One of the student sources in this story is anonymous due to privacy concerns and will be referred to as Student A.
Thirty-two percent of MVHS students have been in a romantic relationship, according to a survey of 95 students. While high school relationships are not something most students discuss, it has a major impact on MVHS campus culture. The obsessive nature of young relationships begins to affect more than just those involved, disrupting friendships and creating the challenge of balancing multiple connections at once.
School-based therapist Akiko Chung believes that as students adjust to the new environment of a relationship, they develop stronger communication skills and emotional maturity to better balance their time. She emphasizes the importance of friendship for students in relationships in order to retain their own opinions outside of a partner’s influence.
“When you are in a relationship, you can become blind,” Chung said. “Whatever your partner says, sometimes you just go with it and you really lose yourself. This is when danger happens, because you don’t know when you are losing yourself in a relationship. Your friends can really give you a reality check, that’s why you should keep your friends so you can keep your identity. Your friends will hopefully tell you when you need to scale back, because usually they can be your check.”
Senior Aaryan Sharma has seen his friends lose themselves and their opinions after getting into a relationship. Despite trying to give advice and reality checks, he recalls his friends often dismissing him because they were unaware of the mistreatment they faced from their partners. After continuous failed attempts to reason with his friends, he now feels he has to watch what he says regarding their relationship to avoid jeopardizing their friendship.
“I can’t help my friend anymore because I feel like whenever this person opens up to me about their partner, I try to sugarcoat it, but I still, simultaneously, try to get them out of this,” Sharma said. “You have to stick up for yourself. You can’t accept that type of abuse. This person is so convinced that their partner has a good heart and that they would never genuinely try to hurt them. But I just don’t believe that.”
While Chung and Sharma recognize and warn of the dangers of losing your identity and friendships in a high school relationship, Chung also adds that when in a healthy relationship, having a partner can be a positive addition to someone’s life. Specifically, she believes having a partner can help boost self-esteem and confidence, a change she had not experienced through her friendships. Student A, a senior, has seen these positive changes reflected within her own relationship.
“I’ve become a lot less insecure,” Student A said. “I don’t wear makeup as much anymore. I don’t know if that’s because of the relationship or if I’m just tired, but I just don’t feel as ugly. I don’t feel as insecure about my looks and myself.”
After being set up with her boyfriend through her friends, Student A recognizes the importance of her friendships in her relationship. She makes a point of balancing her time equally between her partner and friends. If she sees one being neglected because she’s paying more attention to the other, she makes sure to balance her time more equally. Doing this has helped her make compromises and become more aware of how she spends her time.
“I prioritize both equally,” Student A said. “Homecoming was weird for me to plan because I wanted to get pictures or TikToks with my boyfriend, but I also knew that my friends didn’t want my boyfriend to come along for the pictures that we went to take near the reservoir, so I ended up compromising and I went at the planned time for my friends. But then, I made my boyfriend come earlier in the day so we could film the first part of transitions and just hang out a little bit.”
To Student A, the key to managing her time between her relationships is to respect and understand her friends’ or boyfriend’s wishes. She often brings her boyfriend to events with her friends, but respects their opinion when they prefer him not to be there. Sharma, a close friend to both Student A and her partner, believes they do a good job of making sure their friends are always comfortable and included in hangouts.
“It never feels too awkward to the point where I’m like, ‘I don’t want to hang out with you guys anymore,’ so I think that they’ve incorporated me into plans, and there’s never been a problem,” Sharma said. “The only thing that it affects is if they want to hang out, and they want to have their alone time, and then I’m there, I might feel awkward, and I might feel like a third wheel. But I think that they’ve planned things well enough that I’m not interfering with their relationship.”
Chung says it can be easy to lose sight of friends in a relationship, but she advises that they should maintain their friendships as a source of support during difficult times, as they will always be there for you when you need them the most.
“Things change, and people in relationships often forget about friendship,” Chung said. “I’ve seen that, but I don’t want them to cut off their friendships, because friends are support for when they go through hardship. It’s not black and white. I hope you guys keep the friendship as a support to overcome this hurdle.”
