Settling
By Emily, age 21, Newfoundland
Sweet Designs Featured Writer
Whether you're old or young, you always hear about people who settle. There are those who settle for the less expensive clothes and there are those who settle for the less expensive school or car. But the ones who perplex me the most are the ones who settle for the wrong partner.
Throughout my brief adulthood I have come across many couples where one or both of the people involved have settled for the person they have come to be with, and I have yet to be able to understand it. And I think to myself, maybe I need to be a little bit older to understand why people settle. But then, I see people around my age settling for people they're not really attracted to, people they won't break up with, and people who drive them crazy.
They say that you accept the love you think you deserve, and I wonder if people really think that in these situations. I wonder if people my age really think that they have to stay with someone who makes them miserable because they think that no one else will really love or accept them.
Throughout university, I've always told myself that I should try to stay out of long-term relationships because I want to experience the world for what it really is. I've always felt that dating was more appropriate for people my age because it gives me a chance to pick what I like and don't like about the opposite sex. I've always turned my nose up to the ones who settle, and I think that someday I'll find someone I won't have to settle for.
But with all this talk of settling, sometimes I wonder if I really should be in a long-term relationship. Or, sometimes I wonder if I'm running out of time. What if I'm doomed to be a "settler"?
I'm 21 years old and I haven't been in a relationship for four and a half years. Still, to this day, I believe that there is someone out there for me, and I just have to find him. Until then (or I turn 30), I refuse to settle.
