The Truth About Boys: Part II

In Chapter I, we covered some truths about boys.  In Chapter II, I will tell you some dos and don'ts about the dating world.  Ready?  Let's begin.

DO:  keep yourself open to finding romantic love, but...

DON'T:  be desperate and lonely and print it on a t-shirt or post it to Facebook every fourth minute that you're looking for a boyfriend.  For one thing, you are too young to think that you're going to be alone forever and for another, you will make yourself prey for freaks and stalkers and abusers by being desperate for anyone.

DO:  keep a close circle of friends.  If you don't have a good circle of friends, make friends first before you think about dating seriously.  It doesn't have to be 20 friends, maybe just 2-3 really good friends. Why?  Because, if you start dating seriously and don't have friends, that is all you'll have. 


DON'T: have your boyfriend be your only friend.  Isolation in a relationship is a bad thing.  If he is a creep, there is no one around to tell you and if you are in that position, you likely aren't socially astute enough to figure it out for yourself.  And, if it ends- which if you're 25 or under is likely- you'll have no friends to fall back on.


DO:  listen to your friends when it comes to boys.  If these are good friends, they will be your first warning sign that a boy is a creep.


DON'T:  keep friends who aggressively flirt with or try to steal your boyfriend.  These girls are called skanks and have personal issues that need some work.  You are not their therapist and do not need to keep them around if they won't back off.  These women will grow up to be divorced, bar hopping, cigarette smoking cougars by the time they hit 40.  It is so not worth your time.  Worse yet, if you are the one who is stealing your friends' boyfriends, then you are a skank.  Seek therapy.  Now.


DO: respect yourself.  If a boy says things that hurt your feelings, belittle you, make you feel stupid, confront it right now.  Everyone makes mistakes and it is likely that the boy didn't know that he hurt your feelings or made you feel bad.  So, forgive.  But...


DON'T: allow a boy to consistently make you feel less than the great, valuable, smart, beautiful girl that you are.  A pattern of this behavior cannot be fixed without years of adult therapy and maybe not even then.  A boy who tries to control and diminish you through verbal or physical abuse is a mess and a creep and will likely be one forever.  This behavior in boys does is also unlikely to make them successful adults at work or in other relationships.  This will fuel further resentment, leading to worse behavior and plunge them even further in to the depths of asshole-ism.  Dump these boys fast.


DO:  respect your body.  Every young person wants sex as much as the next.  However, you, young lady, have much, much, much more to lose when you become sexual.  I'm not preaching abstinence here.  I'm saying, be smart, know yourself and be cautious.   As I mentioned in Chapter 1, if you put out, expect boys to talk about it.  That might be okay, however, if you put out a lot with more than one boy, you will quickly get a very hurtful reputation that is unfair and ugly and may take years to overcome.  It is a hideous double standard that girls get called awful names for being sexual while boys are congratulated for it, but it is just plain fact. In this culture, girls just don't get to be as sexually open as boys, or at least as vocal about it. Your mother might have told you that boys don't like loose girls.  Well, that's wrong.  Boys LOVE loose girls.  But, they don't love them in the way that you want to be loved.  Be smart.  Be kind to yourself.


DON'T:  EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER let a boy take a nude picture of you.  EVER!  DO YOU HEAR ME??!!??   I don't care how much you trust him. I don't care how hot you think it is.  A single nude picture WILL come back to haunt you whether it is next weekend or five years from now.  DON'T BE STUPID!  Worse yet, DON'T EVER take a nude picture of yourself and e-mail it to a boy unless you want the entire campus to see it. That is just plain foolish and desperate.  If you have done this and it is too late, change your name and move to another country.

DO:  Be patient.  Enjoy yourself now. A romantic relationship isn't the fix for anything.  It will come.  If you have fun now, focus on building lasting friendships, taking care of your mind, body, studies, career, there will one day be an equally stable, confident, successful, interesting boy that will look at you and say "Damn.  Check out that stable, confident, successful, interesting, sexy chick.  I want to hang with her for the rest of my life."  It will happen for you- maybe not tomorrow, but eventrually.

That's enough for now.  In Chapter III, we will discuss why you need to observe a boy in the world before you get too involved.