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[QUOTE]
I am in the physical sciences, which is often closely associated with engineering majors. I am female, and have been largly surrounded by men because of my major. Unfortunatly, these guys are severe nerds and tend to not care much about personal appearance or odor. Of these societal rejects, I did manage to make a handful of male friends. Each of my guy friends has asked me out at some point in the past 4 years. But yeah.. I never started dating any one of them. Finally a little over 3 months ago, I went to a birthday part for one of my guy friends and met a very attractive engineer who I hit it off with immediatly. The next week we both happened to be at a birthday party for another friend. So we got to talking, and found out we traveled in the same group of friends, just had never crossed paths before. He asked me out, I accepted.. and now we've been dating 3 months. (and now I'm graduating!). I didn't think guys like him existed.. he unbeliveably romantic, sweet, caring, loving, affectionate, yet is strong enough to win in a fight with another guy if needed. It was just instant magnetism, I don't know what else to say.
<p>I'm a guy, and my problem is that there don't seem to be any decent girls out there. I'm looking for a girl who wants a meaningful relationship and all they seem to want is to hook up for a night! Also, it seems that most of the girls I've encountered are immature.</p>
<p>My male friends have this same problem. My female friends feel this way about guys (except us). For some reason my group of friends doesn't date each other though.</p>
<p>For some reason my group of friends doesn't date each other though.
That's probably a good thing, though. Relationships within groups of friends can be messy for everyone involved. One of my best friends is dating a guy in our general group; they're very publicly affectionate and it just makes everyone uncomfortable. I don't even want to know what'll happen if/when they break up. Awkward much?</p>
<p>you end up dating people nearby to you (living quarters-wise) cause it's hard to maintain both your grades and your relationship if the other party is too much of a trek away.</p>
<p>but there's plenty of it. slightly less of a hookup culture than other schools but there's still plenty of that too.</p>
<p>"...if the other party is too much of a trek away."</p>
<p>pebbles, that just made me laugh. I can just imagine non-MIT people having a stick and going "trekking" through the mountains just for a date.</p>
<p>Anyways, I'm still in high school and have rarely dated (maybe 1 or 2 so far). I keep on thinking that it'll get better once I get to college but somehow, I seriously doubt it. Oh well, I guess I'll just see.</p>
<p>Just forget about it. Popular college culture is the antithesis of everything that traditional 'dating' is about. I've never met anyone that was in as serious a relationship as mine. Here are the three outcomes of your romantic life:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You magically find somebody, eventually, and end up being very happy with them. This happens to like 1 out of 1000000 people. I'm one of them :D</p></li>
<li><p>You never find anybody that you REALLY like. You date a bunch of people throughout college and end up marrying somebody that you think you like but you eventually find out that you made the wrong decision. However, you choose to stay together for the kids. You're unhappy for the rest of your life and become a desperate housewife. You may or may not get divorced multiple times before this happens.</p></li>
<li><p>You continue your college dating habits for the rest of your life. You might get married once, but you divorce in under 4 years because you cheated on your husband. Or maybe he cheated on you. Everytime you see a happy, committed couple you tell people it makes you sick and you act like commitment is a bad thing. Inside you cry. You die alone and depressed.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>have the mechanics of dating changed any since your parents were in college? Do girls still wait for a guy to ask? Does the guy always plan and pay for the evening? If a girl asks a guy to do something, who pays? If a girl and a guy are in convenient proximity to do things together that they both want to do (like eat), how does that evolve without it being a formal "date"? Do they share costs if neither one of them has a lot of money but they would rather do things together than on their own? Does that evolve when they get into a relationship, or does it start out that way?</p>
<p>also, Mollie, are you unusual in finding someone during college that you want to marry? I went to college a million years ago, but it seems like when we graduated we were all still quite a few years away from being interested in marriage. It seems like my peers started getting married at age 25-30. I knew someone at the end of college who wanted to be married before he went to med school. He didn't have anyone in mind; he was just shopping around. That struck me as decidedly odd at the time.</p>
<p>It seems to me like there are a lot of kids at MIT who are in serious relationships, but many of the couples I know aren't explicitly thinking about marriage yet (except, ahem, the ones in which the female is from the Midwest or the South!). My personal observation is that MIT relationships go from very casual to very serious in a short amount of time, which I attribute to the lack of time available for playing head games with the opposite sex. (And, as pebbles says, people tend to date within their dorms, which often leads to playing house rather quickly.)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Certain kids go for hookups. Think of party scene kids. You will mostly find them looking for hookups.</p></li>
<li><p>Non-partyers are the ones looking for long term in most cases.</p></li>
<li><p>Of the people who were in a relationship with a high school sweetheart when college started, only about 10% still are with that person.</p></li>
<li><p>Of the relationships that started as college freshmen, only about 20% are in one currently. Some people only lasted a while, sort of like high school relationships so.</p></li>
<li><p>There seem to be fewer older/younger relationships in college. In my high school, it was not uncommon to see people dating people in other grad levels. Seniors dated seniors, juniors, sophomores, and yes, freshmen.</p></li>
<li><p>Of the high school relationships, no older/younger relationships from my school that were there a year ago are still surviving. However, I've seen this from other schools (my high school was smaller so maybe the sample size isn't large enough). The only chance of this really surviving is if the college kid commutes and still lives near his high school. Of course, kids like this are also prone to going out with high school students if they still retain contact with their alma mater.</p></li>
<li><p>If you look enough you can find whatever you want, hooking up or long term relationships. Unless you go to a college of about 50 people there are probably people who want one or the other. Check out the Facebook profiles of folks at your college. Some want random play, others want a relationship. This is probably your first indicator.</p></li>
</ol>