Amid the experience of high school, filled with gossip, stress, dancing, unfortunate grades, and more, heartbreak is one of the more unfortunate experiences anyone can go through. There are few ways to avoid the inevitable crying, emotional pain and embarrassment that comes from liking someone romantically and having it not work out. However, Naina Tallak became known among her friends for strategically avoiding typical teenage heartbreak. 

Her secret? High standards and a firm commitment to avoid romantic entanglements.

The biggest quality Naina looks for in a partner is emotional maturity. After that, it’s respect, kindness, loyalty and academic intelligence.

She sees these qualities in celebrities like Dylan O’Brien, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Kim Mingyu, Park Sung Hoon, Cho Gue-Sung, Andrew Garfield, Dev Patel, Julio Pena and Prince Naveen. 

“I definitely think the reason I’ve never had a crush during high school is because there’s no one here that meets all of those standards for me,” she said. 

She thinks having these standards will likely make dating life harder in the future, but in the meantime, she is happy that she doesn’t need to worry about getting hurt. 

Tallak mentioned that athleticism is not a big factor and that although physical attraction plays an important factor, personality is more important to her. 

“A guy can have 0% athleticism, but if they’re book nerds and like to read for fun, I’m sold,” Tallak said. 

Tallak loves to read for fun, especially romance books, which is a key reason her standards are so high in the first place. 

Though she’s never felt a need or desire to be in a romantic relationship in high school, she’s never been completely closed off, either. 

“Whenever I see someone act a certain way, I definitely note to myself that they would never meet those standards,” Tallak said. 

When Tallak goes to college, she will still try her best to keep these high standards, recognizing that there will be many more people to choose from, and likely, more emotionally mature potential partners too. 

“I think high standards serve as protection for a lot of unfortunate events like seeing my friends get hurt by a guy that treated them really badly,” Tallak said. “I feel like if you maintain high standards, the probability of you having bad experiences in a relationship is much lower, which is why having them is so important to me.”