My parents met during their first year of college. They weren’t students at the same university — my father went to school in New Hampshire, and my mother attended an all girls’ school a few hours away in Massachusetts. My dad tagged along with a fraternity brother who was dating a friend of my mother’s, and let her steal sips from the strawberry daiquiris he bought all night because she mentioned she liked them and was still too young to order them for herself.
There is no doubt in my mind the practice of buying drinks to express romantic interest is alive and well — one need only to set foot in any Corner establishment for supporting evidence. However, neither my experiences nor those of my friends have led me to believe any of us are going to meet our future spouses waiting at a crowded bar.
Maybe the weight of the fact that my father, the original frat star, was sacrificing his masculinity by repeatedly purchasing “towering tropicals” for my mother contributed to the initial affection between them, but I suspect the difference between then and now is something more universal. The intent behind such simple exchanges like buying someone a drink or even sending a text message (which obviously wasn’t an issue back in my parents’ days), is so hotly debated that the gestures themselves have lost all their meaning.
People get stuck over-analyzing all the ways a person could interpret an interaction. Suddenly a wave hello from across Grounds after a chance meeting the night before could have some hidden meaning, and I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I have been asked to interpret the significance of some emoji.
Once you get through the initial awkwardness of gauging another person’s feelings, you face the dreaded “talking” phase of a relationship: when a general pattern of regular conversation and pleasure in each other’s company has been established, but no “label” has been applied. Back in my parents day, all that communication was seen as emotional and financial investment — my mother reminded me how expensive the pay phones she and my dad used to call each other on were. Today, it seems we keep our tentative romantic interests at arms length for fear of losing our investments.
All the turmoil that seems to accompany any kind of modern college relationship makes it hard to believe the stories our parents tell us about how they met on move-in day. Considering how signals can get crossed and feelings can get hurt, it seems like more and more people are abandoning the timeline and the practices we grew up expecting to replicate.
Perhaps the entire timeline is shifting. If our grandparents met when they were teenagers, and our parents met in their early twenties, maybe our generation will meet the people we are meant to spend the rest of our lives with later in life, out in the “real world.”
Regardless of the reason, the shift itself is clear. Maybe buying that drink or sending that text still feels like an investment, but the kind of investment is different — it is a lot less long-term.
However, just like there will always be more strawberry daiquiris to be bought, there will always be more time to figure out what you’re doing with the rest of your life, and who you’re spending it with. My friends and I may not meet our life partners in line at Coupe’s, but that’s not to discredit today’s dating practices, which will get us there eventually.
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