> > You sound a lot like me when I was your age. I was afraid of being alone, too. Unfortunately I think society has a way of conditioning us to think this way. The prevailing attitude is that if you don't have a "significant other" there must be something wrong with you.

I was talking to someone about a similar idea tonight. For some reason, many people feel a need to "set up" their friends with other people. They seem to think it's their duty to force you into a relationship with a specific person. I think it must go along with the myth that people MUST be in a relationship in order to be "normal."

> Never, ever, EVER being in a relationship can do the same (for the low self-esteem part). I speak from experience on this one. Despite the fact that I am only 17 and I'm supposed to be too young to have a "meaningful" relationship, I'm an awful lot more mature than my peers. (Some of you may be inclined to dispute that, and you know who you are . . . ) Nonetheless, the lack of a said relationship in my life bothers me. I've always sort of fancied the "And he married his high school sweetheart and lived happily ever after" scenario.

Well, just to take the cynical side of things, high school sweethearts aren't all they're cracked up to be. (If someone reading this did happen to marry your high school sweetheart, I'm impressed and mean no judgement.) Most people graduate from high school when they're about 18 years old, which also happens to be an age where hormones aren't quite steady yet. That also happens to be the age at which people become legal adults who can think entirely for themselves. And it's also the time where many of these new adults start college.

That time from approximately age 17 to 21 is a very fast-moving, changing time. Personalities change, attitudes get readjusted, and basically, teenagers start to become adult members of society. Through all of this change, the odds of having someone else change with you, and in the same ways, are fairly slim. My mom tried to tell me that once, and I didn't listen to her. I should have.

I've watched friends who stayed with their high school sweethearts past graduation. They change, and then they get divorced because they no longer seem to be be the same people they once thought they were. I recently found out that yet another one of my old friends is getting divorced. You know how old she is? She's 21. She's getting divorced because she and her husband have become completely different people as they've continued to grow up.

If you're 17 and have never been in a relationship, I'll tell you what you're missing: pain, heartbreak, ruined friendships, and wasted time that you can never get back. Relationships are too overrated.

Ell"You also avoid the annoyance of not being invited to the wedding of a formerly good friend of yours, just because the friend is marrying your high school 'sweetheart'"myruh