There's a common idea that summer is the best time to find romance. Summer is a time when we as young people have less cares and responsibilities and can spontaneously fall in love and spend time with someone who we wouldn't see during the other months of the year. We've watched countless movies about it, about how marvelous and long lasting it can be, like in "The Notebook" or even "Grease." But how realistic is it that a summer fling could last until death do you part like Allie and Noah, or even until the end of the school year like Sandy and Danny? The answer: not very likely. The likelihood of your lives being able to work alongside each other during the rest of the year as well as it did during the summer is not high. You go to school, or work, or to different states, or maybe even different countries, and nothing is the same.
Still, it can feel a little degrading to be single during the summer. There are movies coming out about people falling in love left and right, as well as TV shows directed towards teens and twenty-somethings in which we follow the rise of a great romance alongside the characters. Somewhere along the way, we decided that love is a part of the sweet, warm air of summer. So really, how are we single people supposed to feel about ourselves as we return to our normal routines to hear about the great summer flings, crushes, encounters etc. of our friends during out summers apart?
Honestly, summer love may not be the smartest idea after all. How many of your friends, a week or two after telling you about their new partner, will be telling you how hard it is to do long-distance, or how different things are now that the summer is over? Their once passionate romance is now fizzing out. Is their new flame no longer answering their texts with the same tenacity that they used to? Is distance too hard? Are they now thinking they didn't want as big of a commitment as they agreed to before summer ended?
I, being a human being without any kind of romantic attachment, am not looking forward to these conversations. It sucks when our friends think they've found happiness and turns out they haven't. However, I know I had a good summer spent with good people that didn't involve some great romance.
To have a summer romance is a thing that can be amazing, I don't deny that. There are the stories of the Allie's and Noah's in the world. But to my fellow single people out there, we can rest safe knowing we can have a good time despite being single; summer can still be fun. We set out to have a good summer, and I'd say a lot of us succeeded without the romance we've read about and seen in movies. And you know, there's always next summer.
