Juliet settles for Romeo

For most people, there are times when the need to be with someone else is stronger than the need to find the right person. The solution, although controversial, is to settle. Settling is when you date someone that for some reason or another does not meet the ideal match requirements, according to standards set by you or the people surrounding you. Personally, I have often considered this. I have also had my friends tell me that the situation I put myself in is with a person they consider me to be settling for.

Today, I want to talk about a friend of mine. Her situation makes me and her other friends cringe at the thought. She’s currently in college, making her way toward a biomedical engineering degree. She was originally planning to become a heart surgeon but for some reason that does not appeal to her any longer.

Usually she has some guy she’s interested in, but for the most part she’s single. When she entered her sophomore year of college she met a guy and they hit it off. For a while things were going good but the guy was slow about initiating an official relationship status. They would hang out, go on dates and spend nights talking. She was happy with the situation for the most part only she wanted to know that they were official. When I would talk to her, she seemed to stress the fact that he was not leading or even hinting at the boyfriend-girlfriend stage of the relationship. I thought at the time that she must really like this guy and he seems to be an airhead for not wanting to start the relationship. My first fear was that he was a jerk and only wanted to sleep with her, but the places he brought her and the things that they did when they were together did not suggest that this was what he was after.

I remember one evening she came home and told me about her date. In their city, there’s a conservatory. Everyone refers to them as “The Domes” because there are three large glass domes in which are stored many varieties of plants. She told me they walked through these domes for a while and talked. They decided to sit on a bench and talk even longer. The domes were just about to close and he leaned in and gave her a kiss. She told me that she was excited and had really enjoyed the evening, but she wasn’t sure if she should continue this because she may be leading him on. Typically she doesn’t let anyone even speak of bases unless they’re dating.

One day, he just referred to her as his girlfriend and it pretty much was official. She wasn’t happy finding out this way, but it works. A few months later, some friends and I went down to visit her and we had our first opportunity to meet him. My first thoughts weren’t altogether positive. His hair was drab, his personality was less than satisfying and worst of all his jeans were about 3 sizes too tight! This guy she had made out to sound so amazing wasn’t so incredible after all.

We spent the evening with him and I learned that he was a nice guy, but my thought was that he and my friend did not have a darn thing in common. She was majoring in engineering and he was a communications major. These are two rival majors, they hate each other. How can this Romeo and Juliet even be together? He’s a fanatic about a band from 4 decades ago, a band until she started dating him, she never spoke about. Now she’s in love with the band and wears t-shirts showing them off, despite most of their members being dead. I have to admit, the band is awesome, I listen to their music, but I never thought she was a fan.

The guy is from the south. This would be his first winter here, so he was pretty excited about the snow and ice. I was online one evening and she sent me an instant message concerning him. She told me that he had fallen on the ice, while ice skating with some friends, and was being rushed to the emergency room. She told me she had made plans earlier to go see a game and she was scared she would have to cancel the plans. I told her she should cancel the plans to see if her boyfriend is all right. She sat for at least an hour and could not decide if it would be okay for her to see him in the ER. I told her that that is where she would want him to be if she were in his situation, and she agreed but she still felt it might be too much. Finally, I convinced her it was okay, and she ended up going. I think him, and his other friends were thankful that she did show up. I kept her updated on the scores of the games so she didn’t miss out on that. Everything seemed okay then.

After he was released from the ER, I was informed that he was going to have to use crutches for a few months. He lives alone in his apartment and was going to need help doing simple daily tasks like cleaning, and washing clothes. She decided to help him through this. Well, a bit past half the way through, she decided it was too much. He wouldn’t ask her to do stuff any more he just expected it of her. He didn’t seem thankful that she was spending time tending to him instead of her important homework.

One day she called me and we talked about it. She was upset that she was doing all this stuff for him and he didn’t seem to care. I told her that she has to make a decision, to both get through it and hope that when he’s better he’ll go back to the normal way of doing things, or she has to leave, in which case he’ll be stuck alone and on the crutches. She decided to just wait it out and maybe see how things were after he healed.

The thing I’m worried about is the fact that she doesn’t seem to be happy with him. She doesn’t have anything in common with him, and she’s changed what she enjoys for him. In relationships, I think we all have to make sacrifices. One sacrifice we should never make is our personality. We shouldn’t change who we are to please the person we’re with, it wouldn’t make the relationship an honest one.

In the end, I think she’ll decide to break up with him because she’ll either decide they have nothing in common or she’ll find someone better. He’ll be heartbroken for a while, grow a bit tougher and hopefully move on. But is all this healthy for everyone? Should we subject ourselves to the occasional settled-for relationship?