"Boys Don't Like Me!"

Teenage Amanda, Circa 2009
(Note the Claire's jewelry)

When I was sixteen, my greatest personal ambition was to have a boyfriend.

(To give you some perspective, my greatest personal goals at twenty are to sleep for eight consecutive hours and watch an entire season of Grey's Anatomy in one weekend. My parents must be inexpressibly proud of me.)

 I dreamed of holding hands at football games, taking grainy, obnoxious selfies on my flip phone, and showing off my hypothetical other half on group dates at the local pizza place. For some people, these events were an unquestionable reality of their high school experience, with boyfriends and short adolescent romances coming to them as easily as breathing.

But that is not my story.

I didn't date in high school-- though not for a lack of trying, much to my eternal humiliation-- and as my friends found themselves caught in the overdramatic throes of adolescent love (which featured such emotional turmoil as sitting apart for a day during lunch, catching the respective objects of their affection kissing another girl behind the baseball dugouts, and getting reprimanded for dancing far too close at homecoming), I found myself consistently asking the age-old and mystifying question:

"Why don't boys like me?"

At first, I thought it was because of some tragic, uncontrollable flaw that I had been cursed with at birth (I had been reading Oedipus Rex at the time, so I was quite obsessed with the romantic thought of having a "tragic flaw"). Was I too proud? Too hasty in my actions? Damned for all eternity by a mystic prophecy (most likely)? No, that wasn't it.

Was it because of the way I looked? To be fair, my braces and abundance of Aeropostale clothing, glittery purple eyeshadow, and plastic jewelry from Claire's probably weren't doing me any favors. But everyone else dressed exactly the same way (oh the conformity of youth!), so it wasn't as if I existed as some strange aesthetic anomaly outside the norm of my high school.

Nonetheless, this question plagued me for years as I tortured myself over why exactly the dashing suitors of my high school (and by "dashing suitors," I mean the short, squeaky-voiced, Abercrombie-wearing children who thought that "Deez Nuts" jokes were works of comic genius) chose every other girl on planet earth over me. I racked my brain, attempting to find the one obscure solution that would allow me to transcend the boundary that stood between my current position as the "best friend"-- or, worse, the dreaded "like a sister"-- and my aspired position of "girlfriend," or at least "that hot girl in my economics class."

But then, just as I graduated high school (how annoyingly convenient), I realized that I wasn't the problem. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me.

 And in fact, my close platonic relationships with boys in high school ended up being a benefit to me in the long run. Instead of speaking in the incomprehensible, hazy code of potential lovers, my male friends and I spoke frankly and openly of everything-- school, our plans for the future, what men to avoid, and even other women (it was here that I learned the crucial difference between a "slam piece" and "wifey"). Because they respected me and viewed me as an individual, rather than as a transient sexual conquest, we built genuine and lasting friendships that were uncomplicated by romantic affection or sexual interest.

I have found that often, young women in high school, college, and well into their adult years are conditioned into believing that dating or "finding love" is the penultimate accomplishment that must be achieved at any cost, even to the detriment of one's academic or professional success. In contrast, men are raised to have no such limitations, even being told to either "sow their wild oats" in their youth or eschew dating altogether as they work to establish themselves financially and professionally. The idea of maintaining a relationship-- even a dysfunctional one with a clearly undeserving partner-- becomes so important that all other ambitions (becoming a scientist, or joining the track team, or becoming a self-sufficient individual) fall to the wayside beneath the immense stress of maintaining a relationship that shouldn't have existed in the first place. Love and dating can be fun, positive things that add an extra element to an already complete life. However, they should not enter your life at the expense of your own well-being or personal success.

So focus on becoming the best version of you-- become the captain of your debate team, get elected class president, or break the state record in the 100 meter dash. Men-- if they are truly interested in you as an individual-- will come naturally in time, and in the meantime, you'll have established an entire life that makes you a very, very interesting person (with or without a boyfriend).

Besides, you'll look back in your yearbook twenty years from now and thank yourself for not wasting your time on someone whose senior quote was "2 kool 4 skool." I promise.