I had coffee this week with one of the girls from my old youth group at All Saints church. “Brynne” has just finished up her junior year, and in the past few months, has started dating “Scott”, who is a year older and has just graduated. Scott is off to university in the fall, hundreds of miles away.
In many senses of the term, Scott is Brynne’s “first.” He’s the first guy she’s ever fallen in love with, certainly, and before they started dating this spring, they had been friends for two years, since they first met in youth group. I know Scott almost as well as I know Brynne: he is a remarkable young man, outgoing and ambitious and passionate. These two teens, so bright and sensitive and driven, are as near-to-perfect for each other as could be.
When we met at Starbucks, however, Brynne was anxious. Practically the first words out of her mouth to me were “September 18!” I asked what that date meant, and she explained that that was the day Scott was heading off to college. “It’s less than three months away”, she said, “and I don’t know what’s going to happen.” As we talked further, Brynne made it clear that both she and Scott had talked about wanting to stay together in a committed relationship after he goes off to university. “I know that’s what I want”, Brynne told me. “I also know it’s what Scott says he wants, and I believe him — now. But I don’t want to be the reason why he misses out on ‘college’ experiences, you know? I don’t want to be this stupid high school girl who is his ball-and-chain preventing him from having fun. Sometimes I think we should just break up, as much as that would suck, just so he could be ‘free’”.
In my role as a youth group leader and mentor, there are few questions I get asked more often than the one about the viability and wisdom of long-distance relationship. “Should we break up or stay together?” is a query I get every year, usually in the summer as a couple moves inexorably towards autumn’s physical separation. I never answer the question definitively, because each situation is in some sense unique, and each couple’s set of abilities and desires is different. But if I have a bias, and based on my own experience and that of a great many people I’ve worked with over many years I do have one, it is towards saying that yes, a couple that is in love ought to make an effort to stay together when separated by different colleges.
I asked Brynne: “What sort of experiences do you think Scott would miss out on because of being in a long-distance relationship with you?” She winced a bit, and I pressed on: “Is he going to miss out on great classes? Miss out on joining the right club or fraternity? Miss out on making great friends? Miss out on learning to surf, skydive, or mountain bike?” Brynne laughed, saying “That’s not what I mean.” “I know”, I said, “you’re worried he’s going to miss out on the chance to ‘be with’ new people, with other girls”. She nodded.
I asked Brynne a simple question: “Do you want the best for Scott? Do you want to see him grow as a person?” “Of course”, she replied. I pointed out to her that doing the maintenance work of a long-distance relationship, work that would involve both sacrifice and effort, would be an amazing catalyst for growth for both her and her beau. If Scott misses out on a campus culture of “hooking up”, what harm has there been to his emotional development? If he doesn’t sleep with the same number of people his friends do, what loss has there been to his growth? I hastened to tell Brynne that I wasn’t suggesting that experimentation was in and of itself an impediment to maturation — merely that in my opinion, most people grow more quickly as a result of the work of active relationship maintenance than as a result of non-committal liasons with random folks.
It’s true that wisdom usually comes as the result of experience. But what experiences are most likely to produce wisdom? Surely the discipline and the restraint that a long-distance monogamous relationship require offers the chance for a more useful set of learning experiences than a series of hook-ups. To be fair, it’s a false dichotomy to suggest that Scott will choose between promiscuity on one hand and long-distance monogamy on the other. Perhaps, if Brynne “sets him free”, he will find himself in another committed relationship — though such relationships are increasingly rare on today’s college campuses, for a plethora of reasons. Though I have no interest in joining the chorus of conservative voices complaining about the “hook-up culture”, I am not prepared to say that an ethos that discourages monogamy is somehow more conducive to maturation than one that does.
Conventional adult wisdom, the sort that is foisted on to teenagers by the likes of me, argues that young people should “keep their options open.” There’s truth in that, of course. I wouldn’t encourage Brynne and Scott to get engaged any time soon. On the other hand, a good relationship at any age is one that opens up as many options as it closes. I know Brynne and Scott well, and I can see that as much in love as they are, they are still connected to the outside world. Each has introduced the other to a new set of passions (in this case, horses and theater.) Though by being committed, Brynne and Scott are foregoing the option to swap spit with new skin, they are gaining a whole other set of options and experiences through the process of learning from and challenging each other.
We’ve all seen kids go off to college, promising to stay committed to their high school sweethearts, only to break up by Thanksgiving (the infamous “turkey drop”.) But most of us also know couples who do make it. Two young people I mentored years ago went off to different schools (UCSB and NYU) and stayed together through four years of college. They’re now engaged and living in San Francisco. They had their ups and downs and a brief infidelity or two, but they made it work. And they both tell me now that they didn’t miss out on a damned thing of value in college. I told Brynne that whether or not a long-distance relationship with Scott worked out or not, it was worth trying. Rather than assuming that singleness and sexual availability are prerequisites for a full and rich college experience, I suggested that she dare to imagine that with effort and sacrifice, both she and her boy could grow by leaps and bounds as a result of a long-distance relationship.
When we said goodbye, I gave Brynne my standard spiel: “I love you and will support you whatever happens and whatever you choose. But know that I think you both are capable of making something like this work, despite the distance. And I think you’re both worth making it work.” She promised to keep me posted.
Though I have no interest in joining the chorus of conservative voices complaining about the “hook-up culture”, I am not prepared to say that an ethos that discourages monogamy is somehow more conducive to maturation than one that does.
Monogamy is not synonymous with commitment. As someone in a longterm monogamous relationship, I fail to see how my relationship is more challenging, complete, or “conducive to maturation” than a committed polyamorous or polyfidelitous relationship. There’s a dichotomy between committed and uncommitted relationships; monogamy/non-monogamy is a whole other axis.
My girlfriend and I stayed together when she went to school last fall. It was a heart-rending experience, but our relationship is stronger as a result. And as difficult as it was, it really felt like the only option. As it happened, she ended up moving home again after a few months — I can’t speak to what would have happened if she had stayed, but we’re both a lot happier now than we were while she was gone.
Even aside from all of that, breaking up preemtively is just silly. If they want to say together now, they should stay together. They might find that they continue to want to stay together and that they can make their long distance relationship work. They might also find that he wants to break up with her because he wants to hook up with random girls, because he meets another girl in a college class and wishes to have a non-long-distance relationship with her, or because he realizes that he doesn’t want hook-up sex but also doesn’t want a girlfriend and simply wants to focus on college without the distraction of the opposite sex for the first year. The only way they’ll ever know is to live it.
I’m not seeing what benefit necessarily comes out of choosing the obviously harder road here. Difficulty doesn’t always produce superior results. (I would posit that it usually does not, but this is the voice of someoene coming to terms with the utility of treating depression.)
Daisy, fair enough. I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of gay,s straight, bi and trans teens, and never worked with any high schoolers in long-term, committed, polyamorous relationships. The only poly folks I know were college aged at earliest, and mostly post-college. I’m not saying those relationships don’t exist at the age group of the Brynnes and Scotts of the world, it’s just that I’ve never encountered them nor seen any research on long-term poly relationships in adolescents. (If there is such research, someone enlighten me!)
another committed relationship — though such relationships are increasingly rare on today’s college campuses, for a plethora of reasons
I’m interested — and, despite my liberal proclivities, somewhat disturbed — to hear you say that.
I teach college kids too, but I don’t have anything like the relationship with (any of) them that you clearly do with so many — I don’t, for instance, know anything about any of their relationships. So I think you’d know and I wouldn’t.
But as someone who has thrived in a (committed, monogamous) relationship, it concerns me if that option is really increasingly rare for college kids today. I don’t have anything against frequent hooking up per se — for some people it may be best — but I think that a lot of people do best in committed relationships, and it’d be good if the social structures were such to support those.
…Not being very articulate here. Mostly, I’m surprised that you’d say that: I sort of had that pegged as conservative worry-mongering. If you have more thoughts on this, I’d love to read a post about it.
My high school boyfriend & I managed a long distance relationship for over 1 year (he to Amherst & I was finishing my final year of high school), however, the next year, when I went to University in Canada, it didn’t last much longer than Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving which is in October). The initiation of the breakup was mine, as I found myself interested in playing the field and being open to new experiences. Granted, this was in the 80’s when there was no email, so talking on the phone was expensive. I loved him, but still I was ready to make the move. Looking back I was callous and cruel, and I didn’t really find anyone new for a while, and actually enjoyed the party scene with my girlfriends, dancing/drinking/staying up late/class/making friends with young men/being away from home/ etc. It was a period of discovery, and I suppose that I could have done all this still going out with him, but I think that I had to make a complete cut with the old, and start discovering the new me.
Strangely next year I met a guy at the neighbouring university, started going out with him, he graduated and left town, and we stayed together, eventually getting married (still going strong nearly 20 years later!). All the while living long distance for nearly 3 years, and I never felt that it was a drag! I had no trouble still going out with friends/drinking/dancing etc. but there was no sense of temptation or looking around. I had plenty of fun, without the desperation. (I challenge people who say there was no hookup culture until recently–it happened, just under a different names/circumstances…)
Long story short–it depends on the timing of the couple…sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. If they stay together, so be it. Hopefully they’ll go into it with an open mind, not fall prey to the easy temptation, but listen to themselves if it’s not working or they are called to be alone/be with someone new.
Stephen Frug,
As someone who was in college less than a decade ago, I was puzzled by Hugo’s statement that it’s increasingly rare. I was involved in a lot of different activities in college, especially ones that involved getting to know people in very big groups, and monogamous couples were very prevalent.
Maybe Hugo’s talking about the initial semester or year, where the freedom and huge variety of new people kind of fuels an, “OMG, so many options” sort of feeling, but most people I knew preferred having a boyfriend or girlfriend to just “hooking up”. Many of my friends married a college boyfriend. Maybe something’s changed in the last 5 years, but I kind of doubt it.
Part of the problem is that different colleges have different cultures. On some campuses, perhaps more so in the South and evangelical Christian schools, boyfriend/girlfriend pairs are more common. Thinking about Cal, my alma mater, a good friend of mine from my undergrad days now works in psych services for the university — she recounts that she has seen a notable shift in most campus groups away from “enduring pair bonds” among undergrads, though the grad students are still “marrying like mad”.
The university Scott is off to is a famously liberal one from which anecdotal evidence emerges that serious dating is less in vogue than “hanging out” in large groups, with occasional sexual contact taking place among group members. But of course, all of this is anecdotal, and we could all trade competing anecdotes until the proverbial cows wander home. I certainly don’t want to fuel the hoary old right-wing lament about the prevalence of irresponsible hook-ups.
The larger point is that there are a variety of forces that discourage serious relationships in college, particularly long-distance ones. Well-meaning peers, parents, and professors are it seems more likely to advise against heroic commitments than to advocate for them. But I have no surveys to point to, just a whole mess of accumulated experience with a certain set of young people. Advice is, in the end, only that.
I certainly don’t want to fuel the hoary old right-wing lament about the prevalence of irresponsible hook-ups.
Which is more important, ideology or truth?
“Hook ups” are either responsible or irresponsible. They are either prevalent, or they aren’t. It’s either healthy for people to behave in this way (broadly, with the understanding that everyone is different), or it isn’t healthy.
Damn the politics. What’s good for young people?
Why is hooking up considered irresponsible? I did my share of it in college. I wasn’t really ready for a relationship through most of it, so that’s what I did. Kept my heart safe before I was ready and kept myself happy enjoying a healthy sampling of my schoolmates’ lips. Hooking up can be irresponsible, I guess, but the only aspect of it I’d automatically coin as irresponsible was if you weren’t using protection of some kind.
I also wouldn’t wish an LDR on my worst enemy, but maybe that’s because I had one. Open-ended LDRs are not kind, but maybe it’s different when you get to date in person for awhile first. I don’t know. I know people that met someone young, stayed together through college, and are now pushing 30, but most of them are divorced.
I think what he’s missing out on is the opportunity for a relationship with someone from a different place or culture than his own. Not that that’s the end of the world, and not that he’s guaranteed to have such a relationship if he and Brynne break up, but I think it can be a very interesting and enlightening experience to have an extremely close relationship with someone of a different cultural background. It’s not nothing.
Hugo: no argument from me that committed poly relationships are quite rare among the very young. Never the less, the post equated monogamy and commitment consistently, in a way that implied, IMO, a broader conflation of the two. The system set up was a binary “committed monogamy” and “(irresponsible) uncommitted non-monogamy” — as if those are the only two possible options, and as if one quality necessarily accompanies the other.
Daisy, agreed: monogamy is not the only form of commitment; I agree with you unreservedly.
Whatever you do in a situation like this, you “miss out” on certain things. Part of growing up, after all, is making choices that involve not going down certain roads, leaving some stones unturned, etcetera and continued metaphor. Scott and Brynne will certainly miss out on some good things if they stay in a committed LDR (I appreciate the abbreviation, Nav), but they will miss out on other valuable and good things if they break up. Assuming that the relationship is a good one, the sort that encourages mutual growth, breaking up for the sake of giving someone their “freedom” seems a poor one on balance, if only because the lessons learned as a result of staying and working on the relationship are potentially so valuable.
Kept my heart safe before I was ready
I don’t get how you can keep your heart safe, ever, but never mind, because it doesn’t purtain to this case. These guys are already in a relationship that they both want to keep going. Their hearts are already not safe. I can understand advising against an LDR that one hasn’t even started yet, as the more difficult course, but, what were they supposed to do, not get involved in any high school relationship, because they’d eventually go to college?
And, given that they actually want the relationship to last now, I think a preemptive break up because the guy might want later to be free to enjoy his requisite number of freshman year flings would be foolish. In general, I’m with B; preemptive break ups are a bad idea.
Sure, the odds are good that this relationship will eventually break up, but then, that’s the case with any relationship among young people, even one that’s never long distance, and even one in which the people involved are well matched. Few people spend their whole lives with their first love. That’s not a reason not to try to make things work with your first love, when you both really want to stay together. And, who knows, they may even last and be happy together for the long haul. I’ve known it to happen.
Wow, a two-fer: insult any future relationships they might have, or attractions felt to others, as “swapping spit”, and trivialize their own relationship (see, they’re swapping spit with old skin, but that’s okay).
I agree that pre-emptive breakup on the idea that you’ll cheat anyway is not wise, but even dumber is the idea of sticking to a relationship that’s difficult purely because it Builds Character. If their relationship is great, it will survive their having been apart for so long.
i certainly wouldn’t advise a pre-emptive breakup in this case, but as someone fairly recently out of school, i honestly think that if college seems often more geared toward a culture of sexual freedom and experimentation, that’s probably for a good reason. i also think it’s a little silly to reduce whatever adventures scott (and when her time comes, of course, brynne) in college to promiscuity. i think being in a committed relationship in college can be good (and most people at my college seemed to be in one at one time or another, despite the liberal “hookup” culture), but i also see tremendous value not in pursuing casual sex for its own sake or anything like that, but simply exploring what one wants and needs, things that in my experience often changed drastically from one semester to the next in college. there’s also value in learning how to handle varying types of relationships. i really think that most people, however smart, charming or driven they may be, at college age are fundamentally still becoming themselves and aren’t likely to have a seamless relationship for that four or five years because most of us change over that time.