A touch, a kiss, the feeling of interlocking fingers aren’t things that can be conveyed through a text message or phone call. Kissy face emoticons begin to replace actual kisses, and dinner dates are swapped for Skype dates. Despite the endless messages sent, nothing seems to suffice when you’re distanced from the person you care about.
When we’re shipped off to college as young, naïve 18-year-olds, we’re told to be adventurous and try new things. We’re encouraged to end any relationship we are in so we can learn who we really are and experiment. As someone who went off to college single, I completely agree with this mindset. Your first year of college is a great time to become independent, meet new people and learn more about what interests you.
As I continued through my college years, though, I started to outgrow that part of my life. It’s not that I went looking for a relationship, but I happened to stumble into one. Without getting too much into my personal life, I found myself faced with a situation where I found someone I cared about.
The problem? We’re almost 1,000 miles apart, but that’s when we’re both at school. Even when we’re home from school, we’re still over 250 miles away from each other. It seemed like a lose-lose situation, but I decided to chance it and see where it may lead. To my pleasant surprise, it’s been working out well so far.
Although I say it’s going well, I’m not going to deny that it’s hard. You can talk all day, but nothing can replace those face-to-face interactions. On Valentine’s Day, when we each ordered breakfast food and ate it together while Skyping, there was a moment where I went to wipe a smudge off his forehead – for a split second, I thought we were together before realizing that we were still over a thousand miles away, causing my heart to sink.
What can be harder than the lack of interaction, though, is college culture, especially at Lehigh. It’s no secret among students that Lehigh is widely known for its informal relationship culture. It’s more common to see people walking home from hanging out with someone they will never speak to again than it is to see people in a relationship. It’s not that I’m ever tempted to detour from my current situation, but when sitting among girlfriends who are all talking about their latest beaus, it’s hard not having anything to add.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with students engaging in this informal relationship culture because that is each individual’s prerogative and mature decision. With the majority partaking in this, though, it turns those who aren’t into it into the outsiders of the world of collegiate dating.
One of the big challenges I’ve faced is figuring out who to invite to my date parties and formals. The easy answer may seem to bring a friend, but there are various factors you have to consider – if you like to dance, will they be okay just dancing next to you? Will you feel like you have to entertain them the whole night, or do they know enough people in your organization that they can mingle by themselves?
If you don’t have a friend who fits these criteria, the next best option is to get set up with somebody. With Lehigh’s relationship culture – or lack thereof – many men invited to these social events expect something more at the end of the night, which isn’t ideal for my situation, either.
Although it is difficult, there are some minute upsides. If I’m busy with school, it’s much easier to shoot a text message when I’m free instead of being committed to spending time together. And if I happen to be in a bad mood one day, it’s easier to mask those emotions over text than in person. I wouldn’t trade these slight advantages for having to deal with our negative humanistic tendencies, though. And the caveat to technology, as always, is that things tend to get lost in communication. For the most part, technology has done a lot to ease the burden of not seeing each other, but it never seems to be enough at the end of the day.
Whenever people hear about my situation, they always ask me about how tough it is. Regardless of how much I may complain at times about it being difficult, I think the effort is worth it. Because if you really care about the person, you’ll be willing to go the distance and make it work.
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