To my friends: please stop wasting your time.

I don’t mean stop watching Netflix when you need to do homework. I mean, stop wasting your time on relationships that are stressful and painful. Stop wasting your time being friends with people you don’t want to be friends with.

I have seen so many of my friends get caught up in relationships where the other person doesn’t care about them at all. The relationships have been shallow, emotionless, and focused around sex more than anything. A relationship has to be more than just sex if it is going to work. Even with only basic experience with relationships, I know that relationships involve emotions, commitment, trust, and communication.

One thing that seems to happen is the feeling that you have to be in a relationship. There is so much pressure to be in a relationship, and I’m not talking about peer pressure. Unless you have a really poor taste in friends, none of them are going to tell you that you need to find a person to date. The pressure comes from societal expectations for us to find someone to date and then marry by the time we graduate college.

All too often I hear someone say “she’s just here for her Mrs. degree”. Not only does this term degrade women to just wives, but it also says that they are only in college to find husbands. Sorry, but what a waste of money that is, if you’re just going to find a spouse. There are lots of easier ways to find someone, and I’m pretty sure college is a pretty expensive way to find a date.

But anyways, I want my friends here to know that their worth lies in much more than crappy college relationships that don’t benefit anyone. There is so much time for us to find someone we want to be with, and we don’t need to rush that. Too often I see my amazing, beautiful, intelligent and capable friends get crushed by a relationship that never starts or breaks apart. It kills me every time that I find a friend crying over someone who’s broken up with them, or crying over something their significant other did that made them upset.

I’m not saying that good, healthy, constructive relationships can’t be built in college. Obviously, they can, and have. But, relationships are not the only part of the college experience to focus on. Have relationships, go on dates, and do what you want with your life. Just remember that the people you know for these four (or five, or six) years of your life are likely not going to be in your life forever, and there are still thousands of people on your campus alone that you haven’t met.

Just the fact that there are so many people in the world should help us to realize how many chances we have, and how many opportunities we have. Relationships are not the beginning or end of our lives. There is so much else to focus on and to do. I personally try to focus on my friends and my education more than relationships. If someone comes along, then I will know when it’s right. I don’t want to spend my time worrying if a person has an interest in me or not anymore.

It is such a waste of time to me to not just tell someone how you feel. Get it over with. I do not want to waste my time going back and forth between if a person likes me or not ever again. Not only is it annoying to my friends, but it’s emotionally taxing and exhausting when it is easier to just ask the person how they feel or tell them how you feel.

So while I do think we have a lot of time to find relationships we enjoy, I also think we shouldn’t waste too much of our time on relationships that are harmful or unfulfilling that suck up hours we could be spending on pursuing our passions and goals. Waste no more time, no more effort, on relationships that are meaningless and shallow. You will find someone worth your time, whether or not you find them in college. For now, focus on yourself. Focus on your friends and the people around you. There are more important things to life, and we have so much time to work it out.