person who is not on the same page as me about our relationship.

Hanging out with one person multiple times and having a great time together is exhilarating. You have a new person to establish a friendship with, and maybe something more, which means you have the chance to learn from previous mistakes and the chance to be a better person than you were in your last relationship. The catch? Generally, it is that you and this other person may not see eye-to-eye about “what you are.” This is what happened to me.

I don’t blame this other person for seeing other people because we never agreed to be exclusive or date or anything like that. We just had fun together and I made the mistake of getting attached. It is hard and it sucks seeing someone you want to be with, with someone else, but the only thing you can do is be honest with this person in the future. Dating and relationships and love are so complicated today because it can be scary trusting someone new or believing that a person will always be honest with you. Especially in college, you don’t know everyone’s dating history or what their morals are like you did in high school. It can be tough deciding whether or not someone is being honest with you or if they are genuinely interested in you.

What I’ve learned is that any kind of interaction with a person is a risk. Investing time or money or energy into another person will not always produce the result you are looking for because people may not know what you want or they just don’t care. It seems like people, guys and girls alike, are more concerned with their needs than understanding there is another person there they may be hurting.

Love is such a complicated aspect of life to begin with, but technology and social media and changing ideals on relationships have really added to the mix. You’re going to get your heart broken at some point, and I’m sure it doesn’t ever get easier to deal with. Being honest with yourself and others about how you feel is the only way you can protect yourself. Tell people when they have hurt you, and tell people when you love them. Life is too short for bad relationships and broken hearts.