From a young age, I have always looked forward to one day being married and sharing my life with someone who was the ideal person for me. This has been both a good and a bad thing; good because I love with all of my heart, bad because heartbreaks are even more devestating. When I started dating, I thought I had a good idea of what I wanted in the person that I'd spend the rest of my life with; After many trials and many errors, what I thought I wanted has changed completely.

Starting out in middle school, like many "relationships," we were dating just to say we had a boyfriend/girlfriend and didn't really take things too seriously. Needless to say, standards were pretty much based on if someone was on a sports team or popular. Thankfully those ideals changed.

In high school, we start developing our own personalities and ideas about other people and relationships. We generally date someone who is a part of your friend group who has similar interests and character traits; people who we spent a lot of time around and found ourselves attracted to. Of course by now puberty is in full swing, so that is also influencing who we would like a relationship with. Most of the time during this stage we're thinking about short term traits that could make "the person of our dreams." A good sense of humor, athletic, fun to spend time with and other traits are generally common for people to look for. Others include similarities, like taste of music, animals and passtimes. These traits could lead you to a good relationship, however in order to develop something that could last, you also need to let your ideals grow and develop as well.

High school sports don't last forever, people may get out of shape, and you will realize that there are so many more important things to look for in a relationship than these qualities. As we grow up and mature, many of us will recognize the different aspects of a person that are important to us. Reliability, loyalty, trustworthiness, respectfulness are just a few to start the list. You will realize that all of those qualities that determined a possible significant other in the past now don't mean a thing.

Many times the traits you believe you want can easily be faked, so the only true way to figure out if a person is good for you is to test out the waters. Getting to know the person like the back of your hand will give you the best ideas about whether someone is for you or not. Sometimes, more times than most, you may think someone is perfect; however after getting to know them, they may not be. Other times, you may not see much potential in someone and they turn out to be the most perfect person you have met.

As we grow and mature, our ideas for a perfect relationship do as well. This fact may lead us to many difficult times and decisons, however in the end, having that person of your dreams will deffinitely be worth it.