It’s 1:15 on a Thursday morning. My deadline is slowly nipping at my heels and I can feel the pressure to write something innovative, creative, or even breathtaking. I want to write something that moves you.
Fortunately, the world I live in is full of ideas; fresh aggravations that the youth of our generation need answered. Moments like these make me feel like Carrie Bradshaw, analyzing her friends’ woes and confusions in search of an epiphany we can all relate to.
Recently, a theme kept cropping up in conversation, “do titles matter?” The question sounds redundant and relatively simple enough to answer but if you spend enough time talking to enough people, you’ll realize that relationships are not easily titled or defined, if at all.
For most of us it’s cut and dry. From dating to friends with benefits to boyfriend/girlfriend to married there’s an array of titles that we build our lives around. We understand the connotation each title presents and we follow the guidelines as society dictates. But what about behind the scenes? We are often presented with the socially accepted front of a relationship, but are we ever really aware of what is happening behind closed doors?
A friend (there’s a title) of mine and her boyfriend (and there’s another) decided recently that the constraints and the expectations of titles were weighing their relationship down. They removed the titles and suddenly the weight of the world seemed to fall away; those tiny fights over nothing disappeared and they entered into a state of permanent dating. They do everything a boyfriend and girlfriend would do and they are exclusive, and yet there is a certain expectation that is stripped of their relationship. They feel as though they can make time for themselves without letting down the other in the process. Initially, this sounds selfish and you can sneer at the sound of it, but think for a moment what labeling a relationship can do to you.
As college students, we have a lot on our plate. There is an overwhelming stress to balance sleep, social life, studies, work, personal time, significant other time, family, clubs, hobbies, what have you. As the responsibilities pile on, our stress increases (source: my own life) and we begin to get consumed with it all. We drop the ball more often than not on our friends, family, and even ourselves.
A lot of the anxiety comes from trying to meet the expectations of every single title we are connected to. There’s a social stigma surrounding titles: we have to do this in order to maintain this. Suddenly our relationships with people begin to feel more like science formulas than human connections.
What if for a moment, you could eliminate the stress of expectations and still meet them?
This sounds backwards I know, but follow me here. The friend I mentioned before has said being in a relationship has never been easier now. With the title attached to their relationship, the expectations began to feel like end all be all. We have to hang out every Friday. We need to see each other 3 days a week. He has to buy us dinner. She has to call me before she goes to bed. We have to text back immediately. When these things don’t happen there seems to be a little part of us on the inside that goes “if you’re really my boyfriend/girlfriend you wouldn’t act like that” and “if you really cared about me you would do it.” Is that really true? You need a label to say that?
Can you be in a committed relationship, care about each other immensely, still treat each other like boyfriend/girlfriend and not call each other that?
As soon as that title is stripped away it almost strengthens the relationship. If the person truly cared, they would make the effort to stay in your life regardless of a title that “holds” you two together. Why do titles exist? Outside of how we introduce others and ourselves to people. “This is my ex-boyfriend.” “This is my best friend.” “This is my wife.” “This is my partner.” “This is my enemy.” Everything has a title for the purpose of introduction and rarely anything else if you honestly think about it.
I think as we age, titles become more important as they are part of how we define ourselves. “CEO.” “Mother.” “Father.” “Assistant.” “Principal.” But at an age where we are still desperately trying so hard to define ourselves as individuals, is it important to put so much pressure and expectations on a relationship? Can you define a relationship if you can barely define yourself? Those who care will make the effort regardless of how you label them. The important thing is that they are in your life and the rest of the world can either accept it or move on.
We are still so young. We crave the companionship of others but we still want to feel like we can freely move about; it’s why we moved so far away from home for college. It doesn’t make a relationship anything less just because you don’t text back in less than 15 minutes. I think we become self-conscious of how we act as soon as we label it. We worry if we don’t act a certain way we may lose that person from our lives. But the reality is, they were there before the label existed. We have a tendency to lose ourselves in those we date, and even in friends as soon as there is this pressure to live up to a title. And at point in our lives where finding ourselves is so crucial, it’s dangerous to submerge that part of you in order to fulfill a title.
For some, labels are a necessity. For others, they are only an easier way to explain a situation. Who are we to judge how others attempt to experience a relationship?