Freshers: This is why relationships at university suck

It’s the fresher dilemma: should I stay with my partner from school, or break up with them?

The answer, obviously, is that you should break up with them – which is probably the last thing you want to do. That’s the problem with you freshers: you think you know everything.

This leads to some credulous and stupid decisions. Some of these are minor: going to Syndicate on an Eden Friday and telling your mates that it was ‘sick’ (it wasn’t) or joining the Pokémon Trainers society because the chick dressed as Misty looked ‘fit’ (she did).

The girl of your dreams
Photo: animevice.com

Things get majorly stupid when your relationship comes into it. The likelihood is that staying with your partner means committing yourself to hundreds of miles of travel, spending dozens of hours and loads of dolla on trains. This to see somebody that you will have to continually convince yourself that you ‘love’. If they don’t go to university the whole shebang is even worse and even more awkward for you. The mere mention of university will make them feel about as nebulous as Danny Dyer’s twitter feed.

Danny Dyer’s twitter feed – proper nebulous.

I know it seems unlikely, but there are actually worse things than whiling away your precious time on trains. Here’s a fact about ‘long-distance’ relationships that’s as bald as Walter White – you will probably cheat on them and it will be awful. It doesn’t matter if you invest in the sturdiest chastity belt or wear a figure-swallowing burka every time you go out, it will happen. A horrendous cocktail of missing them and alcohol practically guarantees this. Does this make you a bad person?

The kind of weird drunken snapchat you will send if you stay in a relationship at Uni.

Not really. Everything in those first few weeks is novel: the people, where you live, where you go out; do you really want to be a hostage to somebody else’s emotions at the same time, every fractious phone call feeling like some dismal emotional air raid? I say be selfish. Save yourself. Not being in a relationship will release you from all the guilt that accompanies any given night in Lizard Lounge.

The home of bad decision making.

You need to be selfish. Parts of my first year were a Stalinist nightmare comprised entirely of recriminations, mutual suspicion, train timetables and singing duff Morrissey songs loudly in the communal shower. It’s a miracle that I made any friends at all. This experience was not unique. It was the same for everyone else I knew in the same situation (well, maybe with a little less of the Morrissey).

Morrissey socks bought due to relationship issues. Things don’t get worse than this.

It’s the third term. I hear a sound from outside, a sort of high-pitched screaming, like every badger cull in history is happening all at once. Naturally, I take a peek at what the hell is going on out in the corridor. A chap a few rooms up from me is a sobbing mess, saying ‘It’s so horrible’ over and over again. I was worried. Had his parents died? Had the apocalypse begun and forgotten to send the rest of us the memo? No. His girlfriend had merely asked about going on a break. For fuck’s sake.

Don’t be that guy.