Sex and the UniverCity: Space in relationships

By: John Bailey

Posted: 9/3/08

Claustrophobia is more common than you think. As it turns out, we've all got a mild case. Everyone has been in those suffocating situations: crawling through cramped ventilation shafts, stuffed among mothballs in tiny closets, tied up and wedged into the trunk of a two-door convertible. Metaphorically speaking of course, but doesn't it suck when you can't get your space in a relationship?

Secret Agent Man

How the hell did you end up in this stupid ventilation shaft? You can't move your arms, you can barely straighten your legs, and your neck is stuck at a permanent 45-degree angle. If you try to escape, take a break, maybe do some yoga, there are guys with ski masks and guns at every exit. Being a professional infiltrator sucks and you've got enough to worry about back home, with a significant other that refuses to let you go anywhere else on a Friday night, make plans without consulting them first or speak to any other human beings.

"When you're trapped in a relationship, you're trapped," said Dan Emmons, a 5th-semester electrical engineering major. "You can't go anywhere. You can go back, and that's it."

Oh, and they might be nice about it.

"You can do what you want," they say, but of course they have this look. The look they give you is the one you know that the only thing you can really do is nod, smile and assure them that of course there's no place you'd rather be. Even if it is just sitting on their bed and watching them watch YouTube videos.

Say you like being a secret agent. You absolutely love the work that you do, like spying on people and then snapping their necks. In the same way, you love your significant other but you're not going to disarm the nukes if you're trapped in the ventilation shaft. You're never going to be the person that your beau fell in love with if they don't let you do your own thing. Your own thing is what makes you cool, right?

Trapped in the Closet

You can't move. Electric blue tracksuits and jackets with enormous padded shoulders surround you. Your left arm is pinned to the wall by a hat rack. You suspect someone may have put an entire Elizabethan wardrobe in here and every once in a while a shaft of light pierces the gloom and a hand snakes in. They grab you, pull you out, take you on a whirlwind tour of human emotion and then it's back into the closet, with the hair gel and parachute pants.

Sometimes it's nice to be needed but it's also nice to be other things - like loved, respected and free to move around. We're all kind, caring people and kind people like to help their significant others out when they're feeling down; however, it's easy to turn into an accouterment when you're always there to lend a helping hand. You move from being a shoulder to cry on, literally, to riding on someone's shoulder.

"You feel like a sponge," said Andrea Kahn, a 5th-semester English major. "Or a handbag. Like, when you just match the outfit. A handbag full of sponges."

In a way, being "closeted" is a weird kind of space problem: you've got the space you need, but you're too busy sharing it with all your significant other's personal problems. So it's nice to be nice, but sometimes you just can't be.

Kidnapped!

Sometimes a relationship can be a little too much - like when you get ambushed by a band of hoodlums. That's not a very good relationship and you need more air or else you'll suffocate. Or say for instance you're a freshman that ends up in an awkward relationship with a senior one month after getting to school.

"It was overwhelming [having a relationship freshman year]," said David Beattie, a 5th-semester English and psychology major." It was really hard to get used to that while entering a completely new [college] culture."

Relationships can easily be overwhelming, especially when there's so much else going on around you. Sometimes you need to let it go for a while, no matter how much fun you're having.