Features
Sex & the Campus: boundaries of exclusivity
By Sawyer Frisbie '19
September 15, 2016
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It’s Thanksgiving. You’re sitting around the table with extended family that you don’t see often enough for the type of personal questions they ask you. To me, it’s a dodgeball game. They’re whipping fast balls at you left and right: “What are you majoring in?” “Oh, and what can you do with that?” “Any jobs lined up yet?” So far it’s a success. You’re diving, dipping, dodging, successfully avoiding confrontation while simultaneously convincing your parents and your family that you have your life together. Feeling pretty comfortable, you breathe a sigh of relief and reach for the gravy, but, just as your turn your head, you’re smacked right in the ear by the one fateful blow: “So, are you dating anyone?”
There it is. The one you’ve been dreading all night. To your Aunt Janie, this sounds like a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. In reality, the response is more layered than the pearl onions in front of you, and, just like those pearl onions, it’s better left in your aunt’s ugly serving dish. The question is out there now, though—there’s no avoiding it, even if you don’t know the answer yourself.
“What’s the difference between dating and being exclusive?” you may ask. The answer is, I have no idea. To try to answer this question I had to turn to an external source: my big brother. I texted him the question, no context included, and without questions he proceeded to send me paragraph after paragraph of responses. Apparently, my brother was taught by my uncle that dating means two people are seeing each other—“co-mingling”–– but are still on the lookout for other potential candidates. My brother, on the other hand, 23 and a recent college graduate, defines it as “not putting [his] P in another girl’s V,” claiming this makes him a “little more of a romantic than [our] uncle.” If his answer helps you, power to you. To me, it made limited sense, but, as his little sister, I kept my thoughts to myself, hoping he would provide a little more clarification. Of course, he didn’t, but at the end of the conversation, I think we might have come to an agreement, or I might have just stopped listening…Sorry, big bro.
At the end of the day, the difference between dating and being exclusive lies purely in you and your partner’s interpretations. I say you and your partner’s because, no matter what situation you feel that you are in, it is a two way street. You can’t date yourself. Any relationship, whether it be dating, exclusive, even just a friendship, requires communication. It’s important to be very open and honest about expectations and hopes you have for your current relationships and future ones. Knowing exactly where your partner stands and how that lines up with where you are will help determine whether or not you two are truly compatible. If one of you is thinking about marriage and the other one isn’t ready to commit, it’s important that each partner is aware of those feelings so that they can make decisions about how to move forward.
It’s easy to get comfortable with your partner and to fall into a routine to the point where you assume that you can read each other’s minds. I’m here to pop that bubble. You can’t. You need to communicate. Once you do that, it doesn’t matter what Aunt Janie thinks, or whether or not she even understands. Aunt Janie can worry about her own love life.
If you have any doubts about where you and your partner are in the dating/exclusivity realm, schedule a time, sit down and talk about it. If you’ve already had the conversation–– amazing! Be sure that every once in awhile you touch base again. Things change quickly in college, and our time here is fleeting, so keep checking in with your partner to make sure the path that you’re on is the one that makes both of you the happiest. In the meantime, send my love to Aunt Janie.