5 Things to Know about College Relationships

We all at some point have had rela­tion­ships in col­lege. Some of us had one or two oth­ers have had more. The lucky few end up find­ing “the one” in col­lege and never have to worry about it again. We all know how awk­ward it can be deal­ing with the issues asso­ci­ated with find­ing some­one new and start­ing a rela­tion­ship or end­ing an old rela­tion­ship and get­ting over that per­son. Here are five things to know about “Col­lege Relationships”:

1. Mar­ry­ing your Col­lege Sweet­heart
The chances of meet­ing your soul­mate and being col­lege sweet­hearts turned happy cou­ple are slim (to none for some). Let’s face it. Most col­lege stu­dents go through rela­tion­ship after rela­tion­ship while some have never even had one. To think the per­son you end up with could be the one you marry is a bit naive but it can hap­pen. Some peo­ple expect it to hap­pen when they go to col­lege. The truth is that the only way to find out is to try it and see if it works out which brings us to the next thing on our list.

2. Find­ing a part­ner
It’s hard to find a part­ner in the first place. Depend­ing on the size of your cam­pus find­ing the right per­son is like find­ing a nee­dle in a hay stack. Even with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass it can be next to impos­si­ble. You’ll prob­a­bly end up going through tons of peo­ple before you even end up find­ing some­one you want to be with. By the time you’ve found some­one you’ve prob­a­bly already friend-zoned a large num­ber of peo­ple. So now you have at least two lists of peo­ple. Peo­ple who are just friends and peo­ple who are poten­tial rela­tion­ship can­di­dates. When look­ing for a part­ner start with peo­ple you know such as friends or peo­ple who have sim­i­lar inter­ests so that you can find com­mon ground. Peo­ple who have things in com­mon find it eas­ier to get along and build a bond. Friend­ship is one of the first rela­tion­ships we have out­side of fam­ily so it becomes the basis for other types of rela­tion­ships. This may be more dif­fi­cult at a large uni­ver­sity than it would be at a small com­mu­nity col­lege. Adding online classes would make it even more dif­fi­cult to inter­act with peo­ple on a daily basis.

3. Deal­ing with a Break Up
Now this is the part that we all hate the most. The part where one or both par­ties are all sad and lonely. Usu­ally some­one gets off bet­ter than the other who of course ends up worse off. Get­ting the short end of the stick hap­pens to peo­ple often. Maybe you and your high school sweet heart didn’t work out after the tran­si­tion or you met some­one in col­lege and it didn’t work out. Feel­ing depressed is nor­mal but shouldn’t stop you from liv­ing your life. The next step is to pick your­self up and do some­thing about it. Hang out with your friends and just do things you enjoy doing. Stop think­ing about the per­son and you’ll move on in no time. Now you have at least three lists of peo­ple, friends, poten­tial can­di­dates and exes. Start to look at poten­tial can­di­dates once again after you have moved on and got­ten over your past rela­tion­ship and partner.

4. Flings and Hook Ups
A lot of times in col­lege peo­ple don’t intended to get involved with some­one and then they end up in this momen­tary predica­ment. Usu­ally short term rela­tion­ships that can start and end rel­a­tively quickly even last­ing as lit­tle as a few hours. It all starts when two peo­ple meet at a club or a party and they get together after­wards to talk, get some­thing to eat/drink or have sex depend­ing on what their mind­set is. Often times it could be some­body you met dur­ing the sum­mer when you went back home or you met them in class or at school while tak­ing a few classes over the sum­mer. Typ­i­cally these don’t last or turn into any­thing seri­ous although they could if sit­u­a­tions and cir­cum­stances per­mit. The par­tic­i­pants don’t usu­ally allow it to go on longer than nec­es­sary and some­times it can be jointly agreed upon or at the sole dis­cre­tion of one per­son involved. Many times these are unex­pected and just hap­pen in the spur of the moment when emo­tions and pas­sions are high, some­one is horny and/or drunk, high or not think­ing straight. Other times it hap­pens the way all rela­tion­ships hap­pen nor­mally or in the case of one night stands they hap­pen some­how and nobody knows how or why. A case of the who, what, when, where, why and how syn­drome. The best thing to do is not make it awk­ward and move on from it. Decide what is to hap­pen next if it has already hap­pened or set bound­aries and expec­ta­tions before it does and pos­si­bly dis­cuss it with your part­ner if you can. These usu­ally are the friends with ben­e­fits or some other sim­i­lar no strings attached rela­tion­ship or at least end up that way. They are spur of the moment bursts of flam­ing pas­sion that can burn out pretty quickly or get too hot and need to be extin­guished. Now you have at least four lists, friends, exes, poten­tial can­di­dates and hookups/flings

5. Remem­ber­ing Time for Your­self
Remem­ber you’ll be in col­lege any­where from 1 to 8 years depend­ing on how long you take to fin­ish, what you’re study­ing and how high the qual­i­fi­ca­tions you are seek­ing are. You have plenty of time for a rela­tion­ship so take some time to focus on you. Don’t rush things. Take up recre­ational and extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties like sports, join clubs, go to the gym. Don’t for­get to make friends and spend time with them, focus on yours classes and your stud­ies. Also remem­ber to put aside time for your­self just to be alone, be you and do the things you like to do. There is no rush to find some­one. They will either find you or you will find them in time. When the time is right and you’ve found some­body you can start to build a foun­da­tion with you’ll know. Don’t be pushy or in a hurry cause then you could end up with the wrong per­son or in the wrong rela­tion­ship and end up unhappy. Pace your­self and take some time to make sure you know and under­stand what you want in life, in a rela­tion­ship and in a partner.

Col­lege and uni­ver­sity rela­tion­ships are just the begin­ning of what we’ll face as we enter the world. This is just the tip of the ice­berg and there will be many more obsta­cles to face. Col­lege is not just about the things you learn in the class­room because it teaches you many life lessons. Rela­tion­ships are only a small part but the expe­ri­ence you gain from those will stick with you and help you through­out your jour­ney called life.

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