Relationships? Not That Big a Deal, Students Say

The Facts:

• 23.3 percent of Aliso Niguel students are in a relationship at a given time.
• A student will have an average of 2.6 relationships in high school.
• An Aliso relationship lasts an average of 176 days, or 5.75 months
• 22.2 percent of Aliso students will never date.

Another Singles Awareness Day is long gone (Feb. 14, for those unfamiliar with the holiday), and the obvious statistic glares at my face: I am one out of the about 2,500 single Aliso Niguel students (about  76.7 percent, based on a small-sampled survey of 176 students with a stratified random sample during tutorial).

But more important, 72.7 percent simply do not care.  According to the survey, nearly three in four students do not consider relationships an “important goal” or feel the need to be in a relationship.

“If you can be in a relationship that's great, but if you're not, it's nothing to worry about,” Josh Grossman, junior, said. “There's enough to worry about in high school that will actually affect the course of your life, and relationships (generally) aren't one of them. So I don't think they’re important.”

Timothy Chen, senior, argues the contrary. “Being in a relationship can be important,” he said. “It can help improve his/her social life and, depending on the person, can even help improve their grades.”

The repeated, rephrased question still showed that 72.2 percent did not feel the need or pressure to be in a relationship, but the ultimate irony lay in the fact that three in four students, or nearly 2,600 students, have had at least one relationship.

The completely “dateless” are a minority: one in five students in Aliso Niguel has never dated.

What is probably the most amusing is what students think of how many couples there are.  In Aliso, 39 percent of students believe most people in high school are in a relationship, 56 percent for underclassmen girls.  An even scarier figure is that more than six in 10 freshmen suffer the delusion that most people are couples—which I personally believe fuels the stereotypes of freshmen.

Chris Leffler points out, “Freshmen haven’t been at the school long enough to realize how many kids there really are at the school.”

Upperclassman boys seem to see reality most clearly, with 82 percent knowing most people are single. 

How Long Do They Last?

The average Aliso Niguel relationship lasts nearly half a year, at 176 days, but relationships are well under the four-month mark, even lasting only weeks or days.

In the true Aliso spirit, nearly 80 percent of students cynically state that high school romances do not last. 

Interestingly enough, the average Aliso student goes through at least 2.6 relationships.  Underclassmen girls have the highest average number, at 3 relationships in their whole lives, in comparison to the average 2.47 relationships upperclassmen girls claim to have had their whole lives. Either freshmen girls are very fickle, or students’ definitions of relationships change as they get older.

“I think it says that freshmen are either lying, possibly to look impressive, or seniors view a relationship as being one which lasted a couple of months or more, while freshmen define it as one where the guy kissed the girl,” Sarah Garfinkle, junior, said.

I have to admit that I received the weirdest range of numbers when I asked students how long their latest relationships lasted.  The record for shortest relationship was one day. The longest was two years, 10 months, and five days–on the dot (strangely, girls remember the lengths of their relationships far better than boys).

So What Is a Relationship, Really?

The fact that a “relationship” can last anywhere from a single day to years and that older students appear to have less total “relationships” in their lives clearly indicate that students define relationships differently.

“Well no duh, David,” you might say.

But in all honesty, that was a bit of a news flash for me.  Isn’t a relationship just being officially boyfriend-and-girlfriend? Isn’t it holding hands and kissing and going to the movies? Or do you have to do some special rite of passage or whatnot? It can’t be that complicated, I thought.

Obviously, I was wrong. I could see that just by watching girls take 20 minutes to take a survey, crossing out and counting and discussing “whether this counts or that counts.”

Kristen Suk described her views of a relationship. “It’s like a prison,” Suk said, laughing. “It’s like a connection with lots of rules attached—sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad.”

Still, others find the meaning of relationships as more than boundaries.

“A relationship is an emotional connection between two people who enjoy each other's company,” Michelle Hulley said. “They realize that they want to be more than just best friends and decide to be in a relationship to learn more about each other and see if they really are compatible.”