Single, Twenty Something, College Grad!!

I'm a 20 something black male with a college degree and I'M SINGLE!!

I recently read a piece titled "Dating in College vs. The Real World, you can read it here; but in this piece the author  details about his challenges, growth, and the differences he experienced in going from dating women in college to the real world. As I read this piece I was immediately able to relate, both recent college graduates, held leadership positions, and both had a fair share of female interaction in our college days, as I reached the end and began to comment I figured I'd too pen my story.


I left the University of Bridgeport in a relationship, happy to have graduated, looking forward to summer, and having closed one chapter ready to begin the next. For me that next chapter was the real word; basically a real world job, coming into my own, and graduate school later on. Of with my relationship dating and real world women were the last thing on my mind, but even before at the beginning of Senior year I never gave it any thought. Really what college Senior sits there like "yeah now I got to start thinking about dating older, grown women, and how I must change to meet them". Be in reality that's what we must do.


In college, I was social, I was a Resident Advisor, Senator on Student Government, apart of this club and that club, knowledgeable in my major, went to parties, and drank, so while there meeting women for me came as natural as waking up and going to class while in college. As Rich put it in his piece "us guys might have passed on a couple of the “I really like you for you, and want to get to know you” types over the years. It happens." And not to take away anything from the lady I was with at the time that just wasn't us at the time. 


So when that moment hits, that you are now a college graduate, no longer on campus with thrones of women and a new class coming in each fall, that you must now actually go out there are put yourself into the mix. You must also realize that there's going to be much more expected from you. 


For me it came in bits in pieces, for me I just exited a relationship, I wasn't looking to jump right back into one, so it would come to me a little than another guy. But it came, at first I did go back to what I knew, college women. That talking phase lasted for a little while, but I soon realized that I couldn't continue to carry that on. The same way I couldn't do the dating a female left here in the city while I was away in college would be the thing here and now. It was naive of me to think I could, we're at two different stages in our lives.


So lets usher in those GROWN WOMEN; NO KIDS, JOB, OWN PLACE, yes I'm ready for them!


Oh so I thought, lets address the kids thing not saying all older women have kids but the ones I came across did and to find an older woman with none is slim pickings, so that's kind of a fact I had to come to terms with. Meeting a woman with a child and understanding how to navigate those waters, it's not impossible, just a little bit more challenging. The job thing wasn't so bad, I had one but women in the real world want stability and to know you are financial stable too. I'm still young for me moving out on my own isn't a top priority, so there won't be to much of that come back to my place, so its hard for me to ask her to have what I don't.


To date in the REAL WORLD, you have to ADAPT! Its like going from college ball to the NBA.  You might be grown but you have to grow up!


Why because real world women, require I different type of man. The ease of meeting a female in class, the cafe, or a random party then exchanging numbers, TEXTING for a lil bit, and having her over to the room just doesn't happen. You're not going to work looking to get the good looking co-worker, running into the same woman in the Starbucks every morning in a movie scene, and meeting at the club is the biggest toss up. Real world women require actual phone conversations, patience, along with all the other stuff like having goals, being ambitious, stability, etc.


But above all of that they require a man to understand what arena he is currently in. If you want a half decent relationship, that woman will require that of you. She wants you to know that you're no longer dealing with the college girls, she's expecting more of you as you are of her. 


For me is it didn't come from any of them coming out and telling me this much. I took me realizing the path that most of these encounter were taking. They weren't lasting long or going far. I'll be honest I was expecting to get away with the same quickness that I had grown accustom to while in college. No need for dates or actually phone conversation. Once I had bypassed the basics; name, age, where you from, what you do for a living, everything else would simply come and we would keep it moving from there. But in the real world its not even that close to being simple. Those things might just get you a phone number from there its; do you have kids, what are you about, what are you looking, etc; then you might actually get a date. 


It took me having to realize that the encounters I was having before were panning out how they were because I had failed to realize that the real world woman was vastly different from that of the college woman.


Now that I have figured it out, begun to grow, begun to rationalize, and be more patience for outcomes; I'm starting to see the pieces fall into place. While no new relationships are on the horizons I can see the greater potential in myself and what I will have to offer the woman or women I meet in the real world.

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