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DIMENSIONS FORUM

Women & Long Distance Relationships

By Robert Taylor Jr.
DIMENSIONS Staff Writer

This spring, Cleveland resident Vonita Phillips probably would be making plans for her four-year anniversary with her boyfriend, also from Cleveland.

Instead, she decided to break off the relationship.

"I'm not with him because I don't trust him," Phillips, 18, said.

But it wasn't he who ignited the mistrust - she left him because, well, she really left him. Phillips moved to Columbus to begin her stay at The Ohio State University in September, along with roughly 5,000 other freshmen.

For some, choosing whether or not to have a long distance relationship is as meaningful as picking a college. For others, it strains to get even a hair of attention.

While Phillips objected to having a long distance relationship, Miss Lewis, who declined to give her first name and residence, decided to go for it.

"I'm with him because I've been with him for three years on and off," Lewis said. "Once you've been in a relationship with someone that long, I wouldn't want him to be with anyone else but me." Yet, with the utmost feelings she has for her boyfriend, "If I meet someone up here who I really like," Lewis won't hesitate to break off the relationship.

"You don't break it off until you know the new person is going to be better than the person you had before," she said.

Some people think with a university as populous as Ohio State, there should be no reason to have to keep someone from home, whether home is Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, or somewhere outside of Ohio. It's rumored that if one can't find a mate at OSU, it's hard-pressed to find a mate anywhere else. But Lewis disagrees. "You never know who you're going to meet. I might not meet anybody up here," she said.

So how do those who choose to be in a long-distance relationship resist the temptation of cheating? Some spoke about the 'trust' factor; others uttered 'stability' as the cause. Mecca, a freshman from Cleveland who declined to give her last name, spoke neither of those words.

"I'm not a committed person. Men cheat, so I like to have my fun, too." Also, "I don't like to be smothered by a man, so the further, the better," Mecca, 18, said. If she were to have a long distance relationship, being faithful would be a lost art. "I wouldn't care what he's doing as long as he respects me (when I see him)," she concluded.


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Jan. 2000