Deadlines suck for pretty much anything. For example, when you get an assignment for a paper due next week and in your head you subconsciously note that you will be starting it the night before, despite your professor’s warnings that it can’t be done… like bitch, we’ll see. Or when you suddenly realize the deadline for “drop/add” for the semester is today’s date and you have to hustle your ass over to your advisor’s building to plead to drop every class on your schedule. Or, when you enter a new relationship, and from the beginning you have a date where you both know you’ll have to part separate ways. You’re basically dating with a deadline.
The relationship is doomed from the start whether you want to admit it to yourself or not. It’s like watching Titanic for the twenty-eighth time and hoping Jack and Rose make it out alive and find everlasting love. No matter how many times you watch it, Jack dies. Sorry for the spoiler. Actually, not sorry. You should’ve watched that movie by now. It’s a fucking classic. Whether it’s a summer fling, there’s a graduation on the horizon, or he’s not a natural born citizen and his visa is about to expire, you and I both know it’s not going to work out. Actually never mind, Donald Trump may become president…anything is possible.
In some ways, it’s a good thing. You feel as if you got to see the best part of each other. You literally only get to experience the honeymoon phase. You never get to come in contact with the real fighting and the imperfections of a real relationship. Maybe you decided not even to call it a relationship, doesn’t make it any less meaningful to either of you.
But, it has no closure. Unlike a real relationship you didn’t break up because of cheating or incompatibility or that time you went to the bar and blacked out and did some questionable things (want to take a second to apologize to everyone for that), you have no REAL reason for breaking up other than the distance or the future. That’s why dating with a deadline can be so hard to move past. It’s hard to forget the guy who never cheated on you with that girl he told you not to worry about. And, you never did anything to mess this one up (weird, isn’t it). The only thing you have to blame for the circumstances is, well, life.
Sometimes, you have to understand nothing lasts forever and maybe it’s worth a little pain. Or maybe, that in the months after it still stings and it was not worth the hurt it caused. Either way, it’s a learning experience, you caved and you felt. Deadlines suck when it comes to dating, but a lot less sucky in comparison when it happens to be for the paper you forgot was due today, and you have that momentary heart attack. Just remember that and feel grateful..