What It’s Like To Realize You’ve Always Been Single

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I think one reason why I don’t exactly love T Swift is because I can’t relate to her music. She’s always writing about how great her relationship is or how awful her breakup was. I’ve never had a boyfriend, so I can’t say I have any idea what her songs are talking about. I don’t know what it’s like to be in a relationship. I don’t know what it’s like to promise commitment to another person. I’ve never really experienced having a romantic connection with someone. A lot of eighteen year-olds have, and sometimes I wish I could say I have too.

The realization that I’ve never had a boyfriend only occurred to me when I got to college. My roommate and two neighbors were all in relationships, leaving rooms to call their boyfriends and telling cute stories of times they’ve spent with them. I actually went through a short phase in the beginning of college where I didn’t want a relationship. I was completely fine with settling for the “hook up scene”. It was college and I wanted to have fun. Looking back on it, I think to myself, “I’ve never had a boyfriend. I had no idea what I was talking about.”

Experimenting with the hook-up culture in my first semester of college has made me want to experience what it’s like to have a boyfriend. It must be nice to feel secure with someone and know that someone wants to be with you. It’s someone you can talk to all the time and tell everything to. Going eighteen years without having a boyfriend makes me start to wonder what’s wrong with me. It riles up this feeling of insecurity and lack of confidence. It scares me that if and when I find a boyfriend and have my first relationship, I won’t be mature enough to handle one because I’ve had no experience. It makes me wonder if I ever will find that person.

I grew up watching romantic-comedies with fairytale endings, giving me this unrealistic vision of how intimacy and love works. I always wondered what it would be like to have my first fight with a boyfriend or to have my first heartbreak. As strange as it may sound, I actually want to experience those things. I’ve gotten to the age where I feel like those situations should have happened a long time ago.

I can’t tell if the realization of having been single my entire life bothers me, or if it’s just something interesting to think about. I know there are many eighteen year-olds who have never been in a romantic relationship; it’s just something that is rarely ever talked about or advertised. As my roommate and two friends told me, it’s okay that I haven’t had a boyfriend yet. It will happen when I least expect it, and that every relationship is different. My lack of experience with being in one will make my first and future relationship just that much different and unique – that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though.