I Probably Won’t Find My Soulmate In College, And I’m Okay With That
People go to college for a lot of reasons. Obviously the whole further-your-education-so-you-can-become-a-functioning-member-of-society-and-get-a-job thing is a big one, but a lot of people go to college in the hopes of finding their future spouse, which I used to think kind of just happened for everyone, but now I’m not so sure.
After completing two years of college at a fairly small Midwestern university and managing to stay single both of those two years (not necessarily by my own choosing), I have a feeling that the man I one day hope to marry just isn’t there. And I find something comforting about that. I don’t have to even think about getting married anytime soon because I haven’t even completed step one yet: meeting the guy. I’m certainly not saying that if I did meet him that I wouldn’t think about it…but one thing at a time.
Life is weird though, and tends to throw things at me that I’m completely unprepared for (i.e. my entire sophomore year) so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that I meet him the last week of my senior year, or even in 25 days when I move back in for my junior year. I have no idea. This is just a feeling I had one night while I was watching one of the bazillion romantic comedies there are about this very topic. “If it hasn’t happened by now, it won’t happen by the time I graduate. Okay.” I don’t think I finished the movie.
The guys I’ve met and had romantic encounters with, in my two years of college have taught me a lot of different things. I’ve learned that I can’t do casual hook-ups (because I’m actually capable of having feelings), that being “emotional unavailable” is just Asshole for “I want to have fun,” that I probably won’t meet my next boyfriend at 2am on Friday night at a fraternity house, that it’s about way more than physical attraction, and that the invention of snapchat best friends is a form of emotional torture. Each of these boys treated me decently, were my friends before they became anything more, and are still my friends now so don’t let these lessons reflect poorly on them — I just cannot see myself marrying any of them.
College for most guys is a lot different than college for most girls. Girls are often accused of trying to find their husbands while in college, because a lot of them are, while guys are accused of doing the pretty much the opposite: just trying to have fun with the new girls they meet. Putting these two types people together for four years and expecting one of them to change is damn near impossible.
On the other hand, I feel like it’s become sort of an expectation that people find who they’re going to marry in college. That if you don’t find him or her in four years then good luck getting married ever in your life because obviously all the people you’ll ever meet attend the same college as you. It’s even weirder for the couples that do meet in college and stay together for a significant period of time. It’s the first thing everyone thinks about — “can you see the two of them getting married?” “They would have gorgeous kids!” and such. I kind of feel bad for those people; that’s a lot of pressure to deal with while at the same time maintaining your GPA to hopefully find a good job so you can provide for your future family.
My life doesn’t end after I graduate from college. I think the whole point is that it sort of begins after it. I’ve been in school the past 20 years of my life and I’ve met some incredible people but there’s an entire world outside of my small Midwestern university and smaller, Midwestern-er hometown and I’m liking my chances of meeting my future spouse out there instead of here.