I’ve had a fling with a guy throughout the summer, and I’m afraid that if we don’t make it official, it will fizzle during the semester when we come back Athens. How do you turn a summe fling into a relationship without making him run for the hills?
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Well, it seems that you are dealing with an age-old issue with guys, and that is commitment. Sure, we get a bad rap when it comes to settling down and making things exclusive because that seems terrifying to our current lifestyle. We are free birds and we love to fly around, hunt and watch football (Cheesy analogy and I don’t think birds do that last thing). We love the liberty of being not bound or “tied-down” to someone, so may I offer a very counterculture answer to this commonly themed question:
Don’t tie him down.
Of course, I think it is very healthy and good to express your feelings for him and say that you plan to exclusively date him. If you would like to call him boyfriend from then out too, by all means do (if he’s on board with you). So, to turn this relationship between you two to something more than just a “fling” (whatever that means) express your desire to do so. Know too that it may not work out, but everyone needs to know that that ALWAYS will be a possibility (It’s ok, there are 15,000 other guys here).
However, to return to my main point, I say again: Don’t tie him down.
What I mean by this is that you need to know that he basically has no physical, mental or spiritual bond to you. I know this sounds harsh, but it’s necessarily true. As insecure human beings, we do not want to be left, so we create these invisible and unsaid boundaries and laws dictating our significant other. When our partner violates OUR rules, we feel slighted and cheated, but the other is left perplexed in the knowledge that he broke a commandment and cannot use the “ignorance of the law” excuse to clear his/her name. They did something wrong that they didn’t even know was wrong. That’s just not fair.
For example: “Why did you talk to that girl/guy?” “Why didn’t you call me last night?” “Why didn’t you do that for me?”
As harsh as it may sound, we in a sense take the freedom out of the relationship when we should just let it be. Trust me, my friends that have taken this approach have enjoyed their dating lives much more than they did before. It allows both parties to freely choose the other instead of choice out of a sense of obligation.
To return to the original question as my soapbox calmly slides to the side, express your feelings and intentions but understand what I said in the gist of this article. Also, know that the same goes for you in that HE has no bound to you.
Yours Truly,
Your Real Life College Guy
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