Your best friend just got into a relationship. The loneliness will probably start to bother you and suddenly you have a lot of “me time.” That movie you were dying to see, they already saw it–with each other.
It happens to the best of us. We’ve all heard those cliché things such as “too much PDA”, and then we try to laugh it off. But under the surface, this new relationship can hurt our emotions a lot more than we would like to admit.
An anonymous source at BHS, says that when her friend got into a relationship, “It was difficult because they were so consumed with their relationship and making it perfect, that they didn’t really make time for friends, and it was a controlling relationship. It was hard to make time to stay friends and be around each other.”
The source recalls “She lost her voice with him. She lost her right to say what she wanted or do what she wanted unless she had his permission or consent.”
BHS sophomore, Miles Naberhaus says of his own experience: “I certainly didn’t see him as much as I had, and I had been hanging out with this person pretty much constantly and that had gone away and been replaced by his girlfriend. Which I feel like happens in a lot of relationships.”
But what happens when the person you were once so close becomes someone completely different? Whether they change for the better or worse, it may start to bother you.
“That’s what you’re going to hear from anyone you ask, is that you don’t see them as much, but more important than that is when you see them they’re a different person. Being in a relationship fundamentally changes who someone is because they want to impress or want to maintain a stable relationship with someone else.” Naberhaus says.
“People end up not being the same person so whether or not they’re actually hanging out with you as much, that just goes along with them not being the same as they were”, he claims.

Naberhaus also says that “third wheeling” –hanging out with a couple who is paying more attention to each other than to you–can be awkward. .
“It was different… the fact that the other person was there meant that there was just this mass block between us in which whoever I was hanging out with wasn’t allowed to be the person they really were and was trying to maintain this elaborate lie about who they wanted the person they were going out with to think they were,” he says.
Naberhaus says this behavior shows how shallow most people are, the fact that were so willing and easy to change ourselves to impress someone else or to be with someone else.
“I think the worst part about is it is that it works, no one cares about being their true self or seeing other people’s true selves. They’d much rather see who they want to see because that’s what makes it more fun and enjoyable,” Naberhaus says.
In a recent New York Times article, Dr. Wyndol Furman, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, said adolescents lack of social skills and emotional control can make relationships difficult. This could be why less than two percent of all marriages are actually to a high school sweetheart.
“That’s the most essential thing to realize about all these relationships, is that for the most part they don’t last for long and even if they do they’re not good relationships necessarily. A lot of unhealthy relationships exist in high schools and it doesn’t seem like too many people really mind,” Naberhaus says, adding that he believes high school relationships are not genuine because teens are afraid of being who they are.
“Even directly outside of high school you stop seeing these mass amounts of people lying. Where as in this stage of our lives we’re embarrassed about things and we would rather keep feelings inside or make them up to think that we feel differently because we’re meant to all feel that we’re in the same exact boat. And we’re all in the same boat situationally but not fundamentally and emotionally, we’re all very different people,” Naberhaus says.
But dating in high school may not be all that bad after all. According to the Livestrong foundation, the positive effects of dating in high school are that it facilitates maturity in teens, so they have a better understanding of themselves and they begin to practice having intimate relationships that will benefit them in the long-run. Naberhaus agrees that high school relationships have some positive effects, which he noticed in his friend.
“Overall, they were a less vulgar person, they wanted to avoid swearing and stuff around their girlfriend because they wanted to improve their chances of having a decent relationship. And generally they would be a less abrasive person, being nicer overall and kinder to people that they wouldn’t necessarily normally be kind to. This person wasn’t a bully by any means but they would stop making jokes and stuff to impress someone that really didn’t matter at all,” he says.
If you miss your friend, tell them. If your friendship means as much to them as it does to you, they will listen.
“If she’s happy, then I’m happy,” the anonymous source concluded.