The pressures of college can get overwhelming to some.
So much so that if one is not careful, you will find yourself cutting off everything from your life except for your studies. This can include working out, sleep, rest, social activities, and relationships.
While this might seem like a good idea at first, it can actually be detrimental to your general wellbeing.
Remember, for you to focus and perform optimally as a college student, you need to be in good shape holistically.
This makes it all the more important to take good care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally. Without this, performing well in your studies becomes an uphill task.
Why are Relationships Important?
To understand why cutting off your relationships is a bad idea, its first important to understand why relationships are meaningful and why you need to work hard to keep them alive.
Simply put: man is not a solitary animal. Indeed, human beings thrive and tend to be at their best when they have strong social connections.
Science backs this theory, as well.
Decades of research into good health, happiness, and longevity have shown than social connections contribute significantly to all these aspects of life.
Scientists also have been able to establish that affectionate relationships trigger stress-reducing hormones. With pressure to perform being commonplace in the majority of college students, stress-reducing hormones are indeed handy.
With this in mind, let’s see how allowing college life to get the better of you can hurt your relationship and some suggestions of how to prevent this.
How Your Busy Schedule Disrupts Your Personal Relationship
As you can see, relationships contribute to your wellbeing, and your wellbeing-or lack thereof- determines how well you will perform in your studies.
Here are some of the ways in which your busy schedule can affect your personal relationship negatively.
1. Conflicting Priorities
A conflict in priorities comes about when your school work and your relationship’s needs clash.
An example of this is when you find yourself canceling or postponing prior arrangements because your schoolwork demands it.
Don’t get this wrong. From time to time, this will indeed happen, and a loving, supportive partner should be able to understand this,
The issue comes about when this becomes the rule rather than the exception.
If you do find yourself doing this time and again, evaluate how you are running your coursework and study schedule, and see if there are changes you can make that could help you free up some time.
The danger of letting things go on this way for long is that your partner starts to feel neglected or unimportant.
This can result in disagreements between the two of you, where you are likely to be defensive and feel resentful that your partner does not understand how important your coursework is and how badly you want to make good grades.
If this starts happening or whenever you start getting too busy and need to spend more time with your books, try to communicate this early on.
Similarly, try to reassure your partner that you are still committed to your relationship and find ways to compensate for missed, canceled, and postponed dates.
2. You Can grow Apart
Relationships are more of a journey than a destination. What this means is that both parties in a relationship must make a conscious effort to make the relationship work.
This means being present both physically and emotionally.
Your partner requires you to be there emotionally, to listen to them, and be responsive when you spend time together.
Often, however, students get too busy and too overwhelmed that while they might be there physically, their minds seem a mile off.
While your mind might be occupied by an upcoming test or a pending assignment. Your partner is unlikely to read the situation this way. Instead, they might read it as a general disinterest in them or the relationship. If this is not addressed, your girlfriend or boyfriend might start feeling neglected, which might lead to the further disintegration of the relationship.
3. Spend Less Time Apart
It’s healthy for couples and friends to be away from each other.
However, if you totally fail to find time to spend together, this can snowball into bigger issues from mistrust to losing the connection that brought you together in the first place.
Its therefore imperative to always look at your schedule and see when you can create time for a date night, a quick chat on the phone, or even a fun planned activity.
This will not only keep your relationship alive, but it rejuvenates you as well.
You will be surprised at how hitting the gym with your boyfriend or girlfriend can re-energize you and even lead to a more productive school week ahead.
You might wonder how this is even possible when you seem literally buried in school work.
Look at your study habits. Are you someone that procrastinates on work until the last minute, then you end up being overwhelmed? If you are, you can simplify your life greatly by learning to handle and complete assignments as soon as you get them.
If you try this and it makes little difference evaluate other options. For example, ask yourself questions like ‘’how do I rearrange my schedule to make time for my love life or ‘’will my relationship benefit I get a professional to do my homework for me’’.
The answers to these questions will provide some possible solutions for you to evaluate further, according to homeworkdoer.org.
Final Word
As you can see, ending or neglecting your personal relationship in favor of your schoolwork can, at times, be counterproductive.
When it starts causing problems in your relationship, you will find yourself dealing with occasional disagreements, which can affect your ability to focus on schoolwork entirely.
Ending a personal relationship, on the other hand, steals the benefits of having a social connection, support, and a confidante you doubt need to help you paddle through the rough waters can college can be.
Instead, reevaluate your schedule and the various things you can do in order to create a healthy balance between college and your love life.
