Heads up! This and the other posts in the series about the dating scene are simply my own perspective; it is not Church teaching, nor does it necessarily reflect the views of anyone affiliated with me personally or professionally. Okay, you can put your head back down.
By the time I was about 12 years
old, most of my friends were “going out” with someone. It became cliché for our
parents or our friends’ parents to sarcastically ask, “Oh? And where exactly
are they going?” We would roll our eyes at the irritating, patronizing, and
embarrassing question. Sometimes, if we felt up to it, we would push back:
“Mommm, it doesn’t mean they go places.
They’re boyfriend and girlfriend. [Insert deep, exasperated sigh here].”
“Going out” in junior high meant
couples held hands, talked on the phone, couple skated at Friday Night Skate,
passed notes in school, walked around at the mall together, sat together at
lunch, etc. Physical boundaries varied from hand-holding, to hands venturing to
where they certainly do not belong. Many of the serious conversations were
accomplished through a liaison, some mutual friend who would go back and forth
between the boy and the girl, bringing messages such as:
“Barbie likes you.”
“Ken says he likes you too. I’m
going to push him at you when we pass your locker.”
I desperately wanted a boyfriend.
I don’t know if it was because I wanted to be just like my friends, who were
the coolest girls I’d ever known, or if I thought that having a boyfriend would
make me feel pretty. It was probably a mixture of the two.
Fortunately, I didn’t have a
boyfriend during this period of my life. That poor boy would have been saddled
with the burden of my insecurities—a burden that could only be lifted by God
(and eventually was, when I allowed him to do so). Thank God, I grew up
experiencing the love of Jesus in my home life; otherwise I probably would have
been even more desperate for a boyfriend, and more disappointed if I’d had one.
Junior high is tough. Everyone is
fighting to fit in, while balancing new freedoms, looking at different high
schools, hitting puberty at different rates, and more. The unwritten law of
junior high culture is: if you don’t want to get made fun of, the best defense
is a good offense. Be exclusive or be excluded. If someone is making a joke
that you don’t understand or that you don’t like, you had better laugh anyway,
or you’ll be the next punch line. It’s no wonder that junior high girls want
boyfriends to make them feel beautiful, popular, and loved*.
Dating is not the solution. A girl longing to feel beautiful and
loved needs solid relationships with friends, family, and above all, with God.
Interest in and curiosity about boys is normal, natural, and healthy. But why
would we leave her to her own devices to figure out what to do with that
interest? She may not always admit it, but she needs guidance. Instead of
treating junior high culture like a joke, those of us adults who have a
relationship with a junior higher ought to encourage her to practice her unique
talents, improve at being a good friend, develop a relationship with Christ,
develop firm values, and think for herself.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is
old, he will not depart from it." –
Proverbs 22:6
*This statement is based
on my own observations, experiences, and conversations with junior high girls.
