Long distance relationships in campus are a fraud

The easiest way for a campus student to set themselves up for emotional heartache is to date someone hours from them. Most relationships start and end after the sexual curiosity is met. As such, it is almost impossible to be with someone who is largely absent during the only period you can meet at will.

Walking into any campus, you will meet the threatening waft of free will and sin in the air. The primitive energy is unrelenting and caution absent. Laura, a second year campus student has this to say: “I’m faithful to my boyfriend when we are in the same location. When he isn’t, I freelance.’’

This is a generation where young adults are sexually aware and more active than they are on social media. One popular phrase that does the rounds on campus is “Comrades must enjoy”. The phrase is taken to heart and followed to the letter. As you chase knowledge, your girlfriend who is more than five hours away is busy helping someone’s son chase pneumonia. The nights are cold, they say.

As you text your boyfriend who is eight hours away, worried because he did not reply your string of thirty messages including five break-up texts and fifteen voice-notes, he is probably entertaining another woman. He then calls you at three in the morning feigning depression. He will give you a lousy excuse of how he was thinking about his dead relatives that you’ve never heard of or delve into a long- winded story. Do not be fooled.

Each month, you arrange to meet and the rate at which both parties clean their phones would put Sonko’s rescue team to shame. All call logs are cleared, texts from the side pieces filtered and either deleted or archived. Vault is then downloaded and all secrets pushed there.

The weekend spent together will be one of coated lies. He will question you about the mark on your neck. “Ni mosquito bite,’’ you’ll say despite the so-called mosquito bite looking like a love-bite. He will not question you further because he has no believable explanation for the two towels hanging on the hanging line, or the relentless calls from Pam.

You have an unspoken agreement in your relationship. Don’t ask, don’t tell. You have never caught each other.

It is a great illusion. Every month, you go back to each other and tag each other in cute photos where strangers comment ‘“Goals”. It is a relationship, you say. It is a sad lie, the universe knows.