Dating at uni is inevitable for those who it interests, and for anybody, it can be weird. But on the cusp of your 20s, having only left childhood and thrusting yourself (no pun intended) into a vat of single and lonely individuals who now only have to worry if their new flatmate hears them, It can be a shock, even thrilling. Many people find coming to university allows them find people who really get them, and romantic connection is no exception, especially if they become a constant while everything changes around you. But behind this can be a discrete and ugly numeric point system, keeping it ‘not that deep’ and discarding the expectation of respect.
For myself, dating people in uni has sent me on a whirlwind of confusion, awkward encounters in uni elevators and drunk devotion under the glistening YOLO sign imprinted in my eyelids Thursday morning; it was all worth it (I learnt many lessons). The dating apps I had been using as a game of smash and pass (we all do it, don’t lie) suddenly got upgraded to have 100+ new characters all living less than a mile away as soon as I entered my first-year room. What’s more, they were people I wanted to speak to. Easy right? It is exactly this accessibility that makes dating in uni fast, furious, and a little cold-hearted. Recent years have encouraged us to rid the shame of sexual and romantic exploration, especially for women, but the overwhelming flux of opportunity can still trick us into performing our sexuality and craving validation for it, the way we’ve been best taught; by the hands that hold the hips themselves. There’s no right way to express yourself of course, it is your right to make those choices and it should be shameless, but does hook-up culture and online dating encourage an objectifying view of one another as nothing but a choice of photos and a witty bio? We’ve swung the pendulum from ‘how to be right for marriage’ to the ‘hoe phase’. Dating at this time in your life is not the time to be making marriage plans, but equally, the people we romanticize with can offer us glimpses of different sides of ourselves, can become friends, can introduce us to worlds we never knew and give us that sickeningly sweet churn in our stomachs. Don’t settle for one-night stands with people who otherwise don’t give you the time of day, as much as you could be made to feel weird for wanting the bare minimum. Connection is not the incitement for undivided attention though, transparency and respect are vital, but you can still be as free as you wish to make plans, make mistakes and learn lessons, because now is the time to do it.
Having sex is not impressive, and not a necessity as enjoyable as human nature may find it. No matter how much it comes and goes, there is a hell of a lot more to you, more worthy of focus than your allure to others. So if you find the time to date at uni, it’s not worth the stress, so keep it fun and make it an enriching part to the next phase of your life.