Maybe my school is the exception, but “everyone” was WRONG.
Getting adjusted to dorm life, insane amounts of studying, and office hour etiquette was way easier than getting adjusted to the sheer number of funny, mature, is-that-Ryan-Gosling-no-he’s-just-crazy-hot guys walking around. (and Ms.) Rights on campus, it can be a tough call to decide whether or not to date your first year. Pro: He’ll automatically be inducted into your friend group.
If you’ve seen , it’s analogous to how Dug, the talking dog, gives himself whiplash when he sees a squirrel. No matter how cool are the parties involved are, it’s awkward, difficult, and forced to attempt to smoosh your boyfriend into your existing circle.
“You have no curfew, no one to answer to, and you can really explore who you want to be, and that’s what a lot of people do in college.” All that exploring can lead to the “turkey drop,” a phenomenon that, while unconfirmed by science, follows the conventional wisdom that high-school-to-college relationships are most likely to dissolve around Thanksgiving of the first year. “The first semester is often very very stressful for students, and then by the time you roll in the holidays, that’s kind of the breaking point, because there’s also finals that they’re getting prepared for,” said Amy Lenhart, a college counselor and president of the American College Counseling Association.
“And so, especially if they haven’t been good at communicating with that partner, it’s going to be even more difficult to stay together.” (Don’t breathe a sigh of relief, though, if you make it through Thanksgiving with your relationship intact — surveys have found that Christmas, New Year’s and Valentine’s Day can spell doom for couples, too).
We had our own paths, but they were parallel, and in the end they merged.
“Try to make sure that you fulfill your desires, your goals, what you want to do in life, but remain friends.
“It’s definitely possible, but it’s rare, because the chances of you knowing who you want to be with at 40 when you’re 17 are kind of low,” said Tracey Steinberg, a dating coach. And it’s worth the wait if it’s real.” Going the (long) distance is not easy: Challenges including overcoming communication barriers, resisting the temptation of a fun, new social life and scraping together the finances to visit each other at separate schools. But the next time you grumble about a spotty Skype connection or a pricey plane ticket, think about Barbara Gee and Gordon Baranco.
The pair got together at age 16, despite the misgivings of their parents (Barbara is Chinese-American, and Gordon is African-American), who threatened to disown them.
Dating soon after you arrive at school means a lot of yours will be going towards your boo-thang.
This is especially pertinent the first year, because that’s when everyone is running around like crazy trying to fill the gaping void in their social life that opened up when they left everyone they knew. I’m struggling to come up with anything that about the first couple months of life away from home that isn’t completely different from your old life. Keeping that “WTF is even happening” effect in mind, it can be nice to have some constancy and a ready source of emotional back-up.
), and generally try to make your significant other like your friends while trying to make your friends like your significant other.
No small task—but if these relationships all grow at the same time, it’s not an issue. In college, the only resource more precious than time is tuition money.
The reality is once people get settled, they’re no longer desperately hunting down friends like poachers trying to bag a rare species of antelope. Last night I fell asleep hugging the stuffed hedgehog my friend made me, but I’m going to hazard a guess that a real, live person would be more comforting during times of struggle. But if you’re dragging around a boyfriend or girlfriend the way those neurotic moms at Disneyland drag their kids around on leash-backpacks, then you might not “level up” as much.