Oh fun, I'm going to talk about: Dating.

Most people describe the teenage years as the years you're supposed to figure out who you are, what you want in life. Probably most importantly to teenage girls, your 'type' in men.

Dating is supposed to be a really big part of being a teenager, especially in high school. It's shocking to find out someone who is 16 hasn't had their first kiss yet. When you're 14 a boyfriend seems like a really important thing to have. While abstinence from sex isn't necessarily looked down upon, one constantly has to deal with the pressure from tv, movies, music, and peers to just "live a little".

This coming November, I will have been a teenager for 6 years. I have never had anyone I could call my "boyfriend". I've never been able to change my Facebook relationship status to something other than "single". I've never been on a more-than-friendly date. And of course, my first kiss belongs to someone in the future.

I tell this to people, and they either look at me like I just grew an extra limb or like I'm something to be pitied. You wouldn't believe how much crap I get for it.

Of course there have been times where I let my emotions do the talking. I won't go into all the gory details, but I've tried giving my heart to a few different guys. Never once have they held it long enough for me to get comfortable enough to call them my boyfriend.

I started my teenage years saying this, and I've never said anything contrary. It's only recently that I've actually started to believe it, though. Dating, at my age, at least for me, is a waste of time.

Fun fact to help back up this point:
A Harris Interactive survey conducted in January of 2006 merited the following results- Only 14% of people 18+ in a relationship (not necessarily married) met their counterpart while in school (high school/college). 34% of these were ages 18-27, 14% ages 28-39, while only 10% were 40+.

Why should I bother falling in love with someone who isn't the one God wants me to be with forever? Maybe I know that guy now, as a teenager, but if I have my whole life to spend with that person, why should I rush things?

You could argue my point by saying that, as I stated at the beginning of this post, your teenage years are meant to figure out who you are. Sure, the years of your youth are meant to be a learning period. But don't you think you'd be on the shorter road to finding out who you are if you simply looked to God to tell you who you are? I don't see anywhere in the Bible that says dating is crucial to unlocking the mystery that is ourselves. I don't believe that "falling in love" is the key to who you are. How many people do you know, let's say around 25 years of age, who know exactly who they are? Not very many would be my guess... In fact, I don't think I know anyone who spent their teenage years doing what society tells us to do who knows "who they are" because of it. I think most people, if ever, figure it out in their mid-late 30s, and end up regretting a lot of what they did as a teenager.

Not to mention, how many friendships do you lose by dating guys? Why date someone for a few months only to get too hurt to ever talk to them again, when you could have spent that time building up a solid friendship that may carry into adulthood? Friends are worth so much more than a dating experience. Unfortunately this is one lesson I learned from the past, although it doesn't take a genius to figure out. But hey, if he didn't want to stick around as my friend simply because I "broke up" with him, then how good of a friend was he really? Yet another point as to why dating is a waste of time. If a guy isn't willing to be your friend, he doesn't honestly like you and you shouldn't waste your time dating him.

You could point out that this is really easy for me to say being that there probably isn't a guy in all of Arizona who even has a crush on me. While that's probably true, my whole view point on dating isn't solely based on the fact that I'm perpetually single. (I'd also like to state, perhaps unnecessarily, that I'm not perpetually single because of my view on dating. There really isn't anyone who likes me that way.:)

I'm not totally adverse to dating. I do admit that if a certain boy asked me out, I'd probably say yes in a heartbeat. But my point of this post is simply that my confidence in myself doesn't depend on what some guy thinks of me. It doesn't depend on how many guys I've kissed, how many dates I've been on, etc. The fact that I'm 17 and can count on my fingers on one hand how many guys have told me they liked me hardly affects me. I don't need horrible experiences and a broken heart to tell me what to look for in a guy. I certainly don't need an STD to tell me not to sleep around.

I know that God knows what He's doing, and if He has someone for me, that guy is somethin really special. And if it's what I have to do, I'm perfectly okay with waiting. How cool will it be when I can smile at my husband while telling my kids my first love was their dad?