EDUCATION – The Marathon Dating Experiment (The Student)

Posted on December 9, 2013 in 30 Dates, EDUCATION

The youngest Experimental Dater is back, with her personal insight into Dating as a Student.

And The Student has discovered a second kind of Student dating!

Miss Twenty-Nine xxx

Those who read my previous post, will understand that my experience of dating as a student has been essentially non-existent. Though I guess you could count the friendship-sex-monogamy lineage as a dating style!

I have since realised there is another element to the way students date that I omitted to mention.

It is a dating style that I am currently experiencing right now, and I hate it.

It is the weekend dateathon (if you’ll allow me to invent the term). A date that takes place over an entire weekend as the person you are dating doesn’t live in the same city.

I will elaborate.

Your housemate has friends to visit one weekend. You get on particularly well with one of their friends. He returns a few weeks later to visit your housemate again, but really you know he’s come to see you.

Sooner than you know it he’s coming up every other weekend and are staying in your room.

Lo and behold you are having a relationship in fast forward, spending about 48 hours solely in this person’s company, whom you don’t actually know very well. It all happens so quickly that you hardly know it’s happening at all.

This happened to my best friend (The Wife, as she will now be known, as it’s what I call her in real life) in First Year. She had a relationship with a guy in this way for nearly a year and a half.

Now in my Third Year it’s happening to me, and I don’t like it one bit!

I have to entertain and date a guy for 48 hours straight. How on earth do I maintain the interest?

This is probably the worst dating style ever conceived.

As you are technically in the very early stages of a relationship, your texting communication is sporadic and meek, yet you know that either this weekend or the next you’ll be in each other’s pockets!

You’ll have a weekend marathon date where you are constantly tense and self-aware, sharing your whole little university world with someone that may not even be in it for long.

I had a much better dating experience with this guy (Marathon Man) when I was home in London a few weeks ago. We met for drinks in one of those fabulously dusty pubs near London Bridge and then had dinner. Then on to another pub for drinks, until they kicked us out. Then on to the next… It’s a sure fire way to know you’re having a good time.

But when you’re having someone to stay you’re constantly wondering how to fill the little pockets of time that you encounter during a day that you normally don’t notice exist.

Marathon Man wanted to come up the weekend just gone. I didn’t want him to.

I think I find it all too exhausting. Also, it was The Wife’s birthday and I wanted to spend it with her, not a boy.

I did say he could come and visit because he’s lovely, and I do want to give this a shot. And yet that didn’t stop me from feeling relieved when he couldn’t make it.

I can’t work out whether it’s because I just don’t fancy him that much, or if the thought of yet another marathon date is too unbearable.

Either way this is another terrible way that students date!

Give me the regular dinner dating pattern every single time!!

Though the Experimental Dater in me says that I should give this a try. Can these intense Marathon Dates be an effective way to jumpstart a relationship?

I know already that it certainly forces both parties to admit they like each other. There is definitely no room for playing games or acting cool. That’s one aspect I can get on board with.

I suppose I’ve unwittingly embarked upon a Marathon Dating Experiment…

The Student xx