It's time to go back to school?back to below-freezing temperatures in the middle of April and your horrible roommate who "accidentally" peed on your desk chair at the end of last semester. While winter in Maine can be a difficult time in any Bowdoin student's year, it can be that much worse when you have to leave your significant other behind. Whether he's your high school sweetheart or you met her on your abroad program, that last kiss goodbye is never easy.
Back at the beginning of the school year, I personally witnessed a plethora of tragic-looking freshmen, bundled in their newly purchased Bowdoin "sweatseedos," leaning against the entryways to their dorms with cell phones firmly attached to their ears. I overheard so many "I miss you too, baby's" and "but when are you coming to see me's" that it made me want to grab the phone and break off their relationship myself. And then, every once in a while, I secretly rejoiced in hearing a particularly malevolent, "You cheated on me with WHO? And caught WHAT?" While of course I didn't really want anybody's heart broken, it's true that many of these high school relationships didn't even get to that romantic Fall Break, which would have been spent annoying someone else's roommates with incessant baby talk, much less the Thanksgiving so often discussed.
Though many long distance relationships seem to lose appeal when compared with the veritable cornucopia of single and attractive people we boast here at Bowdoin, some actually last, though not without a good amount of trial and tribulation.
When one is in a place such as Bowdoin, with its host of engaging social events and even more engaging people partaking in said events, there are temptations. From that cute guy in your education group to that hot girl on the stage at the pub, there are bound to be people that catch your eye. The question you must ask yourself is two-fold: One, is it worth ruining everything I have with Suzie High School to go home with someone who can actually "get low" when Lil' Jon tells her to, and two, honestly, what are the chances you'll get caught?
I'm kidding about the second part. Sort of.
Of course, even if you can manage to avoid all that lanyard-wearing, flip-flops-in-December-donning, first-year-seminar-attending temptation, there is always the loneliness, both emotional and, perhaps more importantly, physical. When your boyfriend graduates, or your girlfriend from abroad heads back to Connecticut, your bed suddenly feels tragically empty, and those lazy Sundays spent eating cupcakes and going to see "The Chronicles of Narnia" are just a distant memory. You long for both their companionship and their...umm...you know, companionship. Perhaps this is why that girl getting low is looking better and better by the minute.
One particularly painful long distance relationship is the one occurring when one person graduates from Bowdoin. When those lazy Sundays have been a tradition for years, when your bed hasn't been empty since 2003, the harsh reality of being on your own in a place where everybody knows you as one-half of a couple can be extremely difficult. If you two were simply abroad together, or went to high school together, it's much easier to create that single-but-taken persona that allows you to flirt innocently and still go home alone at the end of the night.
Interestingly, although these newly alone individuals theoretically have a more difficult time than many others in long distance relationships, it seems that couples who formed while attending Bowdoin outlast those formed elsewhere. Whether it's the ability to relate to the struggles associated with being seemingly single but unable to date at Bowdoin, or simply that real love can only be real once both parties know what it's like to catch frostbite after being forced to walk home in the dead of winter from a far-flung off-campus house, Bowdoin couples who are forced to separate seem better at being able to make distance work.
With all that said, Bowdoin seems to be a place where long distance love comes to die. Whether it's a Bowdoin couple, high school sweethearts, or a European romance that has gone awry, we can all take solace in the fact that there are plenty of Polar Bears in the proverbial arctic, and many of them love Lil' Jon just as much as I do.