Tête-à-Tête: do relationships at university work?
Can students really be in a committed relationship whilst going through the years of drastic change that are university? Two writers fight their corner
Finding ‘the one’
Laura Ngantu
You’ve fallen in love. I say so what? A glittering university experience will not pass you by if you have a partner back home or across the hall.
There’s this rather important thing in relationships: commitment. At university, you will need it to succeed on your course. When you make friends, you will need it to keep your friendships fresh. If you get a job alongside your studies, you will need it to turn up to every shift no matter how tired or hungover you are. Fact is, commitment is not a bad thing. It’s actually a pretty incredible life skill. So it puzzles me why is there such gloom and doom over the idea of having a relationship during your time at university.
Photo: Flickr/Steve Slater
Sure, having a relationship during a time of immense change in your life, some distance away from home and your partner, is not the easiest. A number of relationships at university break down due to cheating or suspicion of such and a feeling of being left out on both sides. Certainly a mix of alcohol, separation and a new social circle does cause a certain amount of pressure, but the simple solution is to drink less, be more aware and choose friends who will look out for you. You will not cheat or drift apart from your partner if you are 100% committed to keeping your relationship intact. If you aren’t willing to do this then yes, it’s quite likely your relationship will fail. If you are, who is anyone to tell you that your relationship will not survive?
You won’t be isolated, you will still make friends, you will still party, you will still study. You will miss your partner but will also come to realise you are only a Skype call away. Your relationship will be strengthened as long as you create a healthy balance within your personal and academic life. The only people who will tell you not to be in relationship during this time, will be those who once tried and failed or those who are not ready to thrust aside their badge of singledom. Evaluate the strength of your feelings and be honest with yourself about where you want your relationship to lead. I know you can be in a relationship during the first year because I was. Two years on, I continue to be with my – now – fiancé. Not every university relationship has a happy ending but you owe it to yourself to at least give it a chance.
Happy with none
Ahlam Al Abbasi
When I was writing this article I realised that there was an irony and a sort of nativity of spirit that abounds when you experience first year. It’s akin to the American frontier men, looking across the prairies and thinking the future lies beyond the horizon. They’re attitude that of the infamous Jack Sparrow; ‘Now, BRING me that horizon’. First year is about the new. You are allowed to express yourself. You pursue your own interests.
A relationship in first year is like the frontier men encountering the Berlin Wall on their precious prairie land – there’s always a niggling there that the pastures are greener on the other side. They are greener, because they are untilled, brimming with potential, ready to be sown with something new. That’s what they came to the prairie for after all, right?
So a relationship in first year is like a wall. I think it is time for me to elaborate.
Relationships, by their very own definition, hinder this expression of individuality. At a very tender age words such as ‘compromise’, ‘team’, ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘us’ begin to float like oppressive clouds in the air. Your relationship has become a commitment, not a whim. Yet, your bid for individuality by coming to university in the first place is lost and you become an entity in relation to someone else.
Image: Flickr/Nicolas Raymond
I will agree, naiveté permeates the air around this article. If, for you, they are noxious fumes, you can stop reading now. For the rest, I have to say that thinking a first year capable of supporting a relationship of any kind is very slight. I clarify my statement by saying some do, and I tip my writerly hat off to your success. But expecting an adolescent to have a successful relationship just out of secondary school is itself naïve. How does a person negotiate the intricacies of what a relationship entails when they don’t know their place within their own mind and social sphere quite yet?
Then what happens when it all ends, love sours, and you find that the word ‘team’ not only ostracises the word ‘I’, but pummelled it into an early grave, what do you do? The pinnacle moment when you stand on your solitary mountain top and look to the horizon, are you strong enough to put one foot forward after another, without knowing who you are, and find that never ending horizon? Or do you jump from one coupling to another, trying to find the illusion of the person you thought you were? I fear an identity crises will ensue.
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