A few times a week I volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club in downtown Newport News. Last night while I was there I noticed one of the older girls didn’t look so well. I asked her if she was ok. I thought maybe she was on her monthly cycle and was cramping. Then I thought again; must be a boy. At first she brushed it off, and said she didn’t know what was wrong she just didn’t feel well. I didn’t push her to talk about it. I figured if she wanted to open up to someone she would. Later that evening she came over to me and told me she liked a boy who liked someone else. She told me this boy was her best friend. She said they had been friends for two years and that she had told him a year ago that she liked him. I pride myself on being a good mentor for young girls. I like to think at this point in my life I have a lot to offer in that department. However, when it comes to men, I’m probably just as clueless as they are. The longest relationship I’ve had to date lasted 9 months and for the majority of it I was being held captive, but that’s another story.
So what do you tell a young girl who likes a boy who doesn’t like them? I thought of what my father would say to me. I told her she was beautiful and she would meet so many guys throughout her life it’d make her sick. I told her men would make her crazy. And then I gave her what was probably the worst advice of all. I told her “The best way to get a boy to like you is to pretend like you don’t like him.” While it made her laugh, this is not something I am proud of. What I meant to say was the best way to get a boy to chase you is to pretend like you don’t like him. That doesn’t mean he will like you back, all it means is if he is looking for a challenge and you present one, he will most likely go for it. What I should have told her is the best way to get a guy to like you is to be yourself. It doesn’t mean that every guy will like you, but a guy…the right guy…he will.
I am sure I will have more opportunities to talk to her about guys and how they make us crazy. But this situation made me think about all of the advice I had been given about men over the years. I remember my Dad telling me when I was 13 and boy crazy, “Don’t ever go to a man. Let him come to you.” I didn’t always take heed to that before, but I certainly do now. When I was 15 my oldest sister told me “All men are dogs and should be treated as such.” I just looked at her like she was crazy. My naïve little heart would never allow me to believe such an extreme generalization of men. Plus I knew she was bitter. My Mother’s advice about men was “Don't have sex”, and I didn’t’, not until I was 19 years old, and even then I don’t feel I was mature enough to really conceptualize it or realize how much it would impact my life and my future relationships. As a young adult the majority of my relationship advice came from Sex and the City, but at some point I realized I wasn’t cut from the same cloth as these women and sexing my way through my twenties and hoping someone would stick around was not an ideal way to build a relationship.
And now here I am 24, single, and while I won’t say that I am completely clueless as to how to make a relationship work, I am both exhausted and disinterested in the matter. I feel like worrying about men and relationships is something I have outgrown. Or maybe I just need a break. I just don't understand why women my age spend so much time worrying about something we will never have any control over. No one ever woke up and said "I am going to fall in love today", and actually did. Well, at least no one that I know of. And once you do fall in love whose to say it will even last. I know, I know, I sound like a pessimist, but really think about it. No matter how hard you love someone, how much work you put into a relationship, how much time you invest, that person could decide at any moment they want out. Then what? I'm not saying love isn't worth the risk of getting hurt. Its just not something I choose to overly concern myself with. But I can’t tell that to these girls. That would crush their dreams, for when you are a young and innocent girl and your vision of love has yet to be tainted, love is all you dream about. It is the air that you breathe.
