Tag Archives: teen

6 things I wish I understood before I started dating

Posted on September 26, 2009 by Mary| 6 Comments

Like many girls my age, I have my share of cringe-worthy regrets when it comes to dating.  Here are 6 things I wish I understood before I started dating:

1.  Take it one day at a time

There’s no rush to be in a relationship.  In fact, there’s no rush to even date anyone.  Take the time to foster friendships.  Relationships work better when they are able to grow organically anyway.

2.   Don’t waste your time dating someone you can’t see yourself marrying.

This might sound crazy to some people.  For most of us, marriage isn’t even on our mind when we’re dating someone because it just seems so far off in the future.  I’m not saying you should be planning the wedding with every guy you date, but the question should always be in the back of your mind.  “Is this someone who will ever truly be able to take care of me?” If the answer is no, run.  Run fast.

3.   Don’t waste kisses.

No one wants the amount of people that have kissed them to be large enough to form their own club (no one with a maturity level above a 12-year-old’s, anyway).  Kisses should be special.  A guy should feel honored that he got to kiss you—lucky him!  Sadly though, I’ve realized that today it’s easy to forget that.

4.   Break-up?  Time to rip the band-aid off!

…or as my uncle put it, “flush the toilet.”  The point is this: it’s called a “break-up” for a reason.  You need a clean break.  If you’re the one who did the breaking up, don’t call “to see if they’re okay.”  They’re not; and they’re not gonna be unless you let them heal by themselves.  Give it time.  It may not seem like things will ever get better but I promise, they will.

5.   You can’t go backwards.

Whenever two people break up, it seems like someone (if not both) always has the bright idea to try and “stay friends.”  However, relationships don’t work that way.  You can’t go backwards.  Someone always ends up getting hurt.  Most people have to learn this the hard way because no matter what people close to them say, they don’t want to listen. I really wish I would’ve understood this better when I was younger.  I don’t think it’s fair to hurt someone like that, no matter how good your intentions are.  It accomplishes nothing but giving someone false hope and ultimately hurts you both when the one finally realizes the truth.  I don’t think a real friend does that.

6.   Never settle for less than you deserve.

This is by far the most important thing I learned in dating.  After a while, it gets exhausting making excuses for why someone keeps letting you down.  It may be no fault of their own, but the bottom line is that they can’t give you what you need.  But we stay because it’s comfortable, and because the thought of letting go is painful.  But, in the wise words of my father,“why hold onto pennies when there is gold out there to be found?”


Posted in Dating & Relationships

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"No Regrets"

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Mary| 2 Comments

I’m not sure if this is unique to my generation or not, but I’ve found that it is really unpopular to admit to having regrets.  I remember the last semester I was in high school, we were having a discussion in English class about the book Tuesdays with Morrie.  I said to my teacher, and to my whole class, that I don’t see anything wrong with having regrets.

My teacher and most of my classmates looked at me as if I had just said a curse word.

To most people, the word “regret” has a very negative connotation.  In the world of Facebook and MySpace, countless teens post as their statuses or headlines “No Regrets”.  We hear songs on the radio like Angels and Airwaves’ Rite of Spring, or even Rascal Flatts’ Here, all about the past heartaches, mistakes, pain, and poor choices.  But the resolve at the end is always the same: “No Regrets”…  “I wouldn’t change a thing”, etc.

Well, let me be counter-cultural for a moment and say that I am not afraid of having regrets.  There are things in my past I wish I could change.  And I think it’s harder to admit that than it is to slap a headline on your MySpace that says, “No Regrets”.  I really believe that, if everyone was truly honest with themselves, we’d all admit to having regrets.

The arguments for the “No Regrets” claim are out there.  ”But Mary,” you may say, “If I hadn’t done x, y, or z….I would never have learned [insert valuable life lesson here]“.  That may be true.  But I think it’s very dangerous to start thinking of past mistakes as positive events.  For example, if someone gets drunk and gets into a car accident that injures or kills someone else, they will have (hopefully) learned to not drink and drive…but it would have been better had they learned that without actually making such a terrible mistake.

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It is healthy to realize that we have messed up in the past.  What is unhealthy is pretending our past is perfect because it “made us who we are today”.  Regret is the realization that we have done something wrong, and knowing that if we had the opportunity to go back, we would have done things differently.

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I regret any decisions I have made that caused myself unnecessary pain.  More importantly, I regret every time one of my actions ever caused someone else pain.

However, as I’ve said many times before, we cannot change the past.  We should not dwell on our past mistakes but rather learn from them.  And we can take away lessons from a mistake in our past while still acknowledging it as one.

Posted in Other Rants, Young & Stupid

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High School Revisited

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Mary| 1 Comment


“Brothers and sisters:
I declare and testify in the Lord
that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do,
in the futility of their minds;
that is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him,
as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life,
corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self,
created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

-Ephesians 4:17, 20-24

The above passage from Ephesians just happened to be the second reading from this past Sunday’s mass.  It was one of those masses that, for me, it just felt like God was speaking directly to me with the readings He chose.  Because this weekend I realized something.

I’ve gotten so used to the community I’m surrounded by in all my classes, and my amazing friends at home, not to mention my family who are always there to build me up, that I sometimes forget that, in the grand scheme of things, the way I live my life is sort of weird.

High school often kept me conscious of this fact (as high school is generally quite good at poking at the insecurities of anyone).  Don’t get me wrong, I had a really great high school experience (probably just about as good as they come).  I had amazing friends and we did a lot of the normal high school things—like go to football games, dances, and laugh about stuff that no one else outside of our group would find funny.  But I still sometimes felt like a loser because I didn’t do some of the other things that most people considered normal for a highschooler—like drink, party, hook-up, or even freak dance at the dances.

I often struggled with this in high school.  It was tough being different.  I remember asking myself on several occasions if maybe I was being just a little too uptight (maybe you’re thinking right now that I was being a bit too uptight).  ”What’s the big deal?”  I’d think,  ”Everyone else is doing it.  It’s not even that bad compared to X, Y, or Z.”  Unfortunately, that little voice inside of my head wasn’t usually satisfied with comparative, or relativistic, morality.  Maybe it’s not that bad compared to something else, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.  Today, I praise God for giving me the strength to stand my ground in high school (…most of the time anyways.  I won’t claim that I never made mistakes.) —even though it may have made me feel like somewhat of a loser on certain occasions.

Well that’s all fine and good …but isn’t insecurity and caring about what other people think supposed to go away after high school?  I guess I never REALLY believed that it would.  I just hoped.

Sadly, it doesn’t.  I still constantly feel God calling me to look like a fool for Him in new and terrifying ways.  Whether that be in telling someone that He loves them, or admitting my failures and apologizing to someone I’ve hurt when it sounds so much more satisfying to give into stubborn pride and come up with all sorts of ways to justify my actions with sarcastic comments.  Sometimes it’s tough to “put on the new self,” as God calls us to do in Ephesians.  Sometimes the “old self” just sounds so much more comfortable.  But we need to always strive to be growing as people.  And sometimes to grow isn’t all that comfortable.

Posted in You & God, Young & Stupid

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Sex Before Marriage. Why not???

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Mary| Leave a comment

Yesterday morning, I was with Katelyn watching an episode I recorded on the DVR of The Secret Life of the American Teenager.  We got sucked into last summer.  It sounded like an interesting idea for a show.  A 15 year-old girl gets pregnant after a one-night-stand with a guy she met at band camp?  Sure, I’ll check that out.

We quickly realized, though, that there were few things, if anything at all, we agreed with that this show told its viewers.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager ends each episode with a Public Service Announcement in which the cast members of the show tell viewers, “…Sometimes it might seem like everyone is doing it [sex], but that’s not really true.  Most aren’t.”

I always find this part a bit comical.  While it is true that in reality, the majority of teenagers are not having sex, The Secret Life of the American Teenager does not depict it as such.  Only one of the primary characters in the show is still a virgin.  And he’s depicted as a dork.  Not to worry though, he’s made it his goal this season to “get laid.”  In the last episode he even enlisted the help of the guy that got his girlfriend pregnant!

When Molly Ringwald and Shailene Woodley were guests on The View,  they were asked whether The Secret Life of the American Teenager glorifies teen pregnancy.  Ringwald, who plays the mother of 15-year-old, pregnant, Amy (Woodley), points out that the show “really make[s] a point of showing how difficult it is.”

Yes, poor Amy Juergens has it so rough.  Must be tough to have the guy who fathered your child in a one-night-stand willing to babysit him anytime you call upon him.  And a different boy, your boyfriend, who stands by you through the entire pregnancy, even though he met you just a week before he found out you were pregnant.  Not to mention the cushy job the local church offered you at the daycare center–with full benefits, and the built-in childcare of your baby while you finish high school.  No, that sounds like an accurate depiction of teenage motherhood to me.

The reason Katelyn and I were so drawn to the show in the first place was because 15-year-old Amy Juergens displayed courage and strength in the fact that she decided to have the baby.  Today, society makes it seem like it’s so easy for girls to just have an abortion and act like a baby never existed.  But that’s a lie as well.  The girls who make that choice are not bad girls; they are just as much victims as the babies they carry.

The Secret Life of the American Teenager is a disappointment to my sister and me, not just because it falsely depicts how difficult (or in the case of the show–almost easy) it is to have a baby as a teenager in high school, but also because of how it depicts the kids who don’t have sex.  They’re the nerds, the freaky religious kids, or the kids who can’t get a date.  Take the character of Grace, for example.  She was introduced to the show as the Christian cheerleader—someone Katelyn and I thought we might be able to relate to.  But she turned out to be a character whose faith was based entirely on feelings.  Feelings come and go.  A relationship with anyone—including God—based on feelings will never last the test of time.

What’s sadder still is that there probably are teenage girls like Grace out there.  They have been told their whole life to save sex until marriage but never really grasped why.  Well as young people, we want to know why.  Why not have sex before marriage?

I can tell you why I am choosing to save sex until marriage.  It’s not because I’m afraid of getting pregnant, and it’s not because I think sex is dirty or evil.  I was always taught that sex isn’t just good, it’s great!  Sex is one of the most sacred covenants we can enter in to.  Ever wonder why, in order for a marriage to be valid, it has to be consummated?  It’s because the sexual act is a fulfillment of the marital vows—to give of yourself unreservedly.  When you have sex with someone, you give your entire self to them.  It is the most vulnerable you can possibly be.  In a committed, married, relationship, this is absolutely beautiful, and absolutely necessary.

That is also why I don’t buy into the culture of today that tells people they can just have no-strings attached, “casual sex,” without any sort of feeling attached at all.  There is immense vulnerability in the act of sex.  When someone has sex for the first time, a chemical called oxytocin is released in the body.  This chemical acts as a sort of superglue that bonds us to our partner.  How can we fool ourselves into thinking that, after giving ourselves entirely to someone, it won’t break our hearts when the next day, or even the next month, they decide they don’t want it anymore?

Posted in Dating & Relationships, Stuff Catholics Do

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