I finally have a girlfriend! Now what?

Now, most teenage relationships are puppy love.

You're not really thinking about being serious, though your text messages say otherwise, Ex.

"I'll be with you forever."

"You are mine till the end of time."

"I'll never stop loving you."

Needless to say, more than half of teenage relationships don't really last that long, and the odds are even worse in childhood friends, contrary to the popular love theme that childhood friends stay together till the end.

So now you're staring at the ceiling wondering, should I keep dating her and worry about what happens when it happens, or should I take initiative?

Well, if you're a teenager, keep dating. Most of the time, you're out there for fun, enjoyment, and boys, we brag about our girlfriends don't we? Don't deny it, we do!

Girls and boys often enter in a relationship with a mindset on how that relationship would be. Girls would stare at the ceiling smiling about how her dream man would carry her on the altar, kiss her underneath the sunset, they'll have 4 kids, a 3 boys and a girl and- wait, am I being too specific here?

And boys lie in bed and, uh, you know, we think of girls too, just not in the way they do. It's an entirely different setting, and it has a, how do I say this, a disturbing lack of clothing?

We do, and more often than not, when we enter a relationship, we find ourselves disappointed that our expectations were not met.

"He doesn't hold me like I thought he would!"

"I thought she was shy and cute, but she's annoying and needy!"

Yeah, more often than not expectations are truly never met, and these problems occur often enough to end a relationship.

But there are people who dwell in the comfort of their imperfections, who accepts the other even if the twisted side of them shows, and these people often know how to adapt easily enough to maintain the relationship. Good for them.

Another thing about having a girlfriend is that, you most often, always think that your relationship will last longer than it really would.

I have friends who broke up with their girlfriends a month after they got together.

The reason? Boredom.

They got bored of their girlfriends way sooner than they thought.

They knew each other too well in a month, that their relationship just sank into who can guess what the other's gonna do next.

They've become predictable to the other, and ended up getting bored because they thought the other would be a little bit more interesting.

So if you start getting bored of your girlfriend right away, well, that's a red flag in the relationship. You might not be fully committed to the relationship after all.

Or, you love the idea of being WITH her, and not HER.

There's a difference between loving someone for them, and for being with them.

If you love being with them, do you think of them when you're not together? Will you go out of your way to do a favor that she asks, even if it seems stupid?

If you only feel loved when you're with her, you love the idea of being with her.

If you love a person, then you don't even know the reason why you love them. You just do.

Think about this, if you love someone for a reason, once that reason is gone, so is the love. If you love someone just because you do, you really mean it.

You didn't have a reason to love her? But you do anyway? Even if she's not perfect? Even though she punches your good arm for fun? Even if she leaves you in the hallway to walk alone when she stops and talks to her friends? Now that's love.

Getting a girlfriend isn't a choice you make, it is an opportunity in life to show how well you've matured. Because getting a girlfriend is easy, keeping her, now that's hard. If you do your best and it still fails, move on, learn what you and her did wrong, and never commit it again.

And if you see something in her, that even through the years, your interest and love for her was still the same as the day you first laid your eyes on her, do a Beyonce and "put a ring on it."