"Only hang out with people you like. I learned this and it changed my life."
-Emily Haines
Most people think of summer as a time to relax and unwind but, I, on the other hand, seem to always have this crazy notion that I should take summer classes. Needless to say, this makes my summer significantly less exciting especially when the class I'm taking this summer is O chem II. I'm gonna keep it real, it's not really going the greatest. It's not that I'm not trying or anything but I just don't get it. Every time I'm asked, "How would you perform this synthesis?" I feel like, rather than attempting to bullshit my way through a synthesis, I'd be better off just writing, "I would ask someone who actually understands chemistry to do it."
Last night I actually emerged from my study shell (and by emerged from my study shell, I mean last night was one of the three nights a year when someone was like, "Gee, Joey still exists. Maybe we should call him!") for a while. We were in some rando's backyard and somehow the subject of prom came up. One of my friends mentioned that she didn't enjoy her prom because she didn't really want to spend time with her boyfriend and would have rather gone with her friends.
For some reason, this statement jarred me. I'm no relationship expert, largely because I have yet to find someone who's desperate enough to date me, but I feel like my almost complete degree in psychology and the fact that I passed social psych brings me pretty damn close, right? I've always been of the school of thought that you really shouldn't be dating someone that you don't want to spend time with because you can only have sex for so many hours in a day (and even then, sex as a foundation for a relationship generally doesn't lead to anything stable) and you'll be spending plenty of time with each other so shouldn't you actually look forward to that time?
Apparently, not everyone thinks this way because I know WAY too many people aren't dating someone who they genuinely like outside of the bedroom. I've always said that I don't want to rush into a relationship with someone because I want to have the foundation of a genuine friendship but it seems like too many many people are waaaay to eager to get right into a relationship or each others' pants.
Now, I may be biased in this last statement because of the types of guys I tend to attract. For some reason, the stage 5 clingers are really into me. I don't really know why this is because I have a tendency to make my annoyance very clear but they persist. Maybe I have a musk that tells guys that I like being texted, "Hey, what's up? How are you? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?" three times a day or maybe it's what I get for trying to be nice to most people. Either way, I have a low threshold for that and I quickly lose any mild interest I may have had before.
My point is that people need to SLOW THE FUCK DOWN and take time to get to know each other. Studies have shown that couples who are friends tend to last longer and quite honestly, you didn't need to do an empirical study to tell me that. It seems kind of... duh? The reasoning behind this may be because there are two different kinds of love that play a key role in intimate relationships. The first kind is passionate love, and, as the name suggests, this is the "OMG I WANT TO HUMP YOUR BRAINS OUT!!!!" kind of love. I don't remember the exact length of time but it doesn't exactly last a long period. Like your passion, your relationship will probably fizzle unless there's a strong foundation of companionate love. This is the kind of love where you genuinely care about the other person and what they think, feel, etc. This is the kind of love found in deep friendships and generally lasts a lot longer than passionate love (and actually grows over time). Without it, your relationship will not work for an extended period and I've never seen the point of getting into a relationship I knew would fail.
To sum things up, if you find someone that you're interested in dating, take the time to actually get to know them. You'll be glad you did because in the long run your relationship will be stronger. If things don't work out between you and them, hey, that's okay. Some people don't work out together. You'll probably find someone else and if you don't, there's always cats!
