I think it appropriate that this topic chronologically falls on Roman Numeral X.
I remember having crushes on boys since Kindergarten, a different boy each week that I would marry someday.
I became increasingly shy over the years. I went from announcing to the whole class, "I have a crush on so-and-so," to never speaking to the boy I had a crush on. Too many boys never even knew I existed, and I certainly didn't help them along.
So I will define a boyfriend as someone with whom I had mutual interest, to the point of some sort of exclusivity.
1. I was sixteen when I started dating my first "boyfriend" Jared. He was the first boy to hold my hand. At some point, he even told me he loved me. I regretted it at the time, but I responded with, "You don't even know me." And it was true, he didn't! Now I look back and congratulate myself, saying, "Good girl! That's right!" When he finally got around to kissing me for the first and last time, our mutual interest was waning. Soon after, on the day of my birthday party actually, we really talked for the first time. What you have to understand is that we barely ever saw one another, and we didn't talk. I'm not sure what we did, actually. Seems rather boring now. So we finally had a DTR (Define the Relationship) for the first time that night, and we finally talked that night. He hadn't felt "fireworks" when he kissed me (it was a peck). So it was over. Soon after, he started taking out my brother's old girlfriend. That was probably when Dallon and I really bonded for the first time (haha!).
2. I met John when I was in 10th grade, I think. He was a year younger than me: much closer to my little sister's age. I would say that John was my first real boyfriend. We had a great friendship long before we started dating. It was a difficult decision for me to start dating him though, because I had always been taught to date within my faith (so that I could get married in the temple someday, among other reasons). John wasn't really active in any religion. I finally started dating him, and eventually he joined the Church. He and I shared a lot of friends; and he was really close to my family, especially Dallon. Then I went away to college, and he stayed behind. That's when things got tough. I spent a lot of hours talking to him on the phone on the weekends. When I went home for Christmas, he proposed to me. I think it was meant to be more of a "promise ring," but we had long-term plans to get married after he went on a mission. That's when things started falling apart. I went back to school, and he started making some bad choices. I couldn't believe what I was hearing from my sister Sharley, who was still in classes with him at the high school. I also found out that he had stopped going to church. I talked to him on the phone about it. I told him I was going to take off my ring for a while, until he was ready to try again. During the summer, I went home to visit again. Oh, how I hoped he would be ready to get back together! But, oh, the crushing disappointment to find out he really didn't want to anymore. He had been going out with other girls, he had wrecked a car or two, he had tried drugs and alcohol, and he was into pornography. It was not meant to be. We had dated for about two years.
By the time I got to college, I was a serial first-dater. I got a lot of first dates, but not a lot of second dates. I think it was because I was so shy that guys interpreted that to mean that I wasn't interested. But there were a few that I went out with more than once.
3. I met Eric through a mutual voice teacher at BYU. We sang a duet together in a recital, and then we started going out. Eric was a bit awkward. He drove from Indiana to Tennessee to visit me one summer. We had held hands, and we had kissed, I think, before that. But when I kissed him one night, I realized that the awkwardness was too much. Or maybe he had discovered that he wasn't as interested in me as he thought. Or maybe I realized that he was too much of a rebound. We had never made anything official, and we kind of just broke off contact after that.
4. I met Clifton at an after-choir-concert dance. We started going out and became exclusive pretty quickly. I was the first girl he ever kissed, so there was a bit of awkwardness there. Soon after we started going out, though, he started trying to change things about me. He wanted me to dress more fashionably (I guess I've never been very stylish). And all the while, even though I never said it out loud, I didn't like the way he dressed either. He also really liked to exercise, and told me that I should exercise too. He was tall and too skinny, so I felt chubby next to him already. I never really felt right dating him, and I broke it off after 5 weeks. He tried to get back together with me, telling me that he had changed (that he would stop trying to change me). I remember feeling so sad about the break-up, but I knew I wasn't going to change my mind.
5. Bryan was the best boyfriend ever. He still is, ten years later and counting. :) More on this story later.
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