[WARNING: RANT INCOMING]
Covenant has a serious problem. It’s not the food, it’s not the chapel music, or anything else of that sort. Covenant’s biggest problem is the cancerous nature of its dating culture. Since before I came here in 2020, I was told by so many upperclassmen not to date as a freshman. I’ve extended that advice to the freshmen on my hall, but I’ve gone a step further: I encourage them not to date at all at Covenant. It’s a mess, and you don’t have to go far to find people who agree with me. As someone who made the mistake of dating here, and someone who currently has friends and roommates who are dating here, I have had a lot of frankly very depressing conversations with people over their experiences with dating here at Covenant.
The main problem of the culture, not even addressing the over prevalence of freshman couples popping up before Thanksgiving, is the exposure. Everyone at Covenant at least has an idea of who everyone else is here, and because of that, gossip spreads fast. I mean really fast. If you’re trying to keep your relationship private, you are in the wrong place. Everyone seems to think everyone else’s relationship status is their business and can’t seem to leave anyone who is or might be in a relationship alone. When you’re in a relationship at Covenant, it feels like all eyes are on you, everyone sees what you’re doing because there’s no way to avoid people. There’s no privacy.
That being said, Covenant does also have a fair number of supremely toxic relationships. I guess that’s what happens when you get a bunch of people that aren’t used to socializing in a semi-confined space with the opposite sex. You get cancerous relationships. So many Covenant students come in as freshmen not even able to have healthy friendships, let alone dating relationships, and this leads to an overabundance of cringey couples doing cringey things IN PUBLIC. Have some respect for yourself, or at least spare my eyes. I’ve taken to kicking the door open in the Caudle room in Mac any time I see couples on the couch in there just to let them know that what they are doing is in public. Listen, I get there’s not really any private places to go do that, but please for the love of God not in a lobby.
There are honestly so few healthy couples on campus I could probably count them off on one hand. That’s not to say that people don’t mature and grow and end up developing their relationships into something better for them, but I have seen too many codependent relationships since I came here. Guys hanging on girls, girls who don’t let their boyfriends sit next to girls in class (yes, this is a real story someone told me the other day), and couples in general who can’t spend more than eight seconds not entertained with each other in a single chair that is MADE FOR ONE PERSON! Everyone can see you. Stop talking about getting married two minutes after you first met. Encourage each other to spend time with other people away from you. Go outside, take a walk, enjoy the earth God made and unravel from the other person for a minute.
This brings me to another key point. Probably the most overwhelmingly toxic and detrimental aspect of Covenant’s dating culture and Covenant’s relationships are the way that dating here has an overwhelmingly negative affect on spiritual growth. I’ve seen people, myself included, regress on years of progress because of one girl, because all the sudden they’ve got better things to do then, I don’t know, READ THE BIBLE. Can we please for the love of God normalize reading the Bible together in dating relationships. You can do that while sitting in each other’s laps too. Just please do it.
Alright, all ranting aside, this is an issue that needs to be addressed. Too many people have been sitting comfortably without being called out for too long. People need to stop making other people’s relationships their business. If they haven’t talked to you about it, then assume they may not want the news broadcasted. If you’re in a relationship right now, take a good hard look at the way you’re going about it. How much time are you spending together? How much time are you spending with other people? How physically intimate are you being? Even if it is short of sex, that doesn’t mean you aren’t doing similar damage to your soul. Covenant’s dating culture is a serious problem. I’m writing this as someone who has dated at Covenant, someone who has talked to people about dating at Covenant, and someone who has decided to not date at Covenant again.