Dating is one of the most exciting periods of your life. Suddenly, there are new horizons before you, friendships flower, your personality blooms, and your sense of being a desirable person worthy of affection becomes real. This is a time of great exhilaration, splendor, and discovery. To live it fully is to enjoy one of life’s most delightful experiences.
To miss out on dating is a shame and a waste, especially when there is still time to do something about it. Dating is an art, and like all arts it must be cultivated to give results. Approach it with honesty, enthusiasm, energy, and it begins to take form. And soon you have answers to the questions that were worrying you.
Long before you actually start dating, you dream about it. Wistfully, you see other fellows and girls out together on dates, laughing, talking, going places, having a seemingly effortless, wonderful time. Before you ever get a date, you see yourself as the gallant hero or the glamorous heroine of a romantic situation. You imagine all the right words and actions so easily, so vividly, that you can hardly wait to start dating. Yet, somewhere inside you anticipate the awkward moments when you will stand tongue-tied and clumsy before some very special person, finding that dating is anything but wonderful. And so you swing between eagerness and anxiety, impatient to try your wings at one moment, and afraid of a take-off in the next.
When you consider the nature of dating, this emotional see-sawing is quite understandable. For dating fun is different from the fun a boy has playing ball with the fellows or the joy a girl knows confiding in her closest chum. In dating you are involved with persons of the other sex. You are learning about these other special people. And in the process you are also discovering a great deal about yourself. You are on the threshold of a new kind of experience that is grown-up, romantic, and full of promise for your life ahead as a full-fledged adult.
Probably you are wondering when you can start participating in this new exciting experience. For some of you the answer will be easy. If you belong to a closely knit group that does everything together, having dates within that circle of familiar friends will come naturally and simply. But for the majority of young people the answer is not so easy.