There are many things that change when you leave high school and enter into your new life as a collegiette. Your entire life slowly bends and turns until somehow, you wake up one day and everything is completely different. Although your responsibilities may increase and your stress levels may sky rocket, some things need a little extra push when trying to change, especially when it comes to matters of the heart. Relationships can be extremely beneficial to growth and happiness, but that is only if you aren’t stuck in a perpetual cycle of bad breakups. A mistake many make is trying to make an adult relationship work by implementing teenage dating habits. In order to fully embrace the university life, specifically university dating, you will need to leave behind some of the bad high school habits.
1. Displaying all aspects of your relationship on social media
No one is denying that posting photos of happy adventures with your significant other isn’t adorable. Honestly, even little shoutouts every now and again about how lucky you are to have this partner is not bad either. That being said, if you are treating your relationship like an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, in the sense that you’re documenting every single moment for the world to see, you may run into some problems. It may be that you are just trying to show how happy you are, but it does not come off that way. Posting when your fighting, posting when you’ve made up, posting when you break up just brings attention from strangers that won’t fill the gap; the attention you should be focusing on is between you and your partner. Exposing every single detail to the world takes away from the privacy of your relationship. After all, if all your twitter followers know everything about your relationship, what’s left for just you and your partner?
2. Passive aggressive and/or explosive arguments
In high school, you brain is not yet fully developed, you’re still learning; you’re still growing. When you leave your teens and enter the world of adulthood, you can no longer fall back on that excuse. Being sixteen and not knowing how to fully explain your feelings is excusable. You’re young and your hormones are driving you a little crazy. Now that you’re in university, however, one major lesson everyone needs to learn in order to have a healthy relationship is the art of communication. If you are still having screaming matches every single time you’re angry, chances are your relationship won’t last very long. Same goes with passive aggressiveness. Being older simply means that people are less likely to put up with indirectness. If you’re upset, speak your mind. You are more than entitled to be mad and you are also entitled to make that known freely and openly to your partner. No need for cryptic passive aggressive tweets about how chivalry is dead or how trust is a rarity. Just be open and honest and try not to throw anything. It all goes a long way.
3. Letting your squad have too much decision power in your relationship
Don’t get me wrong, it is always a healthy and smart decision to keep your friends updated on how happy or unhappy you are in your relationship, they could potentially point out something that you may not notice. It is also okay to vent to your friends sometimes when you just need a little space from your partner. What is not okay and should be left in your teens, however, is letting your squad run your dating life. Your friends can have opinions, but at the end of the day, you need to be the only person making conscious decisions on what’s best for you. Your girls don’t need to know every single detail about every fight you have. While it seems great to always have a support system every time you’re angry, what actually ends up happening is that the squad will form a resentment towards your S/O. While you will get over the fight and go back to your loved one, your friends don’t have that same connection to him/her. They will only remember the negative details because they aren’t getting as many good ones as they are bad ones. If this continues, they will only start to remember your S/O as the person who can get nothing right. Be open, be honest, but remember that the actual person you should be discussing your relationship with is the other half of said relationship.
4. Going out of your way to make each other jealous
Jealousy is a normal part of any relationship, in fact I would go as far as to say every relationship needs a little bit of jealousy. Think about it, if you don’t care at all about what your S/O is doing or who he/she is doing it with, what does that say about how you feel about them in the first place? That being said, having overactive jealousy, or irrational jealousy is clearly an issue. Therefore, no one, especially if you are no longer a teen, should be going out of their way to make their S/O jealous. It may have been cute in high school to casually allude to the idea that you may have a date with someone else this Friday night, but in university, it’s just not worth anyone’s time. You are both adults, you both have a pile of things you could be doing, why waste time in making your relationship more troublesome than needed? Forget making anyone jealous and focus on making them feel loved. The outcome is the same, you’ll get their attention, but the former is a healthier option and will keep your relationship afloat.
5. Making your relationship your everything
In high school, relationships tended to be all about hanging out and doing everything together. First of all, at sixteen, you have all the time in the world to focus, and sometimes fixate, on your relationship. You are testing the waters of the dating world and instead of dipping your toe, most people cannonball in. University, on the other hand, is different. Most people by now have a hold, maybe a shaky hold, on what dating is like. In university you should be more independent. You both should have your own interests and hobbies because you have both matured into adults with their own lives. Excluding the honeymoon phase, you shouldn’t be so wrapped up in your relationship that you lose sight of everything else in your life. After your relationship shifts from the honeymoon phase, which for those who aren’t aware is basically the first to fourth months of a relationship where you are most enthralled and excited by the relationship, each party should begin slowly getting back to reality. What I mean is that being in love and excited about your relationship is great, wanting to spend time with your S/O is normal. However, don’t forget to be your own individual. Plan events with just your friends or just your family. Don’t forget to keep up with your hobbies and your activities, everything that makes you you. Your relationship should be one portion of an overall fulfilling life, not the entire thing.
Relationships, as much as they can be fun and uplifting, are hard work. Having a healthy adult relationship is a responsibility that should be treated as such. If you are still treating your love life like you did when you were a teenager, you can’t really be surprised that each relationship is turning out just like they did when you were younger. You’re a grown woman, ditch the teenage angst and embrace your new chapter.