York students, our friendships are the true love stories this Valentine’s Day

The dating scene at uni is an emotional mind field for anyone. From stories of cheating scandals, Hinge date horror stories to that one guy that just needs to leave girls alone its a wander Bravo hasn’t made a reality show about it yet.

The feeling of being single is never worse than when February wonders around, immediately triggering the thoughts of uni’s meant to be the time you find a romantic partner. Right?

Sometime it feels like half the selling of point of uni is that you are going to find “your” person, the person who gets you. The you’ll graduate and skip onto the sunset face not graduate job problems, buy a house and get 5 million dogs.

It doesn’t take a genius to be able to tell you this is completely untrue.

The promise  the ”lock and key” club night will work feels questionable at best. In reality, you won’t actually meet anyone at that club night as everyone loses their lock and key in a state of drunk delirium. (I’ve never been to one, but based on their low success rates, that’s what I presume happens.).

It’s time to shift our perspective and realise the real love story has been in front of us all along – our uni friends.

It’s time to flip the statistics

The statistic many students seem to fixate on is that 63 per cent of York Students find a romantic partner while studying at York. However, only 7.34 per cent of these students actually marry their university partner (StudentBeans). These statistics have blurred our vision of what the dating scene at uni is actually like.

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If we flip the stats, 80 per cent of people don’t meet the “love of their life” at uni. So trust if your alone this Valentines your not the only one and it is not an issue with you.

In fact it appears it is becoming a growing trend of the student age demographic to not be dating. The Guardian reported that the number of 16 to 18 year olds dating has dipped by 50 per cent, with a growing trend of women claiming they are ‘#boysober’. Deliberately avoiding the male species all together.

As such the narrative of “young love” is becoming outdated, and the statistics should be rewritten to reflect this.

In The York Tab’s own poll, 46 per cent of respondents said they were single, while a further 7 per cent claimed it’s complicated. This means the majority of York students are not falling head of hills as the original information would suggest.

Its time to be #boysober

Enough with the boring numbers (this is not a statistics paper after all). It is evident through the rise of the Galantine’s trend in recent years that #boysober is here to stay.

It takes one read of Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love to realise the true love story is centred around finding ourselves and our friends at uni. Not a romantic partner.

We asked our followers about their platonic love stories, and boy did they reply.

One student revealed: “My bestie is skipping Valentines with her boyfriend of five years to spend it with me.”

Another confessed: “When my uni relationship fell apart it was my friends who supported me. Uni would be nothing without my girls.”

What was clear in all responses is that friendships – not relationships – have been central to university experiences. The majority of us sit in the 80 per cent of people who don’t fall in love at uni category. And  that is completely okay, no matter how much pressure of the question “Have you got a boyfriend yet?” puts on us.

One respondent wisely said: “I broke up with my boyfriend months after graduating, but my friendships have lasted.”

The jury says this valentines day should be about the friendships you make, not that one random situationship.

Wondering how to spend your Galentine’s? Read our guide to spending February 14th single.

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