The teenage dating mystery, solved.

I understand now why girls want boyfriends.

Why thirteen-year-olds in braces and too-tight Abercrombie hunger for a smelly boy with shaggy hair.

It could be sex pheromones, yes, and it could be hormones, but most of all... it's loneliness.

Think about the culture teen girls are raised in: from a young age they're bombarded with media stars labeled "too fat" or "too skinny." Over time they learn to hate their bodies. It's almost impossible to love what you're given, because everyone else is telling you not to. Magazines that we grow up thinking are cool talk about boyfriends and parties like that's all there is to life.

Outside of the culturosphere, girls are pitted against one another from such a young age that by the time we're older, we're convinced it's nature and not nurture. I just read an email from my 11-year-old neighbor worrying over the rejection she's receiving from her "friends." Pardon my language, because I usually try to state my opinion without swearing, but this is BULLSHIT. Girls have to put up with so much from the world already: sexism, body hate, boy problems, school problems. With all of the problems we face, you think we'd develop a mutual love and understanding for one another. An "I've got your back if you've got mine" sort of thing. A girl "bro code." Instead we backstab our best friends to win a boy, all in the name of what's natural.

So in the emotionally hostile world girls live in, it's pretty obvious why they want a smelly boy boyfriend. To any girl feeling insecure, a boyfriend provides a steady companion, a guaranteed friday-night hangout. A boyfriend will always be there to watch movies with when you don't feel like talking and walk you around Forever 21. A boyfriend will keep you from feeling like a loser, in short, because while you may have multiple friends, you only have one boyfriend (at least, I hope so.)

Furthermore, this is the reason women stay in relationships after they've been abused. It's because of that feeling of being loved, of being accepted. It's because of the constancy having a boyfriend provides in an upside-down world where nothing is predictable. Boyfriends are safe.

To be completely honest, I still feel some of this girl insecurity from time to time, and I'm happy that I haven't succumbed to having a boyfriend in the past five years because I haven't met anyone I want to spend that much time with. At times, it's hard to fight off. In the end, though, I always cherish quality time I spend with myself over time spent bored with friends, or worst of all... time spent on failed relationships.