Is Your Relationship the Real Deal?

By K.M.

Almost everyone has that friend or is the friend that has a relationship in high school. How much of a relationship is it and can those in them see it lasting? Or is it just a way to be socially accepted and have someone to hold hands through the halls so you don’t seem like you are drifting around alone?

We all know the look, the absent minded look of holding someone’s hand seeming like you are there but your mind is actually a thousand miles away. It’s hard to believe that those relationships are much outside of social media. Since the creation of social media, and Facebook especially, there is little privacy in a relationship, where everything is out there for everyone to see. The feeling of late night texts and ‘I love you’ fights, the public posts on each other’s walls about how much you “love each other” and “will be together forever” every fifteen minutes when you’ve been dating a week or a month at most, shows the lack of maturity in those relationships.

As students develop relationships younger and younger I wonder how much of it is for show. Before you say, “No my relationship isn’t that!” think about the things you talk about. Do you trash people to each other constantly? Do you publicly string everything out on your Facebook? Every time you fight do you put ‘single’ as your relationship status? If you answered yes to any of these then that shows there is not much thought put into dating someone in high school. In a lot of relationships I have observed, most don’t even share common interests.

My challenge to you: when you are on Facebook and you are about to post another “I love you LOL” on your ‘significant other’s’ page, think about how far you could see the relationship going. I think if we all sat and thought about dating before we jumped in, it would save us from a lot of high school drama.