What students need to know before the day of love
Graphic by Sie Douglas-Fish.
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, love is in the air and students are abuzz with anticipation. Students are excited to go out with their significant others, or find dates as soon as possible. That is all to say that several thousand hormonal young adults are looking forward to getting their freak on in the near future. And what better thing to add into the mix than a breakdown of what UVic students are looking for from potential suitors? I took to the campus with a few different questions about relationships in order to find out.
Starting with relationship labels, it’s obvious there’s not much consensus over how important they are. Some people hate labels with a burning passion, others see them as a necessity. Plenty of students are in between. Several students I talked to were surprisingly indifferent, saying that an agreed upon title like boyfriend and girlfriend is much more important in relationships than casual dating. Take this as a heads up: if you’re seeing someone without labels, you might be getting “the talk” prior to the day of love.
Considering the amount of people I talked to, I was surprised to only come across two in “situationships.” One was someone who said that they still communicate with their ex, and the other openly admitted to having commitment issues. These students showed good self-awareness, which is surprising when emotional intelligence runs low on college campuses. Shout out to those two for admitting to being in weird dating situations.
Now, it’s hard sometimes to find “The One.” Sometimes you might just feel like you’re scaring people off. According to students, that might be likely. The list of turn-offs, red flags, and phobias that students have about relationships is longer than your mom’s grocery list after a month-long vacation.
The students I talked to noted the standard icks, like lazy people, rude people, and bad hygiene. No one can really have an issue with those. There were others that some might contest, but are still fairly reasonable, like smoking, low intelligence, and astrology. Some students cited slightly unreasonable red flags preventing them from forming relationships, though, like being close to their mom, playing video games, and French Canadians. The creme de la creme for me was the girl who said she hates cute nicknames, and then proceeded to list the exact nickname that my partner and I use. Sorry, bubba.
As for kinks, fetishes, and philias, people were very hesitant to give me explicit answers for some reason. Like, who wouldn’t want to share intimate information of their sex lives to a random student claiming to be writing an article? While the best answers I could get were a few people preferring Dom or Sub, or enjoying some roleplay, there were also a few people who did mention having specific types.
These included specific physical traits, like blonde hair and green eyes. Other types were slightly more broad, like ‘Latin American studs,’ or ‘guys with big muscles.’ However, the biggest want from the students I spoke with was an adventurous type. So maybe start exploring buildings you haven’t been to on campus yet?
I noticed there were quite a few things that fell as both red and green flags. Style was a huge controversy, because there was no consensus of what exactly constituted good style. Reliability and confidence were listed as good traits in a suitor, but cockiness and over-masculinity were generally acknowledged as bad.
Hopefully, this article will be helpful when it comes to finding the person you want to bump uglies with on Valentine’s Day. I can’t see what could go wrong with exposing UVic students’ phobias and philias to a bunch of horny university students. Just remember to respect your roommates’ needs for peace and quiet. Maybe treat your single friends to a nice meal on the 15th. And if you’re on campus, please make sure your windows are shut.
