Romantic relationships can offer connection and growth, but for teenagers balancing school, friendships and family, they can also be overwhelming. As 31.6% of MVHS students have been in a romantic relationship, according to a survey of 96 students, students describe dating as an experience that can either strengthen their sense of self or slowly pull them away from it.
Senior Nicole Jeleva began dating her boyfriend in her freshman year. After dating for three years, she’s seen multiple positive changes in herself, including learning how to be emotionally vulnerable. This impact can be seen beyond Jeleva — according to research published in the National Library of Medicine, teenage relationships can influence emotional health well into adulthood. Another benefit of dating, she notes, is the security that comes from knowing she has a reliable person to confide in.
“I tell my boyfriend a lot of things that I wouldn’t necessarily tell my friends,” Jeleva said. “If I’m feeling sad, he’ll be there to comfort me. You have someone to share your problems with and someone to be there for you when you need it. It’s a great place to be vulnerable and show all sides of yourself.”
However, she adds that one big challenge relationships present is time management and balancing extracurricular activities and friendships with her relationship. Peter Lee, a father of MVHS students, agrees. Lee first met his wife of 25 years in their sophomore year of high school, and they began dating in their senior year. He believes knowing where to best spend one’s time is critical to both a healthy relationship and self-growth. During high school, Lee prioritized his studies along with his relationship with his girlfriend.
“The biggest change is usually to your families and to your friends, because you have less time for them,” Lee said. “It was important to me to have enough time to study and keep myself at the right status, physically and emotionally stable, so I could get the right result. If my girlfriend wanted to go out for even a movie, or go to a library together, then we had really little time for friends. Back then, I probably ignored my family a lot.”
While being part of a romantic relationship didn’t impact senior Anika Ramachandran’s relationship with her family, she said she noticed changes in her friendship dynamics. Recalling a relationship she had in her early teens, Ramachandran said she often spent the majority of her free time at school with her then-boyfriend.
“I realized that I was missing out on certain things — some friends would have inside jokes that I was not a part of,” Ramachandran said. “There were never any major events that I missed out on, but it was just like the daily things — sitting with your friends while having lunch and gossiping — that was the stuff that I really missed, and didn’t have with a romantic relationship. I feel like that was what I was missing. And so I was like, ‘Okay, I’m losing myself a little bit here. My life has just become all about him.’”
Ramachandran attributes a large factor of her attachment to the relationship to her youth and the time period. Her class had just returned to school after the pandemic, and Ramachandran believed she was lonely and craved human interaction outside of her family. Looking back, she said none of her friends mentioned anything outright to her about the time she was spending on her relationship, but she noticed some changes. Ramachandran said she believed that it was better that she didn’t need to have direct conversations with her friends about the shift, as it would be awkward. But now she believes having these straightforward conversations would be beneficial, a skill Jeleva learned from being in her relationship.
“In a relationship, you have to be confrontational,” Jeleva said. “Before I got into this relationship, I was closed off, and I wasn’t as vulnerable with anyone. Even with my parents or my friends, I was very nonconfrontational. I would consider myself confrontational now, because when something bothers me, I will bring it up. I developed that skill by being in a relationship and by practicing it, because when you have any issues, you have to be willing to confront them. With friends, you can get away with edging around topics. But in relationships, you have to be very explicit.”
While Jeleva acknowledged the effort that relationships require, she says her relationship is a positive experience. She values having her partner to experience new things with, noting that both people introduce new experiences to each other. Lee agrees, saying that the long-term success of relationships relies on people’s abilities to help each other grow.
“If the person is mature enough, any relationship should help you in some way,” Lee said. “If you can look inside yourself and reflect on the consequences and your priorities, I think it’s all positive. But if you get too committed and you lose yourself through the process, then it is probably not a very good result, regardless of whether you’re in high school or not. It’s just that in high school, people are usually less mature, and you have a lot of other commitments. But I think all of this is positive, as long as you don’t lose sight of the important things.”
