Relationships after college: say what?

Contributor: Speak Coffee

"Wait a second, you're how old? ... Nineteen?! ... And your birthday was when?"

Let me just state for the record, that when it suddenly matters to you when someone's birthday was, it doesn't actually matter anymore: he's just plain too young for you.

Since that little run in, I haven't really bothered much with dating since I got out of college. But what I have discovered is that the college dating scene was drastically different from the one I find myself confronted with now.

My college was small. 2,500 students give or take. My class graduated just under 700 students and we remain the largest class ever to attend. So when it came to relationships you didn't actually date. There was no awkward first date, no getting-to-know-you second date, no big hurdle third date. If you were interested in someone the truth of the matter was that you probably already knew them on some social level. Either through classes, clubs or frat parties - there was no 6 degrees of seperation, it was more like 3 degrees to connect everyone to everyone else on campus. So you didn't "date" you "hung out" and then one day you had "the talk" and then changed your Facebook status to "in a relationship with ..." and that was it, you were boyfriend/girlfriend. You were officially expected to be a staple at all of his fraternity's parties and he was a date to your formals and informal dances. You ate several meals together each week, and depending on the situation your sorority sisters stopped expecting to see you at the house after a certain time of night because they knew you'd be over at his place.

Now? I'm expected to make an awkward connection with someone I don't know just so that I can go on an equally awkward date with them. One of my girlfriends recently went on her first "real date." Yes, she'd been taken out places by her college boyfriend but she'd never been taken out to a semi-fancy dinner by a guy who wasn't her boyfriend. This was a guy who was just "interested." She was flabbergasted. She couldn't get her mind around the fact that he wanted to do something this fancy with this much planning involved when they weren't even in a relationship. She was also floored as to what to wear, so three hours prior to pick up I zoomed over to her place for a much needed second opinion. This is what I'm good at; remember, I'm sorority trained.

For the most part, my life since college has been up in the air. I've bounced from one thing to the next and rarely felt stable enough to even bother with introducing another person into the mix. Various people at law school thought it their mission to get me a boyfriend, to which I answered "When? When on earth would I have time for a guy? I don't even have time to finish my torts reading!" Although, somewhere in there I managed to accidentally pick up a guy I didn't mean to, which I found odd because I know my demeanor was very much "don't mess with me I don't have time and I'm a sarcastic bitch so you'll only get burned anyway." My demeanor was, as always, up front, thorough, and suscinct.

As a senior in college I was well aware of the wave of engagements, and the promise rings or fraternity pins being exchanged across campus. It happened like clockwork: the snow melted, graduation grew near, and chicks started getting lavaliers. So it wasn't without a certain amount of guile that I dated guys younger than myself in order to avoid the "getting serious" thing that happened right before graduation.

In the past few years I've briefly wandered into the world of an online dating/match making site under the theory that if I get my news, my music, my books, clothes and everything else from the internet, why not buy my men there too? And honestly, it is more personal than the bar scene. At least it's conversations sparked by personality not just a hot ass. I've also been told that Generation Y is embracing the whole internet dating thing and discarding the stigma other generations associate with it. We're the people that embraced Facebook and MySpace (okay I have not embraced MySpace because it's stalker-central), we're used to social networking via the internet. But I've yet to really get into it and have become quickly bored with the situation. I never did end up meeting anyone I'd been talking to or emailing.

I really think I'm waiting for my life to settle down. Or at least develope some level of stability. I've always been very firm on the notion that you should know yourself before you get involved with someone, otherwise you'll use the relationship to define yourself and that almost always spirals down into bad juju. Not to mention those people who define themselves or their life by their siginificant other and then suddenly find themselves without said person. Those people don't know who they are when they're single and rush right into the arms of Miss Wrong or Mr. Next without giving thought to why.

I have no issues attending weddings by myself. I see them as great opportunities to catch up with my college friends. Actually, my friends who are in relationships frequently leave the guy at home for those weddings because they know he'll just be bored and she'll feel she needs to entertain him when she'd rather be hanging with the group.

I frequently sputter when I hear that various people have gotten married -- normally because I think they've gotten married too young. If I were my mother, I would be celebrating my fourth wedding anniversary this Spring. My parents are very pleased that I am doing no such thing. They know, if anyone does, that the theory of getting married young and finishing raising each other doesn't translate well into practice.

Because of my frequent soap box speeches on the stupidity of people in relationships (which I have already described today just without the ferver) many people seem to think I'm against marriage or uninterested in relationships. Really, I just think you have to be at ease with yourself and who you are, that you have to be able to live alone and be happy that way, that you have to know yourself before you know you've found the one. It's all the people who don't bother with anything other than the ring and the wedding that bother me.