Fight for this Love

As our seemingly endless summer vacation approaches, those of us in relationships will be starting to experience those niggling little questions at the back of our minds. Those in a relationship with someone at home will be anticipating a joyous, post-exam reunion with the other half, while those with romantic ties at Warwick may fear how well they will survive the long break, if at all.

So then the whole frustrating dilemma of relationships at home or away comes into play. I was certainly surprised in the middle of last term when three close friends suddenly decided to end things with their long term ‘soul mates’, who they had been with since their school days. It came as a shock mainly because with one term to go until the summer and the Easter holidays on the horizon, I found it difficult to imagine the possible reasons why it was a good time to break off something that seemed worth fighting for.

Naturally, all three break-ups, and several others I encountered, were due to three main reasons, which certainly have the potential to sever the tightest of bonds.

**No 1.** _The new love interest_. Someone gorgeous at Warwick studies the same course, plays the same sport, or knows some of your friends from the gym or the pub. And there’s a spark. Your eyes always meet across a crowded bar, or across the chilled floor 2 of the library. You accidentally whacked into them in the middle of the piazza or round a hall corridor and books and paper went flying. Suddenly you think that actually ‘the one’ is right in front of you, and it ain’t the hubby or wifey back home.

**No. 2.** _The other half can’t be bothered_. You’ve been to see them at their uni on multiple occasions, yet their trips to Warwick are growing fewer and far between. It seems that the effort of coming to see you has become a financial or time consuming burden for them, and thus they simply CBA with getting on a train to Coventry station.

**No. 3.** _Boredom._ You wake up one morning and experience an epiphany that having been with the same person for two years you actually know everything about them, and they know everything about you. And this is immediately boring. You start to question how anyone can ever actually ‘do’ marriage when it means being with the same partner for an unpredictable, potentially indefinite, amount of time. So panic sets in, and you abruptly begin searching for a scapegoat.

{{ quote Don’t they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder?}}

These three reasons, therefore, form what you could consider the perfect argument for having a relationship at Warwick. The holidays might be hard, but at least you have the gift of time away from studying, and the beautiful thing that is an overdraft to pay for spontaneous train trips up North or down South. And don’t they always say that absence makes the heart grow fonder?

Does this mean, then, that moving on to a university relationship mean that you have matured as a person? Or simply that you didn’t have the guts to fight to save that great thing you had back home? Tricky, isn’t it. Being able to focus on your studies whilst at uni, and then your partner from your hometown during the holidays seems like an ideal life strategy; but then life never goes according to plan.

This is something that could be debated indefinitely, but whichever side of the relationship spectrum you find yourself on, I wish you luck this summer in keeping the love alive. Of course, you may be enjoying the thrills of the single life, and not desiring any form of something which uses the scary labels ‘commitment’ or ‘long term’. Or perhaps the post- exam period will provide dozens of possibilities for that much- anticipated ‘summer of love’ that you’ve been hoping for since January.

In any case, remember that whether you believe you have ‘true love’, or that butterfly feeling of a new romance, both are wonderful things when finally found; and it is up to you to decide whether this person is a keeper or not. If it’s worth having, it’s worth fighting for, especially over the break.