Relationsips after College: Work of a Different Kind

Contributor: Paralith

For me, there has been no dating after college, because I found my current man while I was in college. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly proud of the circumstances under which we met. A few months earlier I had broken up with my previous serious boyfriend, and had more or less been rebounding every since, with none of my escapades leading to good ends. In fact, the night I met my current boyfriend was the same night I started seeing one of his friends. Cringe-worthy, isn't it? Practically everything I did during that period was cringe-worthy, and like I said, I'm not proud of it.

But (cliche as this sounds), things were different when I began to get to know my boyfriend (from this point I'll continue our current habit of referring to each other by screen name, and refer to my boyfriend via one of his typical screen names, Wablo). As is typical with rebounds, my previous flings were all more or less like my ex, except the newness of the relationship caused them to be free of the problems that ultimately caused my break up. Wablo, however, did not fit that pattern, and as I got to know him I realized that in many important ways he was very different from the rest of the cadre of boys that I hung out with.

That cadre is defined thusly: nerds, geeks, and gamer boys - my self declared dating pool after a brief and mind-numbingly boring stint with a frat boy (from a frat, no less, that had a reputation for being better than most typical ones). Unfortunately, this didn't help my rebound problem, because I was more or less surrounded by a large group of guys who would all be very, very happy to date me. I'm fairly good looking and quite nerdy enough in my own right. I like games, I'm happy to hang out at the campus arcade, and at the time I was even a proficient Magic Card player thanks to my ex's tutelage. I'm a rare breed and they all knew it.

The problem is that a lot of these kinds of guys, though in my opinion being far more interesting than your average sports-loving econ major, can be socially inept, have emotional baggage (oh yes, men have it too! And they try to lay all the blame on us.), and/or don't face a very promising future if their goal is to get a regular paying job at Best Buy and then spend their evenings and weekends playing World of Warcraft. Having my own set of emotional baggage (hey, I never said we don't deserve some of that blame), getting into a relationship with someone with similar problems is just asking for disaster. The kind of disaster that was my previous break up. Personality-wise, I could get along with almost all of these boys quite well - as I did with my ex. I'd learned the hard way that it simply wasn't enough.

But Wablo was very different. He wasn't just smart, he was razor smart. Nor was he socially inept - far from it, actually. He once told me that he would sometimes flirt with three girls at once just to show his friends that he could do it. He was confident, he knew what he wanted, and he had a bright future. He'd had jobs since he was 13, and jobs related to computers since he was 16. At the time I met him he was already working at a job that paid far more than being a desk clerk at the campus arcade - which, surprise surprise, was a favorite of the gamers.

Wablo was the first guy I had met that made me look forward to the future. I could see having a future with him - having a Real Life with him. Of course he was fun and funny (hilarious, really) and caring and loving - but he was also capable, practical, and excited about life. He was the only person who had ever made me feel that way, and he made me feel it long before we actually started dating.

Of course, most relationships feel like peaches and cream when they first begin, and after being together for over three and a half years, we have had our share of fights. Some of them, pretty bad. Some that even put that wonderful future of ours into question. And moments like those were some of the most difficult, most painful ones of my life. And the difficulties of my Lost Year played no small part in them.

It's a whole new world, learning to live in partnership with someone else. That's very different from just dating. That's very different from the experience I had with my ex, which itself was an obstacle we failed to overcome. Living in partnership means learning to overcome your unconscious selfishness, learning to accept the dark moods and moments of your partner's, learning what's worth getting upset over and what isn't, and learning how to just get over it sometimes. I know people everywhere say this all the time, that a relationship requires effort - but it does. What can I say. There's a reason that it's such a common sentiment.

But we have put in the time and effort to learn how to live with each other, and I have to say, I love the results. Everyday life with Wablo is one of my favorite things. Grocery shopping. Cleaning the apartment. Cooking dinner. Visiting friends. Watching movies together. Trying out new restaurants. Figuring out the directions to get to some new place. It might be more of my female domestic nature coming out as I get older (ha! 23, and I'm "older."), but I simply love it. I love working with him on our life together.