College Dating Relationships: A Walk-Through
Escalating relationships are so much fun, really. You meet someone, or better yet you are referred to meet someone and the anticipation is so great. You guys hit it off and establish a few commonalities, perhaps a sacred inside joke or six. This coincides with the first step in increasing intimacy, involvement and immediacy. He (ok we are obviously operating from a girl’s point-of-view) somehow attains your phone number and you receive the oh so holiest of holy texts from an unknown number, wherein you find the familiar unfamiliarity of a casual introduction and also how to spell his name, as he has listed his first and last. (Oh, you thought it was "Stephen,” but there’s a v…tricky.)
After you send the ceremonial mass text message to your disciples exclaiming that he FINALLY texted you after probably thirteen hours of anxiousness, you respond coolly and you pray. Before you know it, rubbing elbows on a crammed couch in order to make room for everyone to watch a movie you don’t want to see becomes a norm, and the collision of elbows and thighs is apparent (because you can realistically only fit two people comfortably on a porch swing). This is achieved through the second clause of intimacy, of depth and of similarity. The book states that friends “gaze more, smile more, show more positive facial affect, sit closer, and touch more” (Burgoon, Buller, and Woodall, 254).
Moving through the chain comes affection, attraction, liking, and love. Suddenly you find yourself engaging in long bouts of daydreaming about the next time he will see you, what he will think, how it will go, and how you should stop wearing sweatpants and find those earrings you leant to Madelyn because they really make your eyes “pop.” This consumes you. (WTF does Mom mean by "pop" anyway?!) You fantasize about his flawless face, the kind worthy of a Taylor Swift song, and his lovable chuckle. You feel as though the passenger seat of his car is not such, but rather the queen’s thrown next to a king’s, and you are suddenly enthralled by that song playing only because he gave the volume dial a volume spin.
After a few weeks, a few misread texts (you used an ellipsis; clearly letting him know your “that’s fine, have fun” really meant “come over or I’ll be really mad”), and a few nights of losing him after paying his cover charge, you find yourself in the passenger seat of his car, waiting for this stupid song to end because you hate it and you have no idea why you told him you loved it. You find yourself thinking that he is not that great after all, and that perhaps your friend was right about him maybe having a lisp… You imagine him meeting your parents, and you imagine the awkwardness between him and your brother. You imagine what your kids will look like, and if they would have his bad skin or that annoying laugh. Alas, the car you’ve grown so sick of reaches your driveway and he drops you off.
These are all factors of declination in intimacy. Such breakdowns in communication, loss of shared interests, diminishing fun, as well as the money thing (he always conveniently forgets his wallet!) really way on you, and you begin to develop the far away eyes you always listened to Mick Jagger sing about. You just can’t wait to rid yourself of this burden of a person, and you find refuge on your porch while he waves goodbye.
Hopefully he will text you soon, fingers crossed!
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