• not quite as romantic as Carrie Bradshaw would want it to be •
It was 2AM and I was curled up in bed binge watching Sex and The City, after recently learning six seasons are available on Amazon Prime, when I experienced an uh-oh moment that made me think. Season 1, Episode 7 “The Monogamist”. Or as I like to call it, the time I read the word ‘monogamist’ five times before stupidly realizing what the word was. As someone who has spent her entire existence toting on about English being her favorite subject, you can only imagine that this was not my finest moment.
It dawned on me that there was only one thing to blame for this atrocious slip of intelligence… College. Before you assume that public universities have let my generation down with online courses and overflowing lecture halls, let me correct you. I am not referring to my academic experience at college, I’m referring to boys in college. What some may call modern dating, I call an assemblage of boys with one objective.
I’m not writing from a place of scorn or judgement, in fact, I think it’s important for people to live out their lives the way they want to. I’m really just stating the truth of the matter, which is that monogamy is a foreign topic in the general terms of dating in college. We dance around commitment with one night stands, occasional hook-ups, and friends with benefits. Oftentimes, someone in the “relationship” overanalyzes, assigns untrue labels, and gets much too attached. Or, let’s say, things do work out. You two start talking, maybe you become exclusive, maybe you even enter what you think is a real relationship.
I have watched so many unhealthy college relationships ensue that I’ve lost faith in them. There is jealousy, emotional cheating, physical cheating, ongoing unfaithfulness that has been deemed acceptable by our peers, and control issues. I’ve had countless friends write off dating in college and completely close themselves off to the idea of finding something real. On the other hand, I’ve had friends so hopeful that they will find something real that they then swim around endlessly in the pool of frat stars hoping to be able to stop, find someone, and catch a deep breath. Either way, these girls begin to enter the cycle unknowingly.
Like I said before, there is nothing wrong with the cycle, it just is what it is. We’ve all contributed to it. We’re all guilty of it. Because when we aren’t contributing to it, we’re binge watching a Netflix series with our best friends, eating ice cream and wearing fuzzy socks. So I’m not sure which sinking point is lower, the number of calories I consume on a girls night in, or the number of people I’ve wasted my time on when on a girls night out.