Four Key Lessons I Learned from My First "Real" Boyfriend

4 Key Lessons That I Learned from my First "Real" Boyfriend| Transformed4More.com

I started dating my first “real” boyfriend when I was 15 years old. I had just moved 600 miles from the place I had lived all my life. At my new school, there were 2,400 students, and I only knew a handful of people that I had met at basketball camp during the summer, (and Susan, obviously). Needless to say, I was anxious.

After the first few weeks passed, I started to feel less anxious and actually began to notice other people. Most notably, the cute guy in my 2nd period math class. I’ll refer to him as Mark.

A few more weeks passed and Mark and I began to talk more at school. I found out he was the goalie for the soccer team and went to a few of his games. The more we talked, the more I liked him.

Towards the end of September of that year, he asked me to be his girlfriend. We dated almost a year and half. He was my first “real” boyfriend, and I learned so many valuable lessons during our relationship. In today’s post, I want to share them with you in hopes you will learn a few things as well.

Lesson 1: There ARE good guys out there!

Mark was by far the best guy I ever dated (outside of my husband). Honestly, I didn’t even realize how good he really was until I started writing this post.

Mark did so many things right:

He pursued me and planned dates
He was involved at school
He had a vision for his future and what he wanted to do with his life
Had a good family
He was a Christian
He respected my boundaries and had his own
He surrounded himself with great friends
He never took me for granted and was always kind and respectful
He didn’t drink, do drugs, use foul language, and always “walked tall”
Seriously he could have been the poster boy for our Good Date Video

Was he perfect? No; no boyfriend (or husband for that matter) will ever be perfect, but he showed me that there are awesome, classy, respectful Christian guys out there. I wish every other relationship I had could have overall been as solid as the one I had with him.

Lesson 2: Boundaries are a MUST

Holy hormones. If Mark and I had not already been clear within ourselves about our boundaries, we would have skated off a physical cliff.

In our book, So, You Think You’re Ready to Date?, I spend an entire chapter talking about setting up physical and emotional boundaries BEFORE you ever date and how to do it. This is critical to not compromising yourself emotionally or physically.

Doing this kept us in a healthy relationship and left me (and I assume him too) with minimal regrets.

Lesson 3: Teenage dating relationships likely won’t last

By the time our junior year came around, I knew that a relationship with Mark wouldn’t make it. I wanted to come back to Tennessee for college and we would be at least 600 miles apart. I didn’t want to do long distance and did not want to ever convince him to come with me and thwart what God had planned for him.

When I was doing research for our book, I found a statistic that stated 96% of teenage relationships end. It’s almost inevitable. I go into more detail in this post as to why you likely won’t end up with who you date in high school.

Lesson 4: Breaking up is hard to do

I never realized how hard breaking up would actually be until I broke up with Mark. He was such a good guy, but like I said, I knew there was no real future and that the end was inevitable.

The next few weeks were really awkward because we still had classes together and actually were in the middle of working on a project together. (In retrospect, I should have had better timing).

In an interesting twist, in one week he was already dating a girl that I was friends with. I have to admit that it stung. Even though he was single and could date whoever he wanted, it hurt because it made me feel as if our relationship hadn’t meant anything to him.

I eventually became steeped in bitterness and the Lord eventually had convict me about forgiveness. It was a messy process, but I was grateful and it actually helped me spiritually (I talk about that in this post about unforgiveness).

I really thought their relationship would be a rebound…but they dated for seven years and then got married. Life is crazy sometimes.

In Closing

A boyfriend can teach you many lessons. I do not regret my relationship with Mark. It was a great high school relationship, and I learned many things from it. I hope that you found this post helpful and if you would like to learn more about how to set a Biblical foundation for dating relationships, check out our book So, You Think You’re Ready to Date?