Maintaining a relationship in this day and age as a mere eighteen year old can be quite a tricky thing to do—trust me, I’m living it. Being eighteen in today’s world comes with a plethora of responsibilities and expectations, not to mention fulfilling the desire of being in a happy, committed relationship. Honestly, it can be quite overwhelming.
Blowing out the candles of my birthday cake upon my eighteenth birthday was my first official step into adulthood. Up until this point, I had been able to depend on others for life’s basic needs (food, shelter, love, etc.). However, once I turned eighteen, that all changed. I immediately moved out on my own, had just graduated high school and was beginning my first year in college, changing jobs, and, on top of all of that, attempting to maintain a relationship. Needless to say, it is not an easy thing to do and took quite a toll on me.
The pressures of an eighteen year old are endless. Not only was I trying to become my own person, living up to my own wants, needs, and expectations, but I was also trying to live up to the expectations of my friends, family members, and the men in my life. After many feeble attempts at trying to please everyone, I soon realized that there usually is no way in hell to make everyone happy, to live up to all of their expectations. I then decided to concentrate more on what I wanted and what I needed. I figure that once I have established my own personal wants and needs, I will be more able to work on fulfilling the wants and needs of others in my life.
At this point in my life, however, I was still struggling on deciding between my wants versus my needs, my main struggle being a relationship. I know that I needed to concentrate more on my work and school work, but at the same time I couldn’t help but want to be in a relationship. Hearing about the love lives of my friends and seeing happy couples walking hand in hand all over campus day to day also didn’t help ease my wants very much. In my mind, I had decided that once I was happy and in a relationship, everything else would fall into place. That idea was completely misconstrued though, so I took the opposite route: getting everything else together (my career and school work), and then waiting for my prince to come my way. Waiting for something you’re not so sure is coming can be quite stressful though, and I soon discovered that I can be quite impatient. So instead of waiting idly for a great man to come sweep me off of my feet, I took my own course of action and decided to go searching for him.
When it comes to relationships, it seems that everyone in my life believed that they had a say. My family wanted what was best for me, though what they saw as best for me was not exactly what I wanted. My mother just wanted me to be happy and was relatively supportive with my choices in men, but my father was just the opposite. In his mind, no one was good enough for his little girl, and he always had his gun cocked, ready to bust a cap in anyone who might break my heart. My dad was the hardest to please when it came to me being in relationships. He suspected foul motives of any guy that I wanted to bring home, and refused to believe I had become a woman, preferring to imagine me as the same little girl he used to read bedtime stories to. He was completely irrational when it came to my dating, always very cynical and disapproving. It got to the point to where I wouldn’t tell him about any guys that I was dating and stopped brining men home to meet him.
From my friends’ perspectives, no man was ever good enough for me (he was too much of a jerk, not smart enough, not going anywhere in life, too tall, ugly, had bad teeth, etc.). Whenever I was with anyone, I had to constantly listen to their nit picking—some even came up with page long lists of why I shouldn’t be with the guy in question! At first, it aggravated me immensely—I mean it’s my life after all, who are they to judge? But upon further scrutiny, I realized many a times they were right about certain guys being bad for me, though they were also wrong sometimes, too. Though I hate to admit it, there have been times that I’ve broken up with a potentially great guy, just so that I wouldn’t have to listen to my friends constantly bickering about him. Their disapproval in the men that I had been dating made me change my idea of what I wanted from a man, but I soon realized that I was only trying to live up to their expectations. I would go on dates with guys that they would hook me up with, whom I held absolutely no interest for, merely to please them. After awhile of this though, I decided it was time to stop dating who my friends wanted me to date, and to go after the types of men I wanted to be with.
Ah, the types of men I wanted to be with…another problem all in its own. My ‘type’ of man that I was after proved to be a very wide spectrum, and a lot to expect out of men in my age range. Be this as it may, I wasn’t willing to settle for less. I wanted a man who could make me laugh, was attractive, intelligent, goal oriented and going somewhere in life, open, caring and not shallow, not just after sex, and who would be there for me. Most men around my age were relatively immature though, with no life plans and few goals. Though I understand that was to be expected, I couldn’t help but feel that if I was with anyone who fell short of those qualities then I’d be cheating myself in the long run by not obtaining what I truly desired. Men would come and go, and, sadly, I did settle for less a few times, but it never lasted.
Finding a guy around my age willing to be in a relationship with me also proved to be rather tricky. Men seem to sprint away from the word ‘commitment,’ especially younger guys. Men in my age range seemed to have only one thing on their minds: sex. Now don’t get me wrong, I love sex, but in my opinion, sex is so much better when shared with someone that I care about on a deeper, not just physical, level. Be this as it may, men at this age are hormone ridden and not only want sex, but expect it. Even worse, most expect sex with no strings attached, but then have the audacity to get angry whenever I’d see anyone else. It seemed like a complete double standard to me, and also very immature on their part. You simply can’t want to have a no-strings-attached sexual relationship with someone and then get angry when the person is seeing someone else—it just doesn’t work that way, buddy!
This time in a man’s life is seen more as a time to have fun and act a fool. Though they are adults, men at this age tend to believe they still have some leeway in the responsibility department, and some people think it’s acceptable when these men aren’t very responsible. I, however, was not one of those people. Being overly critical of the men in my life made it all the more difficult to find one I actually wanted to maintain a relationship with; however, I knew that once I’d found the right man that it would have all have been worth it.
Finding love at eighteen and maintaining a relationship will not be easy in the slightest. However, once you find the right person, none of that will matter. In the long run, it all will have been worth it.


