This week we’re going to talk about a little thing called PDA. No, not Public Displays of Affection. Public Displays of Aggression. Every couple fights. And if you say you don’t, you’re lying. Even people in that awkward I-don’t-know-if-we’re-dating-but-you-sleep-in-my-bed-every-night stage have fights; maybe not together, but they definitely have some serious aggression going on.
Aggression is a natural product of relationships just as much as love, happiness, and the total disregard for reality. I would argue that PDAggression is far worse than PDAffection because when you engage in a public fight it’s like airing out your dirty laundry on the quad, at Shooters, or the Loop (rude, I eat there) whereas PDAffection is like a performance of how amazing your life is because you get sex on the reg. And PDAffection can only really come in so many forms and is only acceptable in some places. PDAggression can happen anywhere because it’s spontaneous, it feeds off the crowd more than the aggravated couple themselves, and it can differ from couple to couple, woman to woman, man to man, relationship to relationship. Kissing is pretty standard across the board of relationships but fights? Fights can be ridiculous, ugly, and high-pitched in all different kinds of ways.
Let’s narrow it down by locale.
The Quad Fight
First of all, the Duke quad is NOT the ideal place to have a public display of aggression. At Duke we like to pretend that committed relationships and emotional attachments don’t exist, so having a public fight about one shows that you’re weak, that you’re not in control, and that you will not beat all the other Duke students in a battle to be perfect. Hell, if you can’t even control your relationship, how are you supposed to successfully manage a multi-million dollar company? Come on.
However, quad fights do happen. But they are the tamest public displays of aggression. They usually involve hurried whispers, with each participant distracted by all the people on the quad that might be watching instead of looking at their actual partner when they talk, and of course the brutal storm-off by the girl who waits until she reaches a bathroom to cry. Classic quad fight.
The Shooters Fight
Oddly enough, most public displays of aggression occur outside of Shooters. There’s too much of the normal affection going on inside, so there has to be more aggression outside to counterbalance. Dukies are always thinking about equilibrium. Shooters fights are often more aggressive than quad fights mainly because of the environment. Usually everyone is hammered, packed together like cattle in line, and cold because it’s winter for way too long in Durham during the school year. These conditions can only encourage public displays of aggression between couples, girls, boys and security guards alike. They usually result in either police intervention or a sullen cab ride home that makes two stops and charges $20. Lame. But you won’t remember it in the morning, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
The Mixer fight
By far the worst public display of aggression happens at mixers. Mixers are high-risk locations for PDAggression because A) they involve perfect balances of the opposite sexes, B) they’re often the intersection of Duke hookup incest, and C) they are usually held in enclosed spaces at night in drunken situations, with lots of people around to feed the fire. Mixer fights are so terrible because when they happen, both you and your combatant are in the vicinity of all of your closest friends. So some people wanna step in and stop the fight, some people want it to go on, and the others are being filled in on what caused the fight in the first place.
And then once the fight is over and someone has embarrassed themselves, it’s awkward because neither of you wants to leave. Neither of you wants to give up your territory in front of the other person and your friends.
The mixer fight can simply translate to a large party fight, which has the same results and the same mixed emotions (punny). The point is, a mixer or a party is the worst place to have a public display of aggression, and the fact that so many people are actively watching can cause the aggression to get out of hand. Girls will cry all of their mascara away and boys will either hit something or walk too far away and end up lost in the Duke forest. So beware.
No doubt, wherever you’re having your public display of aggression, it’s unfounded and stupid because if you’re willing to fight about it in public, on campus, in front of others, it’s probably not really that important. So he stood you up at the Refectory and it caused you to replace his absence with some brownies that you now regret? No one cares, and you just showed how weak and fat you are to your boyfriend and the rest of the student body on the quad. Have some respect for yourself and fight over texts – at least that way you can think about what you’re going to say before you actually say it. “BUT I ATE TWO WHOLE BROWNIES BECAUSE YOU NEVER CAME,” is not an argument that your boyfriend will understand. Texting him that you’re “disappointed” in him is. #manipulation
Image source: http://media.onsugar.com/files/2010/09/39/2/301/3019466/9729380a5e6ba10b_71055371.preview.jpg
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Duke chapter.