Relationships
Dating Advice: Are You Settling?
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How wonderful it is that more women than men are applying to, getting into, attending, and graduating from college these days. It’s a phenomenon that happens in colleges and universities all over the country, and it’s a great accomplishment for womankind. But sometimes, it sucks to sit through Spanish class three times a week with 17 other girls and 1 gay guy (not exaggerating, this ACTUALLY happened to me).
The male-female ratio at my school is pretty extreme, especially in a few of the graduating classes—it’s such a big deal that the New York Times even wrote an article on it. The article talked about how girls at my school were oh so desperate to get boyfriends, but that all the good guys were either taken, not interested in relationships, or gay, and how in desperation girls gave in and hooked up with the guys, which only gave them more incentive to fool around and not settle down in relationships. It also quoted a girl who said that girls tend to let it slide when their boyfriends cheated on them, because that was better than not having a boyfriend.
Now hold on just a second. I don’t want to make this a critique of the article, since there are plenty of those in the article’s comments, but let’s get some things straight. Yeah, it’s hard to meet guys in class, but I’ve done it. It can be hard to find a guy who’s interested in a relationship, but I’ve done that, too. And it’s easy to look around and see a bunch of girls having meaningless hook-ups, but that can be fun and totally healthy. And what’s so wrong with that?
My first two years of college, almost everyone was hooking up, and almost none of my friends had boyfriends. Some of us wanted relationships, some of us didn’t, and some of us (ahem, myself included) couldn’t make up our minds. For me, being interested in hooking up and being interested in a relationship went in phases. I’d be totally having fun hooking up with people, then all of a sudden one of them would really catch my interest, and I’d want more than that. The only time I’ve ever hooked up and been disappointed about it was when it was with one of those guys who I wanted more with, and I refused to hear that he didn’t want the same (though he told me so clearly and repeatedly… jerk). Or I’d date the guy for a while and then it’d fizzle out, and I’d be back to wanting to hook up. I had fun when I wanted to and had companionship when I wanted it. I also got my heart broken a few times, but none of them had to do with the desperate need to snatch one of the rare and desirable decent-guys-who-want-a-relationship out of the reach of all the other man-hungry single college girls. Not even close.
And now that I’m 5 weeks away from graduating (save me!!), I have to say that looking around, most of the upperclassmen I know are in serious relationships right now, or else they have been during college. Yes, we college ladies hook up. No, we usually don’t do it out of frustration and desperation. Yes, we also date people seriously. I am a firm believer that in terms of hooking up versus having relationships throughout college, we really can have our cake and eat it, too.
Even with our unbalanced ratio.