‘Where Is My Man?’: The Case for Casual Dating
Students feel stuck between hookups and serious relationships. Are we condemning the dreaded ‘situationship’ too quickly?
It was another Wednesday Wine Night at my apartment. After several bottles of Yellow Tail Chardonnay were downed, the conversation turned to life's most important mysteries: how all the wine disappeared, the best lite beer, and love. Some of my friends spoke endearingly of their partners, while others lamented about their cold, empty beds during November.
I was getting ready to share a take I was sure would be a crowd favorite. With my head buried in my hands, I declared that I didn’t understand why it’s so difficult to date someone casually without the connotations of a long-term relationship: the many expectations, unwavering time commitment, and strict exclusivity. Instead of the unanimous agreement I hoped for, my announcement was met with a chorus of indignation, a harmony of woahhhs, and even a “Wait, Alexis, we need to unpack that one.”
My friend Ijenna Okonkwo, CC ’27, and I often find ourselves at Amity Hall and 1020 on Wednesdays. As a student with a more traditional outlook on dating—that is, dating for a long-term monogamous relationship—she often playfully inquires when we are out, “Where is my man? I don’t see him” and “I’m just going to start going up to guys and asking them if they are my man.” I too have started wondering where her man is, but more importantly, how so many students find themselves romantically unfulfilled on this college campus in the heart of New York City.
To Bed or To Wed
It seems to be a tale as old as time. In 2008, a Columbia student named Cotis (now an alumnus) unpacked the maxim “Barnard to bed, Columbia to wed” on his blog, highlighting the existence of a black-and-white, hookup-or-marry dating model on campus. A year later in 2009, a group of Columbia students on College Confidential theorized that dating in Morningside Heights is so difficult because “guys are neither as attractive nor spend as much time or assertiveness trying to get girls, when compared to the theoretical average guy” and “most people on campus have too much work to do to bother making themselves pretty.” Even today’s Sidechat users have no problem publicly posting some Hail Marys like “down to cuddle it’s kinda cold?”, “anyone wanna cuddle,” and “all I want is a bf again and everyone wants hookups or nothing.”
For many students, the dating culture at Columbia feels all or nothing—a person is either in a relationship, single, or searching for hookups. Sam Rivers, CC ’27, an English international student who attended an all-boys boarding school, told me that he “felt pressured to either get into something or start hooking up and sleeping around” during his first year at Columbia. Many students have developed similar expectations for Columbia’s dating scene: One should seek to gain either a committed relationship (defined by monogamy and a sense of permanence), a purely physical hookup, or not be part of the scene at all.
We have lost the art of casual dating—going on different dates with different people without exclusivity. Developing close romantic relationships without labels has been rebranded as the “situationship,” and the uncertainty it brings is condemned as “messy.”
How did these standards form and become so widely accepted on this campus?
At an institution like Columbia, the rigid academic and professional values by which we define ourselves can inhibit our social lives. “There is a focus on the pre-professional: working after school, getting a good job, getting good grades,” Rivers told Sundial.
This safe and predictable track shapes students’ perspectives on casual sex or casual dating. If students are focused primarily on their academics and future careers, romance often takes a backseat, limiting relationships to serious commitments—a long-term partner for dependable companionship or even marriage later in life. This perspective can inhibit students’ development as lovers, partners, and learners.
This pre-professional tunnel vision not only inhibits many students’ open-mindedness but also burdens students with anxiety. Gabriela Sartan, SEAS ’25, an eccentric and emotionally open friend who is no stranger to anxiety, thinks this emotion is a major obstacle to finding love at Columbia. Anxiety “by definition, is fear of lack of control of the future,” which can cause students afflicted by it to let their present lives slip by unnoticed, Sartan said.
“You’re walking and you're thinking about class, midterms, lectures. You miss the beautiful orange and yellow foliage happening, the fountains on for one of the last times, people on Low Beach. You can also translate that into the dating scene.”
We are a student body focused on waiting instead of being—being in the moment, being in love, being comfortable with growth. Many students get stuck waiting for the “right” time to enter a relationship: after midterms, the next semester, after an internship, when they find the “right person,” and so on. Infuriated, Sartan huffs: “And what have you learned during any of it? Besides your technical skills?”
For those who are open to dating in the present, the size of Columbia’s student body presents its own challenge. Many students complain that they cross paths with the same people regularly because the main campus spans only six square city blocks. Nick Pungwa, CC ’27, tells me he feels like he’s experienced four years of dating and learning within two semesters already. He believes that many are dissuaded from making the most of casual dating because they are afraid of their reputation preceding them on such a small campus.
“People are maybe one connection away from each other,” he said. “Nobody here exists in a vacuum. Everybody here has a context that someone else could tell you about.” The fear of a potential partner or romantic interest having preconceived notions about you before the first handshake can be “kind of terrifying.”
The events and spaces where students meet each other also leave much to be desired. Recurring crowds at our college bars and fraternities limit opportunities for fresh starts or new connections. Rivers echoed what many students think: “Do people actually do more than one night stands when they meet someone at a bar or fraternity?”
The Case for Casual Dating
Finding a romantic connection, no matter the level of commitment, can be better than no connection at all. A casual partner can provide an ear for emotional complaints and venting, while also providing unbiased opinions. Partners also can provide relief for stressors accumulated from Columbia’s work culture—students “want somebody to talk to, rant to,” Okonkwo laughed, and “to do other stuff to.”
Though emotional support can certainly come from friendships, friendships are not an effective substitute for romantic fulfillment. “You can still be lonely with the closest friends in the world here,” Rivers, who is in a healthy long-term relationship, said. “Having an intimate connection is important, even if it is temporary or casual.”
Many see serious relationships as daunting and time-consuming investments, and others find hookups to be emotionally unfulfilling. In a world oversaturated with media that encourages this binary choice, we should not reject casual dating as a realistic middle ground. Instead of molding ourselves and our lifestyles to fit an idealized dating model, we should be molding our dating model to fit us.
The stereotype around casual relationships being devoid of emotional connection is likely overstated. To date someone, even casually, “you have to care about them a little bit, you can't be completely cold,” Rivers proposes, and “you can't do that with nothing, unless you're a psychopath.”
Opening up to casual dating is also opening up to love and companionship—but students’ habits of catastrophizing past romantic “failures” can create a closed-minded culture. On social media and in casual conversations, casual dating and “situationships” are frequently condemned, preemptively doomed.
Sartan told me that she has, like many young people, oscillated between actively dating and refraining entirely because she would “catastrophize one or two rejections into a narrative about being unlovable,” instead of accepting that not all relationships succeed.
Such thinking begs the question of whether the “damage we see ourselves as attaining in dating is actually damage at all,” Pungwa asks, or if it is merely the result of trying and sometimes failing to build new relationships.
That is not to say that experimenting with casual dating does not open people up to hurt and heartbreak. Pungwa tells me that everyone—himself included—has felt the frustration of “wanting somebody who doesn’t want them back and boohooing about it,” but he warns against demonizing the entire experience.
“There’s too many young people that are so willing to give up the whole idea of casual dating simply because one thing doesn't work out, or because one person doesn't like you back,” he said.
College is where students go to explore majors, careers, cities, friendships, selfhood, and relationships. These are big questions, the answers to which many students “are not going to know yet,” Sartan said, “but we can’t just expect that question to be answered” by itself.
In making the case for casual dating, Sartan laughed and told me that in a casual relationship, “You could answer one question for yourself, which is, I guess I don't like a finger up my ass. That's one thing. That's a big thing. It's still something.”
“You're learning something, whether it's for better or worse,” she said. The fear of dating for the experience itself not only leaves us emotionally unfulfilled but can also stunt our intimacy literacy.
Staying Romantically Curious
Columbia prides itself on admitting intellectually curious students, but this curiosity isn’t often applied in many of our romantic lives. Dating has become a means to reach certain milestones. We have forgotten to be curious about the learning experience itself.
Pungwa and I met on Low Steps to discuss our love for love and dating itself. “I think that the best part about the middle is the experience of it all,” he said. To him, casual dating amplifies the “rush of having someone, finding someone, losing it, getting it back, or having it come together in the most random, weird way.”
Romantic love is also not only bound between two people—love and relationships are communal experiences. If one connection fails, many other connections can be nurtured and fortified. Pungwa recalled to me his own experience helping a friend through a breakup and how he “experienced it through her,” which “built their friendship in a valuable and unique way.” He comforted her, and in this “misery, there was a connection made. While the situationship may have been fleeting, our connection was made stronger.”
Many skeptical students fear the potential heartbreak, unrequited yearning, or romantic imbalance that casual dating has the potential to bring about. In their catastrophizing, they overlook the lessons they will learn once the grieving passes.
Even experiencing unreciprocated yearning is an exercise in gratitude and awareness, pushing the yearner to accept their gratitude for a lover and the moments they’ve shared. With time, yearning passes, but their understanding of their desires and goals for future relationships remains.
Admittedly, casual dating can conclude in a long-term relationship or with a horribly painful break-up—or anywhere in between. However, we must ask ourselves if our fear of the unknowable future is depriving us of a beautiful human experience. “It's just so thrilling. There's this explosion of happiness, sadness, joy, amazement, euphoria, it makes you want to go back,” Pungwa said. “How could you not give yourself the opportunity to get something out of romance, sex, and love? Isn’t it worth it?”
Ms. Cartwright is a sophomore at Columbia College studying mathematics. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
Well written and fascinating piece! I’m so glad I went to college in the 90’s!