Investments

I know for a fact my parents never counted on me dating before I graduated from high school. Nevertheless, as my sophomore year closed and my junior year began, along came a cool cat (i.j.) who knew how to make great conversation and had a charming personality. I've been dating that same boy for the last year and a half (in January=]).

I was reflecting over this fact with one of my good friends--a woman who had been my school secretary as a child--and explained to her that things between me and my boyfriend were going quite well, and for this reason, I would not be attending a speed-dating event that was taking place on my college campus. I suppose there was an air of finality to my words. When I was younger, there were few mixer opportunities available to me beyond the stereotypical high school fare. By the time I entered college I'd been dating the same guy for over a year. So why would I want to speed date?

*****

Relationships build upon themselves. Investment begins the minute you expose yourself to possible rejection--whether it by asking someone to coffee, or simply saying hi. It's relatively easy to stop seeing someone you've been going out with for a few weekends, but it's slightly more awkward once you're already started dating. A relationship of a few weeks will leave a few emotional scars once ended, but the investment becomes exponentially greater as a month, two months, six months, and then years start to role by.

It's like sinking money into stocks. As you take time and energy to get to know the other person, you become more and more vulnerable. You trust. And as you understand the other person, you allow them more grace for misbehavior. He starts to excuse your PMS. In turn, you find yourself ignoring his Monday night game obsession.

Relationships=Investment (risk)--->Returns---> Withdrawal or Deeper Investment

The quality of the returns received (love, abuse, understanding, grief, fun, etc.) are what ultimately determine the course of most relationships. Investments may start at an introduction, and continually get larger until the 'ultimate' investment is proposed by the guy with four little words on bended knee. When this happens is simply a matter of how long a relationship has been developing, which is why some girls hear these words at 18, and others at 38. However, in some communities (namely mine) many adults are discouraging modern teens from "settling" or "getting tied down" too quickly regardless of the stage they're in.

When I told my friend why I was forgoing speed dating she adamantly responded with, "Well hon, you don't have to hang up your hat just yet! You're still young. Have fun!" Within the community of the college educated, the days of fashionable early marriage are gone. Instead, promising young people are encouraged to put off marriage and children, to date around, to make decisions later and later when they will be more experienced, mature, wise, and understanding of themselves. The problem? Within the Christian college educated community abstinence is also highly encouraged--something that's exceedingly difficult when you're young, and in a long term, or serious relationship. Furthermore, it leaves certain couples in an awkward quandary.

For a young couple in their late teens or early twenties, dating can feel like a trap. They may be completely certain that the person they are with is "the one." But the old folks say "Wait! You don't know yourself yet," which may very well be true. But it's important to understand the underlying belief supporting such admonitions. It is a belief that has been pushed upon the emerging generation with great fervency, despite it's great fallacy. The belief is that Marriage=Commitment.

Don't gasp. I believe that Marriage signifies Commitment, but to say that marriage is the commitment is like saying a diploma is an education, or that a license is the same as being able to properly operate a motor vehicle. In truth, these are only the symbols of accomplishment. You get the diploma because you completed your college degree, you receive the license after demonstrating that you already know how to drive. The same is ideally true of marriage. Two adults do not gather in the sight of witnesses and pledge "till death do us part" because they are getting married, people get married because their relationship has already reached a point where they are committed "till death." The license and vows simply signify a willingness to make the relational status public. It's a matter of taking on the public social responsibility (i.e. joint taxes, etc.) of a commitment already made. The investment is already that deep.

Older adults who encourage dating teens and college students not to take their relationships "too seriously" aren't taking into account the depth of the investment already made. Where is the practicality in that advice if the relationship has already progressed to a serious level? Engagement and marriage aren't things that can simply be put off for later convenience, or at least not so blithely as some would suggest. There comes a point when you've invested so much, that it's time to make it public and permanent. Fish or cut bait. Sign on the dotted line--whatever line that may be. Sure, wisdom and experience are great, but merely waiting for time to pass doesn't foster either, and isn't particularly proactive. The stages of relationships aren't determined by age or maturity, and perhaps that is what young people should be reminded of from the very beginning.

Transition

Today I am NOT going to write about boys. I know, the sudden variety represented by this decision is refreshing even to me. I blame it on college. Yep, that's exactly where I am right now. And removed from what three months ago felt pedantic and mundane (and three months later feels almost like a different world), I suddenly feel as though I have something to say. So in case you were wondering why I haven't written in the last three months, it was to spare you my pedantic life.

In a strange way nothing has changed. I still attend class everyday, the classes are just farther apart now. I go back to a room that is slightly bigger, but that I now share with a girl I'd never previously met. My clothes are in my closet, my books are on the shelf. I have drawers now, which, for someone who prefers to fold, is an improvement.

But things have changed. I was in the Shell fast station a few minutes ago, a small place that serves food and overpriced necessities like soap and Tylenol. Everyone refers to it as the DX, which is short for Dairy Express. It used to be an ice cream place long ago. But the number of people living here who actually remember it as such is so small I don't know if I could find one under age forty.

I grab a Vitamin water from one of the fridges, my mainstay when I want to take liquid and am growing ill of the drinking fountains. Hm...which one should I pick? Focus. That's what I need right now. Because I'm coming off a four hour study binge and still feel as though I've only accomplished two hours worth of work. Because I think my mind is going to melt if it has to keep producing sentences of it's own power. And because while I know it's all placebo, the neon pink drink in this plastic bottle is going to spell the difference between hope and despair as I trudge back to the library and into a computer lab to give my midterm paper another go.

It's midterms. This concept meant only a slight increase of homework in high school. It was a due date, a reminder to be halfway done with some obscure project that no one had honestly started on. Suddenly it has significance. I need to show that I've learned something in the last five weeks. There's no more coasting. No more nodding and placating and dreaming of the party I'll go to later. Not that I was ever much of a partier. But I was a go-to-Paddy's-house-and-watch-a-dumb-movie-on-Tuesday-nighter. That's gone.

I'm an honor student now. A big, bad, college smarty-pants who has to spend hours pouring over books and digesting material. I will look down on her fellow freshman with a slightly condescending smile as I attempt, however weakly, to explain the writings of Sophocles we're discussing in my History class today. I feel like a child.

An older student, a friend and fellow reader from the English Department sits next to me. I try not to make it too obvious that I feel honored he's even bothering to associate with me outside of the office. He's a senior, and I'm a kid. A little girl in the big Emerald City. But he's there. And we're talking, and actually enjoying the conversation. At least, he seems to enjoy it. When three of my friends from my high school approach me, all seniors and graduating this year, I'm torn between embarrassment over the silly jokes we exchange, and relief over the familiar. I look back into the eyes of my college friend and I see only openness. Understanding. This is the way I'm supposed to behave. I do not need to check my high school identity at the door. I'm glad, though in some ways I want to.

I like being older, more mature, forced to think rationally and take responsibility for the minutia in my life. I like creating a new image. Something sleeker, and cooler, and perhaps more understood than the brainy, inaccessible, anomaly I was in high school. I like choosing friends, and realizing they chose me too. I like college.

A few minutes after my co-worker left me I made the unwise and completely unpremeditated decision to shake my open bottle of vitamin water. "Dang it!" I burst out (or some variation thereof), and immediately reach for the thin brown napkins in the metal holder to wipe the table, the magazine I was reading, and myself with. My black sweater-dress is covered in light brown lint. Child again. But it's okay. I may not always be all that sophisticated, and while I don't think I'll ever have a taste for four hour study binges, I know not-so-deep down that this is definitely the right place for me to be. Here. Now.

I clean up, pack up, and head back to the library. Then I get on the computer to blog about the new world I'm experiencing now. Maybe someone somewhere feels the same way...