Benefits of Starting to Date When You Are an Adult

Love isn't something that you can find when you step out of your front door, although it has happened to a few. It takes time, you create experiences and lessons to learn along your journey in life.

My Story

I’m a person that is a hopeless romantic, I’ve always had crushes on boys since I was 5 years old. As I got into the secondary school I noticed that people began to meet new people and started dating. In my mind, I knew I would like to start dating but it was harder than it seemed. I wasn’t one of the popular kids in my school, which meant that I was never noticed by the crushes I had. I had loads of crushes during the time I was in secondary and sixth form. Although I would get jealous or disappointed when I found out my crushes didn’t like me, it would be until later on that I would realise that I would be better off single during that time.

From the friends that I had in secondary school, I watched many of them date from one guy to another, going to parties and meeting new people. I wasn’t really the social type, but seeing people dating a lot of guys in a short period of time was crazy in my head. I didn’t understand how guys would like these girls so quickly. But as I got to the sixth form, I realised that most people didn’t really like who they were actually with. It was more to do with liking their appearance and having general things in common.

That’s why many of these relationships didn’t last long. I would think that they were dating for the sake of dating and wanting to feel love and being attracted to another person. But most people don’t really understand what love is until they got older. At around 17 to 18, I realised that finding love is more than creating an attraction to a person. At a young age, I was really attracted to the athletic and sporty guy just because I took part in athletic activities (I did hurdles for 4 years) while hanging out with these types of guys…. sadly they were never attracted to me. This experience opened my eyes to how just being athletic doesn't mean someone will be attracted to you. It was more than that, but at that time I think that was important for most people.

The ideal type of guy to date changed drastically throughout being 17, as the number of people I was surrounded by became smaller compared to my secondary school days. I starting being surrounded by people that I would have never thought to hang out with or even noticed in the 5 years of being in secondary school. I started talking to really intelligent people, maybe I’m being too vague but people that had interests in IT and coding, law and science areas. I was quite interested even though I was studying business and geography at the time. Over time I became more of a listener than a talker. I would talk in discussions about particular topics of interest, but most of the time would gladly listen to others.

I know I’m going off topic, but I hope my experience will make some people realise that a person’s personality should always be the main priority when finding someone to date and hopefully have a long-term relationship with. Overall, dating at a young age is a good way to discover what a person wants to find in a partner, so don’t be discarded by feeling that you are too young. Do whatever makes you comfortable and be aware of your actions while being safe. From my personal experience, I’m very happy that I didn’t date when I was younger as I am currently in a 3-year relationship and this being my first time to be in a relationship as well as being long-term.

Advice

For me, being able to look at other relationships and learn from their mistakes without being in one was great. I didn’t have to create those mistakes and being older in a relationship meant that I wasn’t as immature, so I knew what was right and wrong in a relationship. Love takes time to develop, at a young age you may not discover it, it’s more likely to be discovered when you are older when you finally know what you feel will compliment you in terms of appearance, personality, interests and values.

The main thing is: don’t stress about it, I have known a few people who have asked me advice about how I have lasted in a long-term relationship without any experience in relationships prior to my current one. I basically said that I noticed that when I liked someone I would get obsessed with them to the point where I would ask if they liked me back but they usually never did. I only figured out recently that when comparing my crushes to my current boyfriend, I noticed that the relationship with my boyfriend wasn’t forced. I didn’t obsess over him. We just talked, found interests and overtime confessed our feelings. With many of my crushes, I had never even talked to them which was a big red flag. If you haven’t talked to them ever or only on a few occasions, chances are they don’t like you. It took me so long to figure that out.

So my last piece of advice that will stick with me for the rest of my life is to not force yourself to keep liking someone just because they are funny, have similar generic interests, and are attractive. In the times that people have liked me, it was because I actually talked to them for a long period of time. I created a friendship with them, and I just let things take its course. Let these people in your life come to you, if you mess with the universe then the universe will come back at you. These people that will love you will eventually come into your life. You just can’t force it, because I feel that most people that are sad because they can’t find someone are trying to force something that will never happen. As a result, the people that are supposed to come into their life never get the chance because that person is on their own path to find their soulmate. The path to their soulmate is right there, don’t try to make the process harder when it’s laid out for you to follow.