I Still Blame Romantic Comedies

I tend to realize fairly important things about my life too late. For example, in high school I discovered math was never going to be my forte only after I registered for AP Statistics. I realized that yoga bores me to tears only after I paid for a six-week class. And one particularly shameful Thursday night, I made a revelation that I’ll never forget. 

It was 2 a.m. on a hot and sticky Thursday night last March as I plopped myself on the curb at the intersection of Sixth and Trinity. In a funk with the guy I’d been dating, my girlfriends and I convinced our selves that Sixth Street’s college night was the perfect place to escape the woes of college dating. It was the longstanding tradition of women everywhere: girls’ night out.

Clad in an overpriced outfit I still had trouble believing my debit card approved, I looked around for my friends who were nowhere in sight. In a stampede of stumbling high heels, not one pair seemed to resemble the ones I’d helped my friends pick out earlier that night as we did our hair and danced to the latest Ke$ha song. But somewhere between artlessly riding the mechanical bull at Trophy Room and a dance-off with complete strangers on the balcony of Shakespeare’s Pub, I’d lost them. As I dug around my purse for cell phone, I realized I’d also lost my driver’s license and as soon as I looked up and saw one of my ex-boyfriends staring down at me, I cringed realizing I’d probably lost a substantial amount of my dignity as well.

There are few things in the world as painfully ironic as being pulled up off a street curb by a guy who you broke up with because you were convinced his life was going nowhere. Shaking my head in the throes of my blatant embarrassment, I believed the run-in with my ex was a sign that the college dating scene was clearly out to get me. But when he helped me up and asked if I was okay like the perfect gentleman he never was when we were together, I realized something—when you’re stranded on Sixth Street with an estranged ex-boyfriend you hoped you’d never see again, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Even with the discouraging lows my dating life has put me through, I’ve experienced more highs including first date butterflies and middle of night pillow fights. Though my unrelenting sensibility will never make me a true hopeless romantic, I can’t help but be fascinated by the world of dating, including relationships as well as single life.

From pickup lines in dimly lit and poorly decorated bars to spending hours decoding text messages, there’s no such thing as an expert dater. With each hook up, breakup, and everything in between comes a lesson, a reminder that college students are constantly redefining the right and wrong ways to date.

As we stray away from the traditional dating path of courtship to the first date to a labeled relationship, now more than ever we’re embracing the freedom the college lifestyle gives us to reiterate how dating should fit into our lives, if at all.

With all of the things my dating life has hurled my way—including but not limited to long-distance relationships, awkward first (and sometimes second) dates, and breakups you refuse to believe you’ll ever recover from—I’ve learned enough to know there’s always something left to learn. Armed with experience that has taken me from Sixth Street to cloud nine, and enough curiosity to wonder what’s ahead, it’s time someone started sorting out the intricacies of dating and why romantic comedies ruined it for all of us.