From what I can gather from the general consensus of dating life in college, a lot of people will say that being single in college is great. They will tell you the benefits are endless: you can go out and do literally whatever you want, you can focus on your studies better, you can be more independent, you can talk to or hook up with as many different people as you choose, it’s less stress/drama, etc.
I’m here to tell you…that it’s okay if you think that all of that is absolute BS, because I do too. I strongly believe that there is a huge stigma surrounding dating life in college where everyone insists that they feel perfectly happy and free while being single the entire time in college. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure some people actually do feel that way, and that’s great for them. I definitely feel that way sometimes too. But I honestly think there are plenty of college kids out there who HATE being single, and just feel like they can’t admit it.
There’s a double standard for dating in college. There’s half the people who are already in fully committed long-term super lovey-dovey relationships, so we start to see Facebook friends from high school getting engaged, marrying, and having kids.
The other half of college students refuse to commit to anything, and prefer hooking up with different people every weekend and never speaking to them again, or sticking to “friends with benefits” and so on. Rarely do I see the in-between, where people actually go out on dates or take dating seriously, or try to develop actual relationships while in college. I think this is mostly because most single college students feel they cannot admit they would actually like to find a boyfriend or girlfriend, and would rather play off the “I don’t give a sh*t about anyone but myself” college-kid vibe.
Photo taken by myself at a Siena hockey game, which represents my current love life.
Here’s the deal: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to be in a relationship or take dating seriously in college. I personally hate hooking up and would much rather have a genuine connection with someone that I have a physical relationship with, and I think a lot of people actually feel the same way too, whether they admit it or not. I think that hook-up culture can be extremely degrading and makes a lot of people feel horrible about themselves afterwards, and there is a lack of genuine emotion or personal connection in hooking up.
For some reason, college kids seem to think that emotions are taboo and wanting to emotionally commit to someone isn’t cool, but that’s kind of ridiculous. There are endless guys who have put the effort into “talking me up” just to get me to hook up with them, and then when they realize that isn’t my style they just drop me like I’m nothing. And I think that’s extremely rude and degrading, and it honestly feels horrible to know that these people only want me physically and could care less about me as a person.
And don’t get me started on Tinder. We’ve all been there, we download the app “as a joke,” and at first it’s kind of funny to mess around with people on there. But secretly we are hoping to actually find someone to start talking seriously to on there, and then we start to realize that almost no one on the app is genuine and they’re all just looking for hook-ups. We realize they didn’t swipe right because they care about us as a person, but because we’re someone who looks good enough to mess around with for a night. So we delete the app in frustration, but then probably re-download it one night because we just saw a cute couple pic on Instagram and feel bored and lonely all over again and don’t know any other ways to meet new people except at parties.
Honestly, I think that dating in college is pretty awful, and that’s why I hate being single a lot of the time. If you truthfully enjoy being able to live life without committing to anything or you enjoy hooking up, that’s great for you, because there’s certainly nothing wrong with that either. Actually, college life must be pretty sweet for you. But I personally think it would be nice to have someone other than platonic friends to do things with and talk to all the time, and have that person you really care about to spend some of the best times of your life with.
If the relationship is healthy and fun and does not put any unnecessary stress or restrictions on your life, I think it would be great to have someone to date in college. I think there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to grow, learn, and be independent as an individual while in a relationship. But for some reason when I bring that up to most of my friends, they think I’m crazy, and tell me to just go out and have fun on my own, and that it’s better that way than to have a boy holding me back anyways.
At the same time, I agree that it isn’t necessary to force anything to happen in your love life. If a great person comes into your life, for sure take advantage of it if you want to. But if for the time being a relationship just isn’t working out for you, it’s probably for a reason. It’s a great time to do things for yourself for once, to focus on school and work, and to have all kinds of fun without feeling bad about it. Not everything in life is about having a boyfriend or girlfriend, and your self-worth has nothing to do with that either. I’m just here to remind you that if you just hate being a single college student sometimes, it is actually OK to feel that way, no matter what everyone else seems to be saying.