Just recently arriving from middle school, Cody has not seen or experienced serious relationships that sometimes come with high school. However, he is not a stranger to the idea. Cody looks forward to the more serious relationships in high school, when instead of just declaring one a crush, one can “take a girl to a restaurant.”
Cody has had one girlfriend in the past, but it did not work out. “We only went out for like a week … It was a long distance relationship,” he said.
Cody sought another relationship, but it had more negative effects than positive. After his friends got up his courage to go ask the girl he liked to the dance, he was turned down.
“It was really awkward. We haven’t talked since then,” he said. “If you have a class or lunch then it’s going to be awkward. If they’re in your class, you’re pretty much screwed there.”
Cody also finds stress in trying to make an impression on the girls he likes. “If you screw one thing up, you’re thinking, maybe she wont go out with me because of this and that,” he said.
Additionally, Cody feels uncomfortable putting his happiness in the hands of someone he cannot always trust.
“If I like a girl but I’m not sure if I can trust her, that’s going to be a big problem. If you take a chance, you never know what the outcome is gunna be,” he said.
Despite the downfalls of middle and high school relationships, Cody keeps an optimistic point of view. “I think I will find [a relationship] at South. There’s a lot of different people all throughout South.”
As senior Jack reflects on his high school romances, he recalls never having been involved in a serious relationship. “There’s kids in my grade that have been going out since freshman year,” Jack said, although he has never “been like boyfriend-girlfriend” with anyone at school.
“I’m not really opposed to [a serious relationship]… it’s just never really happened that way,” he said. “It’s not that I’m like freaking out because it never happened,” he said.
Jack, however, has learned from his casual relationships. “One thing that stands out is that when it comes to stuff like [dating], [it’s about] who you like, who you want to be around,” he said.
Though Jack believes that peer pressure and influences regarding dating have decreased since middle school, he still believes that they exist to an extent. “Don’t not like somebody because someone tells you that you shouldn’t,” he said.
For Jack, communication is the key to a strong relationship. “If you can talk to them and relate to them, then you are compatible, and that kind of takes care of itself. You don’t necessarily have to look at specific factors,” he said.
Jack thinks that there must be some similarities between partners.
Though many students sacrifice a stress-free life for a meaningful relationship, Jack doesn’t think that dating-related stress is neither necessary nor worth it. “[A relationship] shouldn’t be the kind of thing that causes you stress,” he said.
“It’s important to keep everything in line,” Jack said. “If a relationship is too stressful then it’s not the right one.”
Junior Elise feels hesitant towards relationships in high school. Since she has issues trusting others, taking a leap into a relationship makes her uneasy. “To take that risk of getting hurt, I have to make sure that person is really special and that person … is worth getting hurt,” she said.
Though Elise has not had any serious relationships at South, she has experienced casual hookups. To Elise, these experiences were not to fulfill loneliness or love like a serious relationship would, but to help her discover her sexuality. “I’m bisexual, so I wanted to figure out why I didn’t feel something when I kissed guys,” she said. “Now that I know that I am bi, I don’t really need to keep hooking up with people to figure that out, ‘cause I’ve figured it out.”
In addition to Elise’s trust issues, she does not feel that high school students are mature enough to handle serious relationships. “They cant prioritize what’s important,” she said. “You have other things you have to pay attention to.”
To Elise, high school relationships, whether casual or serious, will inevitably bring stress and pain. Though this makes her hesitant to make a commitment to anyone at South, she does feel that this pain high school relationships bring is important in the long run.
“Even though [relationships are] complicated and it’s not fun to deal with all these emotions, I think it's really important to experience it before you go off,” Elise said.
Sophomore Nina is convinced that the guys in her grade are more interested in "getting with girls” than having relationships. With this mindset, Nina is less than enthusiastic about dating any of her peers.
For Nina, the prospect of dating upperclassmen has become more and more appealing. “The pros [of dating upperclassmen] are … they have been through the stage of just wanting action from girls, and they’re most able to be in a committed relationship,” she said.
Dating upperclassmen, namely seniors, does have its downsides. “The cons … are that they’re older, they’re not going to want a really committed relationship because they’re leaving soon,” she said.
For Nina, the main issue in dating other sophomores is the overlapping friendship circles. “So many people have so many friends of the opposite gender that you don’t even know … if they’re doing stuff with someone else or if they like someone else,” she said. When Nina dated a boy in her grade last year, “it just got too confusing … I got so paranoid … it wasn’t worth my time,” she said.
Even after Nina and her boyfriend broke up, Nina found it hard to concentrate on much else. “It really ruined the rest of my year,” she said. Overall, however, Nina feels that her relationship had an equally positive and negative effect. “[I learned] what kind of people you can trust, and what kind you can’t,” she said.
