On Familiarity #2

In the last post I talked about spirituality and religion a lot. I am not abandoning that avenue of discussion. I am but pausing for a moment to write a post that has been a long time coming.

Relationships. Relationships are everywhere, relationships are the basis of existence, for some people anyway. In high school, shit, relationships mean everything. They are life and death, can be anyway. I have seen a few relationships (after they ended) turn fatal. However, my experience as an adolescent with relationships I think has been markedly different from other people's. Oh, where to begin.

I like girls. I love girls actually. I love women more. In high school there are girls. In life, there are women. Those are two different things. In essence, girls are immature, women are not. A note to make, men are not men in high school. Many males are still boys in high school. I don't care if you have facial hair or how badass of a car you drive, you live with your parents, you are still identified with the emasculating denotation of boy. The same sort of concept applies to girls. That is, girls are immature when they're in high school, generally. Am I a boy or a man? I concede there are aspects of my personality that are rather boyish, however I would say there are a great many more aspects that are very mannish. So, we have males and females in high school, right? Lots of them are girls and boys. A far lesser number are young men and women. Boys and girls are immature. Think about it. When you were in kindergarten, or first grade, were you mature? No, you weren't. If you were, that's amazing and I think you should probably go tell some people with PhD's to study your brain. When you were in middle school, were you mature? Probably not. Maybe you were mature for your age, that's more possible, but you still probably were not mature mature. I went through a weird phase in middle school. I look back now and I see it was a very immature world view I had, and I generally just acted like a douche. After middle school, obviously, there is high school. From the time you're a freshman to the time you graduate there are drastic gains in physical and emotional development, are there not? Okay, so we have explored the wild and riveting idea that people mature as they get older. Fascinating. How does this relate to relationships though? How does it belong under a post titled "On Familiarity"?

In my experience I have observed that people who belong to the same group of friends, have similar classes, belong to the same clubs, and those who have similar socioeconomic statuses are those most likely to date. I literally have never met a popular girl who has never/is not currently date/dating an athlete. I'm being totally serious. I'm not saying it's impossible for such a trend to be broken, that's not what I'm saying at all. Popular people date popular people. Nerds date nerds. Pretty people date pretty people. Yea? I think so. It makes sense then, to assert that people who date each other have similar levels of maturity. Holy shit, revolutionary thinking. Many people don't really think of maturity when courting when someone. Yes, it may be a passing thought process, but much of what occupies a person's mind who is becoming infatuated, is exactly that, infatuating thoughts. "Oh my he's so hot, or she's so hot" "He's so good at sports, he's so popular, he throws all the cool parties". It honestly makes me want to puke, the way many young people express their love/infatuation for their "significant other". "Omg love you so much babe, happy six months <3<3<3" Just shut up. No one celebrates a six month anniversary, and it's honestly just stupid to broadcast it to the world. Young people date, and they stay together, in a relationship, but from my observations much of the relationship consists of cutesy little quips and expressions of infatuation. Conversation is about one's day, their problems, their family life, etc. You get to know someone, yes, by talking about these things, but the same effect can be acheived with friendship. The point I'm trying to illustrate is that many adolescent relationships are shallow and devoid of true meaning. I would even go so far to say that most relationships are not meaningful, whether it's teenagers or not. I am not attacking married people or people who are engaged or people who are in a committed relationship. If you're in a meaningful relationship, that's fantastic, and I wish the best for you. Quality relationships are a wonderful thing, and I think many people, especially adolescents, are not in wonderful relationships, but comfortable and socially acceptable/advantageous agreements between two people to like each other. Think about it. The popular girl dates the popular jock. This puts her in a position of power, what power there is to be gained in winning the popularity contest anyway, and gives her social approval. The popular jock experiences the same thing. Both receive general approval from their peers and move up the social ladder. It's a symbiotic relationship, one where both of them, on the outside anyway, benefits from dating the other. Entertain the idea now that they don't like each other any more and they want to break up. What happens? The girl may express some disapproval of the jock's behavior to her friends, and obviously depending on the situation the girl's friends will give her advice on what to do. They may tell her she's completely right and should dump him immediately, or they may tell her she's overreacting and it isn't worth the trouble to dump him. I find many people in just being polite convey the latter. If someone tells you, "I'm having relationship problems", what feeling do you get? Many people would probably say, "Oh I'm sorry, I'm hope you can work things out", when in fact they may be thinking, "Good! She's a total bitch and I just want to push her down the stairs every time I see her", or, "Yes! I hope they break up so I can date him/her", or, "I really don't give two shits about this person's problems, I just said that to be nice". People think of things as it effects them. It's true.

This post was sort of truncated. Next post is the same topic.