On Tuesday night, the Women’s Center hosted a talk by Dr. Carol Burns, a couples’ therapist that appeared on MTV’s Teen Mom. As you might imagine, mostly females attended the event, but the few boys in the crowd were active participants (shout out to the real men, amirite?).
Dr. Burns started by calling us young folks “pioneers” of the dating world. With all our new-fangled technology like The Facebook, we are living with issues that our elders just didn’t face. For example, we’ve all faced the excruciating internal conflict that comes with something as small as returning a text. I personally can remember several times in high school that even my mom, who’s barely over 40, got so exasperated with my boyfriend and I feeling the need to text constantly. Now that I’m older, I honestly just don’t have the energy to maintain a conversation like that even if I wanted to. But at 15 I think a lot of us thought that nonstop electronic communication was key to a successful relationship.
Soon her talk transitioned to the simple question of why we date in college. She quickly and bluntly eliminated one possible answer; it’s statistically highly unlikely that we will marry the people we date in college. So, she demanded, “Stop acting like it.”
Welp, there goes that MRS degree I was working on…Sorry to disappoint, Momma Patton. So why should we be dating in college, if not to find a life-long companion? The audience offered a couple answers: loneliness, boredom, physical pleasure. Dr. Burns agreed that those are all valid reasons; we are wired as humans to seek connection with other humans. After all, our primal ancestors needed each other to survive.
Most importantly, though, she wanted us to see college dating as a trial and error period, a time to build what she called a “relationship résumé”. In the same way that we do internships and extracurriculars so that we can get practical experience and discover our strengths, we should date to figure out what we like and dislike in our partners, what kinds of partners we’re compatible with, and what to expect from relationships. In essence, we should be learning about ourselves. Doing so can prevent us from one day being the people who make up the national divorce rates, which are at about 50%.
In modern American culture, only we get to decide who we date and marry, not our parents or communities or anyone else—though those people may try really hard to make that decision for us. While this autonomy is undoubtedly a good thing, it means that many people decide to get in relationships with the wrong partners, or for the wrong reasons. In Dr. Burns’s words, dating relationships today are no longer designed to make us “emotionally or physically safe.”
This doesn’t mean, though, that we shouldn’t listen to our friends and family about our partners. In fact, Dr. Burns encouraged us toward the end of her talk to pay close attention to what those people say. While the decisions are ultimately our own, it’s definitely a sign that your partner may not be for you if all the important people in your life seem less than enthusiastic about him or her. And talking to the people we trust about our relationships can help keep us living in reality. You might be less inclined to forgive that jerk for cheating on you (again) if you get this reaction from your best friends:
One reason that we get into unhealthy relationships, Dr. Burns said, is that we far too often present less-than-authentic versions of ourselves in the early stages of the relationship. The primary complaint of men who see her for couples’ therapy is something along the lines of, “She’s not the girl I liked when we were dating.” In Dr. Burns’s experience, women especially can be guilty of pretending to have certain interests just to seem desirable. And then when the relationship is official, they can’t keep up the act and the guy is left wondering, “But you liked watching football with me when we were dating?”
Gender stereotyping aside, Dr. Burns makes a good point about how important it is for us to be honest about who we are from the start. She urged the women in the room to figure out what they want/need and ask for those things. “Your partner is not psychic,” she repeated. Over and over.
We should be vocal about our needs in hook-ups as well. Bottom line, if you can’t talk about sex with your partner, you shouldn’t be having sex with that person. In order to have positive relationships of any kind, we have to be honest and forthright about what we want. Dr. Burns later claimed that by vocalizing our needs, we could prevent a lot of incidents involving sexual assault and date rape. (Here I got a bit uncomfortable with the implication that sexual assault survivors are somehow responsible for their attackers’ actions, or could have prevented them, if only they had spoken up. I’m not sure if she meant to send that message, though, and she certainly has a valid point that we could all benefit from more open dialogue.)
So what does a healthy relationship look like? Dr. Burns summed up a scientifically proven key factor in one word: bids. Bids, she said, are subtle little gestures we make in order to get someone else’s attention.To explain she used an analogy: imagine you’re sitting on the couch with your partner, reading a book, and you read something that makes you laugh out loud. That’s a bid—even if you’re not conscious of it, you’re bidding for your partner’s attention.
In response your partner might “turn toward” you; maybe they ask “What are you reading?” Basically, they respond to you in a caring and interested way. Less positively, he/she might “turn away” from you; they don’t respond at all. Or they could be just straight-up rude and “turn against” you; this one involves using an oh-so-charming line like, “Could you be quiet? I’m trying to focus on whatever stupid thing it is that us really insensitive people do.” (Your partner’s words, not mine.)
If you haven’t figured out by now which one of these responses indicates a healthy relationship, then you shouldn’t be reading this because you should have come to the talk itself, taken detailed notes, and then immediately broken up with the monster you’re dating. But fine, I’ll say it—it’s the “turning toward” one. Dr. Burns also said that healthy relationships involve a million little bids; people in healthy relationships are constantly trying to get each other’s attention.
Considering most Sewanee students aren’t in steady relationships, the conversation inevitably took a turn toward the hook-up scene and by extension Sewanee’s deep-rooted gender segregation. Dr. Burns said she had already heard from students that boys and girls here have virtually no social contact during the week, but have lots and lots of “quality time” (wink wink) over the weekends. And then we see each other in McClurg later and act a lot like this chick:
(Sidenote: CAN WE PLEASE FIX THIS? I’m serious, it’s dumb. Plenty of people at other schools have awesome friendships with people of the opposite sex that they 1) haven’t bumped uglies with and 2) can talk to about REAL THINGS, on WEEKDAYS, even while SOBER. I know, I couldn’t believe it either.)
But no matter how much we try to avoid eye contact, we can’t erase the simple fact that we still have some sort of connection with the person we hooked up with, regardless of how attracted to them we are when sober. Dr. Burns gave a pretty simple explanation for this unfortunate phenomenon: it’s chemical. There is a hormone in our brains called oxytocin that is the prime culprit in creating emotional bonds between people. And the worst part is that just touching another person activates it. It’s the reason that we flirt with people by laying a hand on their arm, or that a mother-child bond grows stronger with breastfeeding.
So whether you have sex with someone, or just go for an intense yet classy DFMO, you get that oxytocin flowing and bond with that person to some degree. Dr. Burns backed this point up with some scientific evidence straight from the animal kingdom; prairie voles, which mate for life, constantly have a ton of oxytocin running through their blood. And when scientists did some cool science-y stuff to reduce that amount of oxytocin, all of a sudden those prairie voles got real freaky with all their rodent friends.
Dr. Burns advised protecting ourselves from the next-morning regret by understanding the dangers of our brain chemistry and using caution. Basically, be careful about with whom you share your oxytocin. Take the time to figure out what you’re attracted to, slow down, and make sure that you are comfortable chemically bonding yourself to the people you hook up with. Of course, alcohol complicates this whole rational-decision-making process, but maybe reading this sober (I think you’re sober?) will at least get it into your head. And then when you’re about to stumble back to your dorm with a really weird kid from your English class, a dim little light bulb might go off somewhere amidst all your dreams of grangers and tots, and you might slur something about “oxytoldkfdakfjd or something” as you walk away.
Have no fear, though; Dr. Burns assured the group that she wasn’t trying to deter us from our precious Saturday-night flings. Frankly, she said, she doesn’t care. Rather she wants us to take the time to make decisions we can be proud of the next morning. And more importantly, that we can be proud of down the road when the person we get into a serious relationship with inevitably asks about our sexual history.
And here’s where all the single cynics in the room mentally went, “Well good thing I never have to have that conversation.” But sorry, Lonely Hearts Club, Dr. Burns was adamant that the chances of any of us ending up alone are essentially zero. (lolok. Tell that to my love life.)
But okay, let’s say we do trick someone into dating us; what do we do if it we want out? Dr. Burns offered a way to break up with someone in a respectful, compassionate way that lets you leave the situation without feeling like a total dirtbag: First and foremost, do it in person (please tell me you already knew that). Next, keep in mind that according to some (probably) super-official scientific study, “94% of conversations end how you start them.” Which is common sense if you think about it—if you initiate a conversation by screaming at someone, you would be a bit naïve to think that the conversation might end in hugs and giggles. So when you break up with someone, you should start first by listing the qualities that you liked about them, and then move on to the things that made the relationship not work for you. And then, if you want, you end the conversation by offering some sort of sustained connection, like being friends. If done successfully, your breakup talk will begin and end on a caring note, despite the pain that both parties are probably feeling.
The worst thing you can do to someone, Dr. Burns said, is to give false hope. “It is incredibly disrespectful,” she asserted. She talked about a study she did in college that involved a lot of confused little rats that would continue to press a bar in their cage over and over in hopes of it releasing a food pellet. At the beginning of the study a pellet could come at random intervals, but at the end it wouldn’t come at all. These sad rodents couldn’t abandon the hope, though, and just kept on trying.
We have the ability to make other people act like those poor little lab rats, and we’ve probably had someone make us feel like that at some point, too. So it could not be more crucial to make sure we understand what we really want, and only act on those wants. That means no late-night lonely texts to someone who really likes you if you don’t reciprocate the feelings; it also means breaking up with someone you don’t want to be with anymore, even if you know they will be devastated. As Dr. Burns reminded us, nobody likes to be toyed with.
Dr. Burns was well aware that most people have literally no clue what they’re doing when it comes to dating, especially us college students who spend only about 10 percent of our time functioning as real human beings, while the other 90 percent is split between severe sleep-deprivation and various stages of intoxication.
But Dr. Burns also swore that that was perfectly fine; you don’t have to know what you’re doing yet! The way to figure all this stuff out, she said, is to attend events like this one (or read an online recap of it a couple days later), read books, and even practice dating. It takes education and experience to become good at developing healthy relationships with people you’re compatible with, but you can do it! And remember, according to Dr. Burns, there’s no chance of you being #foreveralone.
I still think she’s a bit too optimistic, though.