Relationships are a little complicated

Winter Break 2008 is a few days away and with the holidays quickly approaching, I can’t help but look back. Three semesters of my college career are gone, and besides some subpar grades, a whole lot of newspaper articles and a few new bad habits, I don’t have much to show for it. Still, it feels like it’s been a crazy ride…something like the creaky, wooden Coney Island Cyclone, to be more specific.

But through the ups, downs, drinking binges and Chartwells food poisonings, one thing has remained a constant: I’m a really horny college kid. Hate me or ridicule me, but there are few more honest statements an 18-year-old kid who’s constantly surrounded by beautiful girls can make.

Regardless, my plight as a newly single and more-than-ready-to-mingle bachelor has been harder than my roommate when anime porn hit the web. My journey has seen its fair share of stages as well. I’ve gone from blaming all living women to blaming myself and even attempting celibacy, but to no avail. After long hours of contemplative thought, I realize the fault is in the worst thing since the discontinuation of the Flintstones Kids show – the “complicated” relationship.

It’s the reason I’m stuck in a high school relationship with a girl I love but a girl I can’t seem to shake in exchange for freedom. It’s also the reason I’ve had fewer sex partners than Kanye has platinum albums (it’s a close race though, ladies).

To explain, the ubiquitous “complicated” relationship is one that seemingly every college kid complains and moans about, but still somehow cannot escape. Whether it’s a love with a high school sweetheart that’s gone awry or a friends-with-benefits deal with a second cousin from Minnesota, everyone has a near and dear past love experience that won’t allow them to move on and try new things.

After falling victim to the “complicated” relationship myself and seeing it firsthand with almost every friend or potentially cool girl on campus, I realize there’s only one intervening question that’s worth asking – if not now, then when? After all, college is the time for experimentation and trying what the “real world” will never permit. Basically, for the same reason that you can eat magic mushrooms on South Beach on a Monday night, you should be able to move on from the one significant other you’ve forced yourself to get used to.

We’re young, vibrant and supposed to be open to new things, so let’s act like it. We’ll have our chance to be in serious relationships in the future. We’ll also have enough time to bicker with our spouses about buying the right brand of tomato juice, why your firstborn is a disappointment or forgetting to pull out in time.

So take a chance and throw the complex affairs to the side in exchange for a lustful or loving encounter with a new chap or chap-ette. Blink 182 sincerely admitted on “Going Away to College,” “I haven’t been this scared in a long time,” but maybe being scared is the perfect lighter fluid to help ignite a new flame (R. Kelly, anyone?).