Romance in the First Weeks of College

Let's be honest. You arrive on campus, you don't know anyone, and your homesick. I don't care who you are, this makes you relationally vulnerable. First and second week college romances are the norm. So is the fact they almost never work out. They start for all the wrong reasons. You are lonely and looking for friends.

The best course of action before you arrive on campus is to commit yourself to finding some good friends and decide that romance is out until at least the first few weeks have passed. Hook up too soon, and you will miss out on a lot of potential friends. You want to meet many new people instead of focussing on one person right away.

Friendships are important. In fact, building good relationships should be one of your main focuses for the first half of your first year. Those friends will be with you throughout your college life, and you will need them as much as they will need you. I still have friends that I have stayed in contact with since college. Your college life will be richer for good friendships.

On the other hand, do you want to spend most of your relational energy on a stranger you met at a relationally vulnerable moment only to have them (or you) lose interest a couple weeks later when you have both adjusted to college life and exit your life perhaps to never be seen again? This happens all the time. You just need to decide if you want it to happen to you. If you like drama, I suggest a soap opera. It's less painful. If you meet someone interesting, just give it a few weeks. If he or she has the right stuff, then they will still be around. If not, well, who needs the pain.

You need to know that sex is readily available on campus without the messiness of a committed relationship. But there are several catches. The first is that you are not made that way. Sex is meant to enhance a committed relationship where trust is involved and security is present. Graduates have become more vocal about the fact that their indiscretion during their college years has screwed up their married lives. The study in book form, Premarital Sex in America by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, contains many testimonies to this effect from the preChristian community.

Another huge catch is that one in four premarital sexual encounters involves a sexually transmitted disease. Some of these are quite serious and currently incurable. I have been warned by campus nurses that female infertility is a far more common result of sexually transmitted disease than most people think. They have had to tell far too many women that they will never have children because of a one night stand.

It is not unusual for healthy, life-long relationships to develop during college, but they seldom develop in the first weeks of school. If you protect your romantic and sexual life then you will retain more freedom that you can use on good choices later.