Living 19 years as a girl has shown me how eager our generation is to find love. Love from family, from friends, but most of all, from a significant other that will make us feel like the only girl alive. I know the feeling of looking around in a crowded room scouting out the hottest boys or picking out which guys in class will make the most money, and I hate to break it to you, but this is likely to get you nowhere.
The best advice I can give you is this: stop looking. Stop searching around every corner and romanticizing the boys at coffee shops. It is called falling in love because you do just that. You fall. It is clumsy and messy, and no one ever falls on purpose. Just let life happen. When it is meant to be, you will fall recklessly and not so gracefully into something you have been searching for all along.
Stop using Tinder as a way to meet the boy you want to spend forever with. I can only speak generally, but these are not the type of people you want to be there when you need a shoulder to cry on or can’t go one more second without venting. Not only are these people the ones you don’t want around, but also they most likely will not be around anyway. People have fallen in love for thousands of years without these convenient apps telling them where the nearest Romeo is.
You owe it to yourself to dive head first into real dating. Into coffee dates and awkward conversations and not knowing when it is okay to go for that first kiss. These raw and innocent and completely awkward moments are the most real and special moments in a relationship, and going over to a stranger's house to take your clothes off and jump straight into bed is not the way you’re going to find your forever.
Do not let the one jerk who broke your heart define you. You are so much more than him, and other people are so much more than him too. Do not let his attitude narrow your thinking. Once you convince yourself that all guys are jerks, you will only attract jerks. When you look at this continuous pattern of so many failed attempts, take a moment to stop blaming all the guys and realize your mindset is a constant factor in all of these relationships.
One of my favorite quotes is by Andy Warhol when he said, “People should fall in love with their eyes closed.” I can't think of anything more true. We spend so much time making this perfect list of what our dream guy will look like, but the truth is that no one is going to fit into the exact list we made. Instead, you should look for character traits like loyalty and kindness, and corny jokes that make you giggle. Close your eyes and ask yourself if you love the person in front of you, because what you see is not who they are.
Above all else, enjoy being single. This is a time to find who you are and begin to love that. It is so much better to fall in love with someone else after you have fallen in love with who you are. Once you know how incredible you are, you’ll be a lot better at sharing that with another person. Embrace your freedom and alone time, and find happiness in other things, because one day someone will walk into the ice cream shop and you’ll know right then that you found what you are looking for.
