You Should Break Up With Your College Relationship

Do you think you’ve met the love of your life at college? Spoiler alert: you haven’t. Or at least, you probably haven’t. The number of successful, long-term relationships that come out of college are minimal, and yet you’re still spending time around someone who doesn’t interest you that much, is completely different to you in almost every way and, when you think about it, makes you desperately unhappy. Statistics may mean nothing to the individual, but you should break up your college relationship.

Think of all the cool people you could meet

College is probably the first time in your life where you’re surrounded with people from all walks of life and with all different experiences. There are loads of different people to meet and loads of places to meet them and yet, the second you begin a relationship with someone you’re too afraid to break up with, the chances of you meeting any of these people diminishes greatly. I’m not necessarily even talking about pursuing other romantic or sexual relationships either, although while I mention it, yes you’re cutting yourself out from all of those experiences, and even meeting your real ‘soulmate’.

This person is NOT your soulmate

Tell me if any of this sounds familiar. You saw them in a club/ party and you thought they were cute, so you went over and offered to buy them a drink or some other cheesy cliché move. You got talking and pretended to be interested in what they were interested in, all the while wondering what they looked like naked. Eventually, you got them into your dorm and out of their clothes, and you shared a wonderfully awkward, bumpy and unfulfilling drunken experience that lasted around 3 minutes. From there, you just slipped uncomfortably into a relationship you didn’t really want to be in. This is not how you meet your soulmate. I can’t tell how you do meet your soul mate, but it isn’t like this. Break up.

Time is of the essence

Now you’ve ended up with this dud of a person, you’re quickly finding out that you have to invest a lot of time to make it work. You’ve even not gone to class a few times because they wanted to see you and you didn’t want to upset them. Your soulmate would probably have understood but, then again, this person isn’t your soulmate. Even being together just for the sake of having someone is wrong; you have a limited amount of time on this planet, so why waste it with this person who doesn’t make you happy? If you really can’t face being alone (a separate and equally worrying issue for another day) then break up with this awful relationship and at least be with someone you like spending time with.

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And time is money

Did you ever realize just how much money it costs to maintain a relationship? There are obvious costs, like birthday and Christmas presents, maybe an Easter egg if you’re into it. But then there are thousands of other ways your purse strings start to fray. Going out to places like restaurants, bars, clubs, the park, the zoo; all of these things cost you money, whether you’re paying to get in or just paying to travel there. If you’re on a college budget, it really isn’t that feasible to be blowing money on these sorts of things, especially when you don’t even care enough about the person to be doing it. Break up with them before you realize you can’t afford your next college-ruled A4 pad.

Admittedly, these criticisms are for people whose relationship is flawed and unhappy, and perhaps you’re very happy with your college beau. What I would say is this: you will never have this much freedom again, and using it to spend time with one person seems short-sighted. I also know many, many, MANY people who had flourishing relationships during the extended honeymoon of the college days, only for them to fizzle out when they left, surrendering the chance to explore other avenues whilst there and losing the reason they did that in the first place. It’s up to you. My advice? Break up.