Dating : The True College Love Story.

I grew up in Southern Louisiana with an Asian father who basically raised me single-handedly; my All-American teenage tale starts off like any coming-of-age rom-com. Girl meets boy. Girl dates boy. Girl dumps/gets dumped. Repeat the cycle until I learn from my lesson. Little did I know that my true lover isn’t the beloved I behold, all these youthful years yearning for someone to just understand little ol’ me. It was something my father had led me to: my integrity.

Repeat it once: I say it back. Repeat it twice: I may just be a boneheaded daughter. Repeat it enough times: I’ve learned my lesson. I am what people have always seen me as: the conventional beauty standard. I didn’t see myself as “cute” when I was younger, given the internalized racism I experienced (we’ll deconstruct that another day). As I got older, I found that I didn’t have a problem finding someone charming. I had issues (as we all do) finding a respectful partner to call my significant other. I didn’t understand this in my early twenties. I thought if someone liked me, and they brought me to meet their family, and they told me they loved me enough times that I said it back to them, then they were good enough for me. My personhood hadn’t yet experienced life enough for me to understand that I held onto a narrative that my self-worth was based off of someone else’s future, and what I meant for their future.

This mindset is dangerous for young women. Why was this something I held on to for so long? I had a father that worked his life away to send any kind of aid back to his mother in Thailand, and for the only daughter he had to be able to go to college so she can find a job and be happy in her life.

The first time I mentioned girls in my 6th grade “dating”, I was met with silence in the car. Well, that’s something I shouldn’t bring up. Somewhere along in high school, he was okay with me having boyfriends. I think the divorce from my mother, and the presence of my stepmother made him chill out more. I remember sneaking my boyfriend at the time to my house in order to have sex. I was sat down one day. I wasn’t yelled at. I wasn’t called a slut. I wasn’t humiliated. My father simply sat me down, and told me that if this happened in his house then I’ll be kicked out.

So why did I continue being dumb with whoever I was dating? I fell for the antiquated advice that I just may have…not met “the one”. This is harmful, wishful thinking to tell someone, especially someone young. I thought maybe if I loved someone enough, I would want to have children with them. I thought if I loved someone enough, we would be happy, and the quarrels would stop. I thought if I loved someone enough, then one day, we’d be able to know everything about each other. Why doesn’t the work ethic “work smarter, not harder” apply to a myriad of love types? Media romanticizes ‘Eros’ time and time again. Girl meets boy: the interest. Girl dates boy: the pursuit. Boy kisses girl: the endgame.

It was August 2014. I was eighteen years old. Somehow, I was able to get the Nexplanon Implant embedded in my left arm. At the time, it was advertised for 3 years. My left bicep had a deep blushed eggplant color over where the implant was inserted. I have never been one to bruise, so it was a fascinating sight to see. My periods were irregular ever since. I bled a lot. I bled a little. I bled for a long time. It did bother me, but never enough to not want to be on birth control. I knew the consequences: no protection meant a higher risk of pregnancy. It was my responsibility to protect myself. During the semester, I had a boyfriend. We ended breaking up after 3 years. I had to move out, and I ended up being single for a year until my next boyfriend. By this time, I was a junior in college. I hadn’t experienced casual sex before so I slept around. My method of finding the next boyfriend at this point still very much sucked: I thought if someone liked me, and they brought me to meet their family, and they told me they loved me enough times that I said it back to them, then they were good enough for me. It was’t until I was able to reject someone that I liked that I learned what met my qualifications of who I wanted to date as my boyfriend.

To this day, I learned so much from all of my “adult break ups”. High school boyfriends were child’s play. I faced death of a family member twice. I learned dirty family secrets. I was adored by their mothers. I said ‘I love you’ enough times back, and ‘I’m sorry’ more than I should have. I didn’t know why towards the end I didn’t matter to them. I now know that it’s because I didn’t mean much to myself that they only saw how they mattered to themselves. Sometimes you see battles that aren’t yours to fight as an act of love, but you’re only hurting yourself. The only trust I gained after my second break up was knowing it was in my power whether or not someone deserves a second chance.

I was told by two boyfriends that they wanted children of their own. I was not told this in the beginning. I was told by one boyfriend he wanted to adopt. This boyfriend told me if I was to be pregnant that I was to carry it to full-term and he’d take care of everything with the best lawyers. I had always stated that I did not want children: when I was 18 as a full-time student, when I was 22 and all I wanted to do was go back to school, and now that I’m 24, I just don’t want children.

Before my third break up, I was given romantic advice for the first time ever by my uncle. He told me sex was easy, but trust was something like credit: it takes forever to build, but seconds to ruin. Without trust, there is nothing. I thought by having a penchant for long distance relationships with little fear of cheating, I had exercised my budget of trust well. I found from my second break up, I trusted someone I thought I loved to live with. My third set of roommates were people I trusted to provide a safe living space with. I never trusted myself.

I trust my friends, my father, my family, exes, but why not myself? Why didn’t I know what was best for myself, but I lived a life accepting the actions of others as virtue. Everyone gets their grades compared to their friends when they were little, so why did I extend this mindset to my early adulthood? I just didn’t like myself. I thought if I could have what others did, then somewhere along the way, I would like myself enough like they did. I might fit into their family, longing for some semblance of normalcy, despite their brand of dysfunction.

I wasn’t broken up with for my third break up, so much as I was being ghosted after six months of a committed relationship. I was very confused. I wasn’t angry, as much as I was mourning a loss for someone who wasn’t always mean to me. After this break up, I was single, and enjoying the casualties of sex again. I had just replaced my birth control, which advertised itself for a length of five years instead. I thought I was being smart this time, by waiting to have sex with guys. Some time after, I met a nice guy. He wasn’t an incel. He was genuinely a good guy. I had a lot of fun with him. I liked sleeping with him. We had some things in common. I liked his friends. He accidentally met my aunt. Then I was asked, “What are we… dating?” I froze and told him I needed some time to think.

Some may tell me I was completely overthinking this question, especially after a month of seeing each other and casually interlacing our social circles together. I asked hard questions the next time we laid in bed next to each other: about family, religion, the future of children, and time management between his career and my lack of having a promising status for my source of income, despite being financially self-supporting. He was so nice and understanding, and I just couldn’t see myself having a future with him, without hard lines of answers that aligned with what I valued. Was I supposed to just be sort of okay with this, religious differences and maybe the possibility of children? I knew I had to tell him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend. I had his Christmas present in my car, with a card saying “Owl always be your friend.” It was anti-climatic. I was not yelled at. I decided to sleep on the couch, and I wasn’t coaxed to sleep in the same bed. He respected my decision and my request of space.

I went on to continue casually seeing guys. I even tried to sleep with my friend, while seeing a guy, and found out I was right about not wanting to sleep with two people at once. I had someone come over to my apartment, and find that I really wasn’t into how much taller they were than me, and rejected a kiss. I skipped first base, and went to third on a friend, and left before he had his coffee that morning. I made eye contact with a stranger at a bar, spent the night with their friends, and went back to his mom’s and as we cuddled, I told him that was enough and fell asleep in his arms. We were friends the next morning, and I never kissed him. I ran into a hook up at Wal-Mart, taunting the theft of my shopping cart in his hands, and I just said I was seeing someone else after him. I started to set boundaries for myself.

It’s now been about four months since I’ve been with my current boyfriend. I’ve learned a lot over three break ups. My father’s voice still echoes in the back of my mind, but this time instead of staying in school or keeping a job, it was up to me to decide for myself what I wanted to do with my life and for me to take care of myself. My uncle’s voice reminds me of how worried the people that care about me can get. They trust me, I can trust myself this time.

“You’re a very smart girl, and you’re very pretty,” a lady once told me, “be careful with that.”