I'm a pretty shy and quiet person. I find a group of friends and I stick with them. I only open up to them after I've gotten to know them a good bit and I shut down a little bit around people I don't know as well.

As you probably imagine, that wasn't really the best tactic for getting people to like me.

Long story short, I stuck with roughly the same group of friends until high school ended. I never had a boyfriend in high school. I had one or two in middle school, but they were just guys I said I was dating and we never spoke until they sent a friend to tell me we were "breaking up." Not exactly what I'd call a relationship. In high school, I had one of those weird "talking" phases where you only ever text and very rarely, if ever, do you talk in person.

My point of all of this is, I wasn't really talking to any guys in middle school or even high school. Did I care and really want a boyfriend? Not particularly. I always felt like I was a step behind, though.

You reach a point around the middle school age where you feel like everyone around you has already had their first kiss and is on boyfriend #3 and you're just wondering what's wrong with you because no one even showed any interest in you. It's a killer on a girl's self-esteem.

Was I at all even ready for a boyfriend back at that time? Absolutely not. Like I said, I think I had one later that I literally never spoke to. Does that mean no one in middle school is ready for a boyfriend, though? No. I personally was not ready, but people can't really accept that we don't all grow up or mature at the same rate.

Destroy the idea that everyone is going to be advancing at the same rate romantically. The idea that they all are the same only results in "What do you mean you've never had your first kiss?" Which, of course, only makes people feel like they're doing something wrong. It results in people feeling like they have to "catch up" with everyone else, therefore forcing relationships that would never work out and that they aren't ready to have, mentally or emotionally.

Don't push girls to jump into relationships sooner than they should. Not everyone has to go through a heartbreak before they find love. Sometimes they just need some time to find themselves. There's nothing wrong with your first boyfriend or first kiss not being until college, or even after. Not everyone's going to reach these "milestones" at the same time and it's ridiculous of us to think they might. If you don't want a boyfriend until you find someone you think you really love, there's nothing wrong with never having that heartbreak.