Many years ago, Taylor Swift was asked in an interview about why she wrote so many romantic songs as a teenager. In her response, she mentioned that she read too many romance novels at that time and didn’t have a realistic perspective on love.
When I heard that, I felt conflicted. I am not everyone, but I thought there were more teenage girls that knew that romance novels are not real life. Real love isn’t always as dreamy as a romance novel. When I was in high school, I saw too many of my female classmate that read romance novels and began pursue relationships based off it. Since they dated boys from our high school, I also got to hear about the gossip and rumors about what the relationship actually was like. Sometimes, I would even get to see how volatile the relationship would be.
This is also why I didn’t want to date anyone from my high school. I was able to graduate without dating anyone, which I felt conflicted about. Today, I am happy I decided to do this. The reason is because out of all the girls in the school, I seemed to emit the most hopeless romanic aura to the boys. Since there were many boys in my high school that wanted to date girls like me because we were the easiest to be with. We wanted to find “The One” and keep him for the rest of our lives. The sad thing is the girls in my high school also wouldn’t say no to doing things they shouldn’t have. Some did this because they wanted to. Some did it in order to keep their boyfriend’s attention and to make sure they don’t leave them. Continue reading “Thoughts on Romance Novels and Keeping a Realistic Perspective On Love as a Teen”