College Girl explains why You shouldn’t need a Boyfriend

I don’t want a boyfriend. This doesn’t mean I want to sleep with as many guys as humanly pos­si­ble until the day my Pin­ter­est wed­ding board becomes a reality.

I’m hap­pily sin­gle– not because I have the option to bring home a dif­fer­ent guy every night of the week (with­out break­ing a com­mit­ment to some­body else.) I don’t hate men, I sim­ply don’t want to be with any­one exclu­sively. I often find myself infat­u­ated with peo­ple, in pas­sion­ate sit­u­a­tions with ador­ing lovers and friends. I’ve opti­misti­cally flirted and begun short-term affairs. While rid­ing solo has given me the oppor­tu­nity to col­lect a few lip­stick stamps on my pass­port, I don’t have “daddy issues.” I’m roman­ti­cally avail­able, but emo­tion­ally unavail­able. It’s not you, its me (really.)

I have no inter­est in tying any­one down, or get­ting myself wifed up. I don’t sit around my apart­ment wish­ing there was some­body to cud­dle me. I find joy in the fact I can sleep like a starfish with­out dis­turb­ing any­one else. While oth­ers are anx­iously await­ing Prince Charm­ing while play­ing the role of Tin­derella– I’m avoid­ing love like the plague. You should have seen my mom’s face when I told her I didn’t want to get mar­ried until I’m in my 30’s.

I embrace hookup cul­ture because it is con­ve­nient, and because I’m a ter­ri­ble girl­friend. I’m not a liar or a cheater, but I’m really bad at respond­ing to text mes­sages within a rea­son­able amount of time. I rock in the thought­ful gift depart­ment, but fail mis­er­ably in the PDA cat­e­gory. The idea of mar­riage makes me sick to my stom­ach, and it’s not because I fear I won’t see enough gen­i­talia in my lifetime.

Some peo­ple sim­ply fit per­fectly into each other’s lives, to the point where their futures align together. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and I don’t want my jour­ney to be deterred by some­one else’s dreams. I don’t want to com­pro­mise my own desires to spare some­one else’s heart. It isn’t that I think rela­tion­ships in your early 20’s are a waste, I don’t feel that way at all. But just because I order some­thing dif­fer­ent from you at a restau­rant doesn’t mean I don’t appre­ci­ate your food pref­er­ence, I can make a dif­fer­ent deci­sion while still respect­ing some­one elses.

I’m sure when the time comes I’ll be able to con­vince some­body to give me their last name, but as of right now I’m try­ing to make a name for myself. I like being able to leave my house with­out telling some­one where I am going. I pre­fer not to have to come up with a response to even the most menial state­ments via text. The thought of engage­ment and pro­cre­ation brings me hives not hap­pi­ness. I don’t envy adorable cou­ple pic­tures on Insta­gram, and I am fine with buy­ing myself choco­late on Valen­tines… and every­day. Few things I hate more than the social anx­i­ety I get from being seen as the awk­ward cou­ple at the party.

Maybe some­day some­body will change my mind, but in the mean­time you won’t see me actively search­ing for Mr. Right. Despite the immense con­fu­sion amongst my rel­a­tives as to why I am “still sin­gle”, I think of my rela­tion­ship sta­tus as one of the few things in my life I entirely con­fi­dent with. So while the inter­net is filled with arti­cles claim­ing that “hookup cul­ture” is the death of tra­di­tional dat­ing, I believe it is addi­tion­ally form­ing a gen­er­a­tion of roman­tic inde­pen­dence. I truly believe find­ing your­self is a lot eas­ier when you’re not keep­ing tabs on some­one else. I do what­ever the f*ck I want, nobody cares– and I love it that way.

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View all articles by Jason Olephant