Whether you met your significant other in high school, on Tinder, at a local event, at a faraway event or really anywhere that isn’t your own college or university, you’re sure to have gotten a few cliché responses from people about your relationship. It’s hard enough to deal with the stigma of being in a serious relationship in college, but when your boyfriend or girlfriend goes to another college, everything just gets much more complicated.
1. You have more clothing from their school than you do from yours.
Honestly, I think I have more clothing from my boyfriend’s school than he even does. I have plenty of Meredith hoodies and shirts too, but his hoodies are so much baggier and more comfortable, which means I inevitably end up wearing them the most.
I can’t even tell you how many times someone at the grocery store has asked me how I like Elon. Usually I just roll with it and tell them I love it there, because it makes me feel like an undercover cop or something.
2. Your wallet kinda hates this relationship.
This especially applies to you if your colleges are just far enough apart that you can still commute to see each other, but it’s still a good distance. Even though gas prices have been wonderfully low lately (sorry Mother Nature), it’s still pretty expensive to be driving all over the map every weekend to see each other. It’s already expensive enough to be in a relationship. Like, have you even seen how expensive Red Lobster is? Also, in order to pay for your gasoline-fueled adventures together, you need to get a job, which drastically limits the time you can spend together. Oh, youth! Am I right guys?
3. It's easy to get too busy for each other.
In high school, when you were in a relationship, it was weird if you spent a solid hour of waking time not texting each other. Now, I’m lucky if I spend an hour a day actually talking to other human beings. If I texted my boyfriend the amount that I did in high school, I would fail all of my classes and be kicked out of all of my extracurricular activities.
Not being able to constantly “communicate” doesn’t have to be a bad thing, though. In fact, cutting down the time you spend talking and channeling that energy into fewer but more meaningful conversations is probably one of the best changes you could possibly make.
4. You can't share everything like you could in high school relationships.
Especially when you’re transitioning from high school to college with the same person, it’s hard to get used to the lack of shared stuff between the two of you. Going to the same high school meant more than sharing some classes or teachers; it meant sharing day-to-day experiences, predictable routines, friends and a general physical environment. More time together also meant more inside jokes and stories that you can repeat to yourselves when you’re bored.
Moving apart from each other means you have more stories to share with each other, but usually this stuff gets lost in translation, which is especially frustrating when the story is super important to you. Meredith College has a lot of meaningful traditions that are infamous for being impossible to understand until you “just experience it,” so it was really difficult for me to explain Cornhuskin’ to my boyfriend when all he could interpret from it was a literal corn-shucking contest. If your relationship isn’t strong enough, it might be easy to drift apart from this massive loss of shared life stories between you.
It’s also hard not to get jealous as you see your significant other sharing all of these fun and sometimes life-changing experiences with their new friends, while you don’t get to play a part in that. It’s important to be able to let that go, though, because it’s not healthy to be possessive over your loved one’s entire life.
5. College forces you to focus on you first.
One of the hardest adjustments I had to make was getting out of the habit of constantly looking at my phone and waiting for it to buzz. I had to get out of the mindset of needing constant attention, and I think that change has been really healthy.
Since starting college, I have had to learn how to make probably thousands of decisions while relying on myself. This process has definitely been hard, but it has been worth it. If nothing else, getting to know yourself makes you a better girlfriend or boyfriend at the end of the day. Or, even better, having a healthy relationship with both partners focusing on self-growth is much more fun, fulfilling, and stress-free than any other alternative.
