“Hi just reaching out because I struggling with dating in todays world. With hookup culture, people not understanding the difference between dating and actually being boyfriend and girlfriend, etc, it is getting really hard to actually find casual dates. I’m not sure if it is because I’m in college still and the guys around me only have sex on their mind, or if I am stuck in a cycle of only seeing or having situationships with toxic men. But I truly am a relationship girl and am finally ready to start dating again but struggling with all these factors”
My dearest bad biddie,
College is a shitshow. It’s this limbo world where hormonal teenagers are thrown into buildings together, living on their own for the first time and navigating what is likely a completely different city from the one they grew up in. You’re not quite a child anymore, but you’re not really an adult either. Despite the fact that I spent the majority of my college years wanting a boyfriend and long term relationship, I also spent the majority of my college years single or in and out of maybe-not-quite relationships (ie. situationships).
My sophomore year of college, I, in a misguided attempt at what I thought to be feminism, decided to hook up with two guys from the same group of friends (albeit across two separate weekends, orgies were never my thing). Why? Because I could, and because I felt like it’s what those guys would have done to me if given the chance. I thought it would be empowering, because anything he can do, I can do, right? Wrong. It’s not empowering to do something you don’t want to do because you’re trying to conform to the current culture, the norm, or what you think society expects of you. It didn’t take me very long to realize that I wasn’t a hookup girl, that I was a relationship girl, and that if I wasn’t going to find a relationship with a guy in college because most of the guys around me weren’t ready yet, then at least I was going to have ONE HELL OF A TIME. So I made girlfriends, some of whom are still my best friends today, I went clubbing (this was NYU circa 2010, we didn’t have traditional frats/sororities like most campuses, but oh baby, did we have all of NYC nightlife), I studied abroad, I consumed a lot of alcohol (trust me, you will never bounce back from a night of binge-drinking the way you do now, so enjoy the fact that you don’t know what a real hangover is yet), I decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life after college, and then changed my mind, and then changed my mind again.
And somewhere along the line my senior year, I did end up finding not one, but two boyfriends (not at the same time, because also, polyamory is not my thing either). I found these guys not by hunting for them, but by living the hell out of my life while I was in college. I can tell you that you’re probably not going to change anything about the hookup culture that surrounds you, but I can also tell you that you can change how much fun you have while you’re in college. You have four years (maybe less, depending on how far along you are) of your life to experiment with who you are, so I encourage you to go out there and try on different personalities, different friends, different activities, and in the process, maybe you’ll find a long term relationship. But even if you don’t, what you’ll have at the end of these four years when you walk up to get your diploma is a stronger sense of who you are without the lingering regret of wishing you hadn’t spent so much time trying to find a boyfriend. Live the hell out of your life while you’re in college, it only comes once.
Love,
Your internet hype woman
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