Everything I know about love at the University of Notre Dame

1. You can find love at the bar (Newfs)

Everyone above the age of 55 tells you, “You won’t find love at the bar,” but they’re wrong. You can find love anywhere — in the supermarket, on the metro, at a beloved South Bend establishment with all the lights down and “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada playing. It is a beautiful, wonderful thing to have your guard completely to the floor at a downtown bar surrounded by your friends and peer group, knowing every “stranger” probably isn’t a stranger (they are almost definitely a mutual friend). So tell someone that you like their bizarre graphic t-shirt or their shoes (which are untied, by the way) (made you look).

2. The best place to get dumped over the phone is outside of a Glee Club house party in a dead patch of grass.

No elaboration needed. 

3. No moment in your life will ever be as romantic as falling asleep on the phone with someone you really really like. 

4. No moment in your life will ever be as gut-wrenching as your first heartbreak (over the phone, outside of a Glee Club house party).

Everything gets easier after your first heartbreak, but when it was all happening, I thought I’d never recover. Strangely, though, the night it all happened is one of my favorite memories from college. Because a girl consoled me in the stairwell of the party and gave me great advice, and Clare and I frolicked on North Quad listening to Taylor Swift “Bejeweled” on repeat. And then we got free za from Keenan at 4:30 am because I told the pizza chef (some freshman from 2Nip) that I had just gotten my heart ripped out of my chest, “so can we pretty please get free pizza?”

5. Let yourself strike out.

The best advice my dad ever gave me was to give myself permission to strike out. This can apply to almost every aspect of life, but when it comes to love (since this is, indeed, a love article), he meant to lower the stakes and be open to any possibility, any outcome (even the outcomes you don’t like, even the outcome that involves your heart breaking into a million itty-bitty pieces). I promise heartbreak won’t kill you, but never ever opening up to the possibility of love because you’re scared to get hurt, will kill you. So let yourself strike out — Bryce Harper strikes out all the time, and he’s still pretty good at baseball (and you, my friend, are getting pretty good at love). 

6. If he says “it’s not what it looks like,” it is exactly what it looks like.

This is a common line used by dudes who should not be anywhere near you or your heart. This is a common line used by dudes who probably aren’t telling you the whole truth (and nothing but the truth, so help me God). I’m not calling him a liar, I’m just saying he probably lied about what he ate for breakfast this morning, his favorite color and his own middle name. And he is probably lying when he tells you, “It’s not what it looks like.”

7. If he says, “you’re wasting your time, I’m not worth it,” he is 100% correct.

When someone tells you who they are, you should probably pay attention, so when someone told me, “You’re wasting your time, I’m not worth it,” I listened. At first, I was stunned, then annoyed, then upset (and crying in my friend’s lap in the Uber ride home), then I was sort of embarrassed and sad for them. For a while, I convinced myself this person was self-sabotaging. I convinced myself they really liked me and lacked confidence or self-esteem or something. And those things can be true, but it’s also true that this individual told me who he was — a waste of time, and someone who is not worth it. So I listened, and I didn’t regret a thing. Besides, we were probably always destined to be loose acquaintances and nothing more (and thank God because that was not my man). I wish him well.

8. If you think you’re leading him on, you totally are.

Don’t do that. 

9. "Hooking up” won’t make you happy.

When I was a freshman who knew absolutely nothing, I occasionally tried to dabble in this game of chess called “hooking up” (I call it chess because I didn’t really understand it, but I would sometimes play along). Also, by the way, “hooking up” is a purposefully ambiguous term and about 50% of the time people will disagree with your definition, so when they do, just call it “smooching” because that is more ambiguous than the already ambiguous “hooking up.” Either way, for a while, I naively viewed this non-committal expression of affection as the prelude to a relationship — when often it was always the beginning and end of something. Sometimes, “hooking up” meant a whirlwind magical adventure with an unassuming stranger after a party; other times, it meant an absolutely gut-wrenching, emotionally intense encounter with someone who would eventually ignore you on South Quad (while riding an electric scooter) a couple days later. Hook-up culture taught me how to feel like a vessel, how to feel like a thing for boys to like and look at and kiss (and never talk to again), not someone to love and value and care for. You deserve to be loved and valued and cared for. In short, “hooking up” never made me happy. It was often fun, but never meaningful, and while I sincerely value my slew of random, insane stories from nights gone right (and wrong), I learned that my long-term happiness does not derive from short-term validation from boys who don’t really know me. My long-term happiness derives from self-restraint, self-respect and sitting in this season of waiting called singleness with patience and poise (because there’s no rush to find the love of your life).

10. If he asks you on a lake walk, prepare for the worst and dress your best.

The lake walk often makes or breaks the relationship, so if this ambiguous situation does indeed take a turn for the worse, you will know almost immediately. He will probably small-talk with you for a while and then say something like, “So I was thinking …” This is when you should say, “Let’s sit down somewhere,” because there is simply no need to take a full lap around St. Mary’s Lake with a guy who does not want to date you. Sit on a park bench, let him say his piece and depart in opposite directions. 

11. An expectation is a resentment waiting to happen, and a hope is a willingness to let others be who they need to be for you. 

I’m going to say it again and let the words hang in the air like scripture (it’s basically scripture): An expectation is a resentment waiting to happen, and a hope is a willingness to let others be who they need to be for you. That’s a line I stole from Father Chase during one of his homilies at a Breen-Phillips Hall dorm mass, and I think about it all the time. It’s true. The next time you love, be open to the unexpected, but keep your hopes high (because what on earth are we supposed to do without hope?). 

12. Dining hall dates should be outlawed.

You will likely bump into everyone you know and will become the talk of the town because nothing ever happens around here. Don’t go on a dining hall date.

13. Actually, I take that back.

Keep going on dining hall dates. I think they’re fun to watch when I’m eating my southwest salad alone because I’m a senior and most of my friends don’t have meal plans.

14. There’s no need to run back to “the good old days.”

A lot of people make reference to “the good old days” when talking about their exes or someone they flirted with at the bar for 4 months straight, but never ever kissed. And sometimes this fondness is very real. Other times, this fondness is fabricated in moments when we feel a bit lonely or a bit misunderstood, so we try to remember things being better than they were. So I implore you not to look back on “the good old days” like they were good, when they were really just old. 

15. If you play the field, prepare to get played.

I did this last spring, and I sincerely regret it. I had a roster and everything. I thought I was being funny. I thought I was being smart. I thought I was in control (I was, most certainly not in control). I thought I was doing what single girls are supposed to do. I thought I was protecting myself from hurt by having “options” on deck, potential conquests to pick me up when someone (inevitably) let me down. But I ended that semester feeling like a worthless, empty shell, feeling like love was the scariest, most impossible thing to ever exist, feeling like no one could enter a love story completely in good faith. I played the field, and I wound up getting red-shirted, which is when I took a whole summer to reflect and rebuild. I had to disarm myself and learn again, learn that love doesn’t have to be so scary. So don’t date for sport. It’s seriously not worth it. 

16. It’s okay if that person is not here, in Notre Dame, Indiana. 

It’s okay if you don’t find “the one” here. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think they did who might wind up marrying someone else — anything’s possible. But truly, “the one” doesn’t have to be someone you met at Corby’s or Calc Tutorial or some O’Neill House Party you attended freshman spring with no jacket on (when it was 10 degrees, obviously). For a while, I thought I didn’t put pressure on myself to find “the one” here, but I think subconsciously I did. Because, as I inch closer and closer to this absolutely uncool thing called graduation, I’ve found myself resenting the fact that I likely won’t be leaving this place with a real, robust relationship to carry into my next phase of life. I admit, I never wanted a “ring by spring”; I never dreamt of grad pictures with my boyfriend in front of the golden dome. But I suppose I did want a proper boyfriend at some point at Notre Dame, and that didn’t really happen. I mean, I’ve been in love, and I’ve dated, but I didn’t have this long-term, capital “B” Boyfriend. Not ever. And that’s okay. Perhaps I’ll meet my person at a Giants game next year or in an airport when I’m waiting for a Caribou Coffee (or God forbid, on Hinge) (please, future Kate, do not get a Hinge). Or maybe he’ll be someone I totally overlooked during undergrad who I’ll bump into at some washed-up alumni tailgate when I’m 26 and still feeling a feral urge to go to Natio’s after a night of drinking back in our college town. Who knows. 

17. Maybe the real “ring by spring” was the friends we made along the way.

I’m not kidding. My friends are the real loves of my life, the ones who pick me up when I’m down, let me curl up in their beds and cry, call me on a Tuesday to grab lunch, call me on a Thursday to report that they are indeed running late (but so am I). The ones with whom I watch shows and dance and play dress-up and hold hands and split pitchers and talk and talk and talk all night long. They are the loves who will carry me into this next phase of life. It didn’t have to be a Notre Dame boy at all. It didn’t have to. It doesn’t have to.