DTR. When I asked my guy friends if they knew what this acronym meant, one answered with confidence, "It's bug repellant," while another responded knowingly, "Oh yeah, that's that new birth control pill." No boys, DTR stands for those three little words you dread hearing most?"Define The Relationship."
For some, guys and girls alike, even the looming threat of the DTR conversation can send shivers up the spine. The dreaded DTR convo is always a sticky situation, but it gets even stickier among Bowdoinites with the summer months fast approaching.
Defining the relationship becomes harder and harder for people when logistics come into play. Graduating seniors are wary to define anything with a significant other because they don't know where they'll be next year. Juniors who may study abroad face it too; it's not easy making a Paris-Brunswick relationship work. While first years and sophomores are thinking, "Can I keep this up by telephone all summer?"
On the whole, it seems like people around here are more likely to break up, or not define the relationship at all, all in the name of convenience. Geography and timing have somehow become more important than the relationship itself. These days, people, college students especially, seem more concerned with convenience than anything else when it comes to their love lives.
I have various friends contemplating breaking up with their boyfriends or girlfriends before they go abroad. Why? Because they're going to be living far away from each other for one semester. So my question is this: are we becoming overly concerned with location and timing in our pursuit of romance? Maybe it's just our generation. We've been raised on speed dating and the belief that getting married too young is a death wish. Perhaps our serial dating tendencies and desire to keep our options open is just a result of the times, and one of the primary reasons for not wanting to be attached, or in a defined relationship.
Still though, moving on from a fulfilling relationship, or deciding not to commit when geographical regions don't work, seems like such a copout. Where has the romance gone? Or more to the point, where has the persevering for romance gone? One of my girlfriend's remarked, "People are stupid to abandon relationships that make their lives a little happier just because they are inconvenient."
We've got the modern devices that make 'distance' a lame excuse: cell phones, instant messenger, e-mail and online cameras. We've got the technology, but do we have the guts? It should be easy. But for most, it's still not easy enough. So maybe that's what this all about. Long distance relationships and commitment are just too hard. As one of my guy friends so bluntly put it, "You can't f**k across the country."
Maybe you can't get booty whenever you want if you don't live close, but does that mean you should end a relationship? Are we always on the hunt for something better? An ideal we have in our head? But then you have to think, maybe this is the best way to go about your love life: cut out all the hard stuff, make things easy on yourself, explore all of the options.
Not defining things at all, leaving it open ended and non-committal, seems to be the most popular and "efficient" way for college students to go about their romantic lives, especially when obstacles such as the summer months and moving away arise. Defining the relationship means commitment. And commitment is not convenient.