Boyfriends, taboo etc

Truth be told — I started dating very early when I was at the cusp of being a teenager. It isn’t dating technically, it’s just professing your infatuation to the boy you fancy on Yahoo messenger (RIP Yahoo Messenger) and him responding with a wink emoji which heralds the start of the relationship in your head. A relationship at this age is barely catching glances of each other or exchanging a few sentences in hiding or calling each other to discuss school problems under the pretence of your friend’s name (Mom, it’s my friend Sakshi from school).

This can be the most beautiful or the most harrowing time in an Indian girl’s life because our society blatantly rejects our biology. As young girls, we’re going through puberty around this age and this leads to heightened increase in sexual feelings given the changes we’re undergoing around this time. This is also around the time we’re experiencing emotional imbalances in forming our identity and coming to terms with a differentiated set of feelings within. This is especially traumatizing for us given we’re coming to accept the things we tried to pretend never existed like our periods, our breasts, hormonal rushes when we saw cute boys and everything that made us innately feminine. The worst part of it all is no one is really trying to help us navigate this tricky age, so you’re just randomly foraying into a foreign territory trying to do the best you can while dodging everyone. The teachers merrily teach you about pollination but unabashedly leave out all chapters concerning your own biology, your parents pretend like they never went through this stage and even talking to the opposite gender (in a co-ed school by the way) is a crime, your friends are all struggling in their own way in isolation so you’re left pretty much feeling shameful and guilty about changes that are so natural (says so even in your curriculum you were never taught).

Ironically enough, all my academic achievements that got me a few cheers here and there, a few taps on the back here and there, came crashing down when some of my teachers found out I was dating. OBVIOUSLY, the girl always has to be the one who’s shamed and ridiculed for her absolute lack of keeping her biology in control. I don’t know about you but some of my teachers gave me a real hard time — hated my guts for continuing to see my boyfriend at the time, continued to discipline me with a looming threat of informing my parents of my wrongdoing (parents getting called for anything was the absolute dealbreaker at the time) and never failed to remind me of what a blunder I had committed. Imagine what our worlds would be like if our teachers normalized these changes and instead taught us how to navigate this age smartly so we didn’t make any rash choices. If anything, some almost push you towards rash choices then discipline you for making them. So at the age of 13 or so, I was dealing with manipulative teachers, parents who refused to understand/accept anything to do with puberty, my boyfriend, strategising with friends (some who knew and some who didn’t and how to tackle both groups), my own physical changes (breasts — I didn’t like them at the time because I was growing up in a society where I looked at them as a weakness), my period (when I first saw the blood patches, I thought I was going to die) and my studies (this always had to be my cushion to fall back on). That’s two movies at the least!

So I did date that boy for 3+ years in utter defiance (got me a few slaps/slippers/yells etc) but it was absolutely worth it. He’s still one of my closest friends and has seen me grow up all the way from the age of 13, lived the Orkut and Yahoo Messenger days with me, cherished in all my life’s achievements and struggles and continued to serve as a benchmark for all the boys I saw since. I know this isn’t going to be the case for everyone but I hope every young girl can find someone wise to confide in so they can guide her into trusting the right boy (or girl — this needs a different blog post altogether), not to abandon boys altogether. It’s also due to the impression of this young relationship that led me to Abhay (the current boyfriend hehe) since he showed me from such a young tender age what men should really be like. Young girls will grow into puberty, will start navigating their sexualities, will see boys (or girls) whether in hiding or not. Even if one adult is willing to have an open dialogue about it so she can sharpen her intuition and make better choices when it comes to association will make absolutely all the difference in the world. So it isn’t your fault if you dated an asshole or two, you had to go through trial and error to eventually make the right choices since no one taught you how to make them.

So many of us function at the helm of our parents/teachers (they are overpowering giants of the society after all), live our teenage years with guilt, step into college and get handed some freedom as our 18th birthday gift, start dating just to find out that our parents don’t accept the boy then get married to someone our parents choose for us and the cycle continues. Why is it that we’re not teaching our girls how to love, how to flow and how to grow into their feminine power? How is it that love, the greatest gift a human being can be bestowed with, is taboo?

Love in our society is either shunned or arranged (in most cases) and I personally feel so guilty for all the women who’ve known either fates (not if you’re happy though — cheers to that). Love is so powerful and when you feel it, your whole life transforms for the better. There would come a point when the love for your partner is SO BIG that you can dig into that well to draw love for whomsoever might need it. It starts the job by making you fall in love with yourself then goes to your partner then goes to your friends then everyone then orbits the earth and comes back feeling even more magnanimous than before. I have never experienced so much freedom in every sense, so much comfort in my being before and all of it started from the tender age of 13 when I asked my first boyfriend “Will you be my boyfriend?”

*Please get in touch if you want to share your struggles with me so we can rejoice in them together!