A new school year is starting. You’re signing up for new classes. You’re meeting new people. You may be moving into a new apartment or dorm. You may be joining new clubs, choosing a new major, or hanging out in different places on the weekends than you did last year.
Why am I pointing all of these things in a dating advice column? Simple: because you are going to change this year. You are not exactly the same person you were a year ago. You are also not exactly the same person now as you will be a year from now. Realizing these things is crucial to making the best of your dating life, whether you are single or in a relationship.
If you are in a relationship at any age, you need to continually assess your compatibility with your partner as well as the direction your life is heading in relation to that of your partner. This is especially necessary when you are a teenager or in your twenties though, because young adults change so much and so frequently. Young adulthood is when you become mature enough to become comfortable with an identity and take concrete steps to shape it and live by it. Some of the choices you make will work, and you will continue to integrate them into your life. Some of them will not work, and you will need to figure out another principle or goal that feels more appropriate and follow that instead. And as you reinvent parts of yourself, you need to make sure to keep your partner aware of the changes you make. Tell her what you have learned about yourself and find out what your partner has learned about herself. Continue to discuss the changes you make in your lives, because there will inevitably be changes. Find out whether your current selves are still compatible. If you still work together that’s a good thing, but don’t let that make you complacent. Continue to be mindful of and interested in your growth and that of your partner, and continue to reassess the relationship.
It is possible that you may come to the painful realization that who you have become conflicts with who your partner has become. You have to discuss the changes and the conflict with your partner, and then you have a choice to make. Is the conflict something that makes things between you and your partner more complex but does not undermine your core values or your ability to be happy? If so, then the conflict is something you should probably consider working through, because there still may be a way to make the relationship work long-term if that is what both you and your partner want.
However, if your most important values and goals conflict now with your partner’s core ideals and motivations, you may have to consider whether the relationship is worth continuing. If you impede on something that is important to your partner or your partner is a sort of obstacle to something important to you, then continuing the relationship could very likely breed resentment. Even if it doesn’t, it will at the very least send your ability to become your full adult self (as well as your partner’s ability to become his adult self!) to a grinding halt. Although the risk of realizing you have grown apart is an unpleasant one, it pales in comparison to the misery you will face if you never assess the relationship at all, and only realize years or decades down the road how little you have had in common since you were eighteen, twenty, or twenty-two.
If you are single you need to apply this same critical eye to your expectations and your interests. Have you re-evaluated your “type” recently? Or have you been interested in people with the same personality traits and life interests since you were thirteen? If you take a minute to ask why, it may be for good reason. The characteristics you have sought for years could still describe a person you will enjoy, or a person who is good for you. But, they may not. It may be time to refocus your attentions toward people with new characteristics, characteristics that will complement, nurture and intrigue you as you are now.
It’s so comfortable to keep on doing what you’ve always been doing: to see yourself as the same person you’ve been for a very long time or to see your current or potential love interests as the same old people as always. But, you’re changing and they’re changing-it is unrealistic to expect otherwise. Take the time to evaluate these changes now, at the beginning of the school year, when the fact that you are changing is most obvious. You will reach your full potential and be more satisfied in the long run if you get in the habit of evaluating your ideals, your life goals and what you want out of a partner.
Do you have any questions about love, dating, sex or romance that you want me to answer in a future Scene column? If so, e-mail them to [email protected]. All names will be changed and all identifying details will be confidential.