The reality of the summer romance

It’s finally here – summer sixteen. It’s as though every summer is more anticipated than the last. Or perhaps our memories are just so short we simply forget how great it is until the warm weather begins to linger in the air again.

With summer comes longer and warmer days. The pace is slower and our bodies are more relaxed. The nights are shorter and unforgettable. We tend to spend much of our time leading up to summer day-dreaming about what might happen over the summer – and more specifically, about our summer romances.

With movies like ‘The Sisterhood of Traveling Pants’, ‘Grease’, every single Nicholas Sparks’ book (not to mention the songs blaring through our radios) summer romances have become highly romanticized and commercialized.

But really, how many of us actually find ourselves on a beach in a random town in America with flocks of men thrown at us? Or bump into someone at a club, lock eyes, and exchange a passionate kiss only to remember our love has a time limit. Hate to break it to you, but summer romances are not realistic. At least not the ones that we are force-fed by popular culture.

The truth is, most of us are probably going to be at home for most of the summer. Re-integrating ourselves into our former lives and trying to make our homes feel like home again. Some will be trying to recover from the hellishness of the past semester, catching up with sleep and old friends. Some of us will try to rekindle old flames only to find that the flames are long and all that’re left is embers. Maybe we will find love. Maybe it will be perfect or maybe not. But either way, that’s OK.

Maybe we will pick up our guitar again and remind ourselves how much we loved how sore our fingers felt after playing for hours on end. We’ll finally find time to do all the things we promised we would do over the semester – read a book, go to the gym, go on long walks. Summer time is a time for us to recharge again. Summer time is for us to fall in love with ourselves again.

Summer love is for you and yourself, and it doesn’t have to end with the season.