Do I really need a boyfriend? “UGH, I need a boyfriend right now!”“Why won’t any guy love me? I’m a catch,right?” “No guy loves me. Love must be fake.”

Can you see my eyes rolling right now? Because they are.

I would just like to get one thing straight before I really get into this: I am a huge hypocrite. I can’t even count all of the times I’ve said similar things to my friends, whether I mean it or not, but that’s the problem. The number of times I’ve said or heard these whiny phrases would take at least a hundred hands to count. I don’t necessarily mean it, but culture today, through social media and entertainment industries, has added comments like these to the long list of conversation starters so why not use them incessantly?

Every time I turn on the TV to a cheesy hallmark movie at Christmas time, listen to yet another country love song thinking about the guy I like or turn page after page living vicariously through my favorite book characters’ romances it makes me just that much more lovesick. Can you tell I’m a sucker for a good rom-com?

The fiction in the world today does nothing but teach girls my age we need a guy to be happy. That fiction then becomes the reality of our thoughts as we hunt for a prom date and obsess over whether it could turn into something more. But do we even want something more or does society just tell us we do?

There is a fine line between actually wanting a boyfriend to be your best friend, spend all their time with you, support you, love you and just seeking attention and popularity through a relationship.

So I challenge you (and myself), next time you go to have a conversation with someone about how much you “need a man” and how you “will die without one” maybe chill out for a second, stop complaining and, if you think you really do like someone, do something about it. Take that chance and hey, maybe it’ll work out! After all, it always does in the movies *wink wink*.