his name was ashley and he was everything i thought i wanted in a guy. he was confident, athletic and oh yeah, super gorgeous. i remember seeing him the first of week of senior year and thinking how incredible of a guy he must be.

as the year progressed i admired him from afar. later i found out that he had a child from a girl at our school. by this point we still had not met. it was not until second semester that he first approached me. it was in Econ CP first period when he first asked me my name. we exchanged numbers and decided to hang out the upcoming weekend. to say the least, the date was amazing. he was a gentleman, he was funny and knew exactly what to say to win my over.

after casually hanging out for three or so weeks, he told me that he did not want to date anyone. however we continued to maintain the same relationship a boyfriend and girlfriend would have. we went on dates, hung out at each others houses,  cuddled. everything seemed perfect.

then he told me that he would date me, BUT we couldn't tell anyone. this should have been the first warning sign. but no, i was blinded and naive. so silly me, agreed to his terms.

we hung out every chance we had.

he started bringing me around his friends more and we began to party together.

after three months of smooth sailing we began to fight. not just any fights, fights over absolutely nothing.

then the trouble began.
it was a friday night and we had planned for a week to head up to Edisto River to hang out with some of his friends. so around 6 or 7 ashley and i piled in the car and began the 45 minute drive. we reached the house and within an hour ashley drank himself silly.

he got really loud and boisterous and i told him to stop drinking, but what did i know. he paid me no mind, though i had his best interests at heart. after 30 minutes of arguing about him drinking, the real fight started.

he got really loud and in my face, and for the first time, i was terrified of him. this was a side i had not seen before, and it scared the shit outta me. in attempts to leave the situation and help the conflict boil down, i walked towards the door. unfortunately he wanted me to stay and got very angry with my attempts to leave. things just spiraled downward the entire night. i was lucky to have escaped when i did.

needless to say all my trust and respect for ashley was gone. i was hurt and i felt empty and alone. it was the first time that someone this close to me had taken advantage of that closeness.

the past few weeks have been filled with tears. in efforts to make the situation make sense, i blamed myself. but after two weeks of guilt, i have to come realize that anything that happened that night was not my fault. it was his fault, no one elses.

its sad that the people we are closest to, are the ones who have the most power to hurt us.

i would never wish what happened to me upon anyone else...ever.

BUT looks matter in relationships and never more so than in the technologically advanced world we live in today. it maybe be unfair, we may hate it, but it is true. image is king and speaks volumes about who we are. from our clothes to the places we eat and drink, people notice what we do and make judgements as to who we are by how we look.

the basis of any date or relationship is basic physical attraction. if you are not attracted to someone and they are not attracted to you, you will be just friends. whatever happens after wards, is likely to stay that way. you both must be physically attracted on some level to make things work.

i do know who and what i am attracted to. i am sometimes called shallow because i go for a certain look for my relationships. but the point is that these looks are what i find attractive and i tend to go for the people who match my criteria. it is nature's way of pairing us off, and for the most part it works well.

the key thing is that we must not deny the reality that looks are important when dating. we should try to understand what kind of looks we really are attracted to and what kind of people we appeal to. people will often say that one should not care about what is outside but what is inside that matters. its true. that is the way the world should be, but it isn't. that kind of comment comes from those who are secretly worried about the way they look.

our lives and the way we have developed in connection with life-experiences govern to some degree what and who attracts us. personally, i like tall, brunette, athletic guys, but it is directly related to the fact that one of my best relationships was with a tall, athletic, brunette. so there may be a link to what we find attractive on an emotional as well as physical level due to to the early connections we make.

physical attraction is not about physical perfection, it is about compatibility.

finally consider this. a survey recently asked what attribute people most associated with being poor and unsuccessful. the top answer was being overweight and the second was smoking.

so if i'm shallow for wanting to date a guy that i am physically attracted to, then the rest of society is right there with me :]