“I don't want normal, and easy, and simple. I want…I want painful, difficult, devastating, life-changing, extraordinary love. Don't you want that too?”

Fans of the ABC political drama, Scandal, seemed to collectively swoon and re-quote on Twitter when lead character Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) delivered that line, breaking up with her current boyfriend to continue her convoluted, adulterous affair with President Fitzgerald Grant III (Tony Goldwyn). I shook my head and thought, “I’m going to make a blog post out of this one day,” and here we are. So many people, including myself, to a degree, have fallen into that trap of believing that it isn’t “real love” unless it drives you nearly insane. People figure that if any one person can drive and control their feelings so easily or make them want to “risk it all,” they must be their soul-mate, but the passionate arguments and extreme emotional highs and lows (often accentuated by satisfying, lustful sex) are just a smoke screen that could damage your being and keep you from experiencing a healthier (and equally sexy) relationship.

There are many reasons why a toxic relationship is like a hard-to-kick habit for some, but a main cause is that the adrenaline that comes with it is addictive; it’s like romantic Red Bull. It is sheer energy, having intense love and hate for someone and having to fight every second for you and your love to survive. Like a burn or a bungee jump, it makes people feel and know they’re alive. The drama is stressful, but it keeps life from being monotonous, and for those struggling with emptiness, it can give a sense of purpose or something to focus on. No matter how strenuous or breaking, test after test and trauma after trauma are tolerated because it’s thrilling to see if you’ll come out on the other side; people get swept off of their feet at the idea of “overcoming all odds.” Chasing this is part of the reason why people take up with “bad boys,” “bad girls” or “wounded puppies;” they come with conflict or a challenge.

There are so many other psychological and emotional stimulants that keep people attached to their James Dean or Amy Winehouse. Some do it simply because they’re bored or like the rebellion of it all; they get off on doing something people advise against, find gossip-worthy or consider “unusual for them.” For others, it’s an (sometimes subconscious) exercise in stroking and rewarding their own ego. When you’re dating a troubled person, you feel needed, useful. You feel special because you get the impression that you’re the exception to their rule; you’re the only person that can “get through” to them and they’re different around you. You pat yourself on the back if they appear to be making “progress” or “cleaning up.” You love it when they (or others) tell you how “good” you are for them. You gradually build this savior complex and think that the universe, God, destiny or some omnipotent, powerful force put you in this person’s life and chose you to be the one to help patch them up. When A) the toxicity reaches all time high, B) the codependence gets to be too much, and/or C) wisdom kicks in and you realize you can’t fix anyone or make them whole (their wounds are bigger than you; their growth and healing starts from within), you decide you want to leave, but you don’t because you now have consequential savior guilt. You don’t want to be another person that left or abandoned them. Maybe you’re worried they won’t handle the breakup well and will delve further into the abyss. In the unhealthiest of dynamics, a person will guilt you for trying to leave or they will  go to extremes, like harming themselves or faking a pregnancy, to make you stay.

“Is this just a silly game…forces you to scream my name, then pretend that you can't stay…when I try to walk away, you'd hurt yourself to make me stay, this is crazy…this is crazy…”--Lauryn Hill (Ex-Factor)

If your savior complex goes uninterrupted by guilt, you’re likely suffering from “potential-itis.” So many people haven’t said “adios” because they’re concentrating on what could be instead of what is. Getting or staying with someone because of their potential is unwise because there are no guarantees you’ll get what you’re hoping for and get a return on your time and emotional and physical investment. It could end up going well, by why play Russian roulette with your heart and happiness instead of choosing someone with better odds?

“Potential-itis” is a sub-symptom of another condition I like to call “I’m Not Going” Syndrome. “And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going” is a song from the Broadway play and film adaptation Dreamgirls, where the character Effie demands “you’re going to love me” to her already-gone boyfriend, Curtis, and insists they’re experiencing just a rough patch and not a conclusion. Curtis was far done with the relationship, but Effie was taking her precious time seeing it…alone. ING Syndrome tends to occur when a union has gone well for a period (even if it’s brief) and starts to go south. “Potential-itis” is high in this scenario because you’ve seen great days with your mate. It wasn’t always this way, so you’re convinced the turbulence is an isolated situation, but there were red flags you ignored or a pattern forming that you know in your gut isn’t going away soon. You’ve turned off of “Honeymoon Avenue” (good Ariana Grande song), down “Point of No Return” road. Like Effie, you think if your mate “would just act right,” or if you could cut out all the crap and external issues (like the craziness or instability going on in your lover’s life), your romance could be great, but the circumstances are now beyond your control. You only have power over yourself; you can’t make anyone think, feel, say or do anything and you can only manipulate your environment so much. If your partner isn’t actively making changes or cooperating with you to improve the atmosphere, *Mariah Carey voice* it’s probably a wrap. 

“In another place or another time, we would’ve been beautiful, but we weren’t in another place or another time. In the here and now, we were disastrous for and to each other, even though we had a special and strong connection. I had to accept the writing on the wall. I didn’t have the power to make another place and time. There would be nothing left of me now if I continued to deny that truth.”--A friend of mine said of their experience with “crazy love” 

By C.G. Seymore, Co-contributor

A large qualm I have about higher education as of late (or at the very least at my university UC Berkeley) is the lack of diversity on campus. Universities attempt to artificially create diversity by accepting different raced people to create a façade that masks the real problem: a lack of diverse ideology. Besides the blind hypocrisy of initiating justice through injustice, the concentration on racial diversity, is the not diversity issue we should be dealing with.
A true utopian school is a school where young adults are able to discuss a diverse surplus of different ideologies and are encouraged to stray from the norm. Schools where the professors don’t have a reputation for being “liberal” or “ultra-conservative”. We go to universities for an abundance of reasons, but one of those reasons comes to the idea of entertaining and exploring the mind, probably more than we ever will for the rest of our lives. So what happens when all we hear is biased political rhetoric without any real or encouraged conversation? We get a bunch of young adults that are well versed in professor dialect and terminology.

Schools that pride themselves on set political stances should be embarrassed. They take the very thing that universities are supposed to supply and wall it off. This creates a polarization effect, in which students know these reputations and will polarize to their most comfortable political and ideological destination. This is where students know they will be patted on the back for re-edifying their own beliefs, and rarely does it encourage them to test the status quo. Students become complaisant and rarely challenge the status quo; this is wrong, this is not what our youth needs to be absorbing and making a habit of. When we students (or our parents) borrow or fork out $100-200,000 for education, nothing seems more problematic than getting an education that only reinforces current ideals and fails to challenge the mind.
This is a plea for schools to take into consideration the idea that maybe their emphasis on diversity has been skewed. It is a plea for students to stop being complacent and demand that their schools challenge their current ideology and encourage diversified political and ideological identities; not perpetuate the ones they already have. If there is a concentration on diversity of the mind, then the problem of diversification of universities between race and other various qualities will level itself out, since there are no innate differences between different races and people.

Cheers

So, I’m at this get-together where most of the guests are from a local Christian student center near my university. There were a lot of interesting people there and I was having a great time mingling….then I came across this one international student who had been in the area for a while and was obviously an activities organizer for another Christian student center nearby because he kept plugging their upcoming events during our conversation. At first, I let him slide with it because I couldn’t knock his hustle; heaven knows I plug my blog and anything else I’m doing when I get the chance. But eventually, I started to get irritated as he kept probing me for details about what denomination I was, if I was a Christian in the 1st place, how often I went to church, etc. For example, we were talking about our career goals, and when there was a brief silence, he busted out with “So where did you go to church today?” I was thinking “WHAT THE HECK?!” Of course when I responded with “nowhere” (yes, I was bad and didn’t go), he says “Oh. Well, why not?” and I said “I just didn’t.” He started to preach a sermon, but seconds into it he stopped and said “Well, I’m not going to preach religion to you.” This was a sentence he said SEVERAL times at the beginning of the conversation. It was almost like he couldn’t help himself from going into random religious tangents. Now for me to explain why I brought this little exchange up.

The conversation reminded me of the many experiences I’ve had with campus Christian organizations and groups where it seems like the only reason they have any interaction with you is because they want you to join their group or sit in their pew. Their intention and goal is positive; they want you to become a part of a faith that’s personally brought them peace. That’s cool. That’s not my beef. My beef is with HOW they try to get you to join the faith. They get so wrapped up in trying to get you to co-sign that they forget WHY they’re doing it in the 1st place. They get so wrapped up, they forget to actually GET TO KNOW YOU. They don’t contact you or hold a conversation with you outside of a religious context. If you end up not being that involved with the organization or its affiliated church, you suddenly don’t exist anymore. Maybe if they stopped treating people like goals to be met, their member/renention numbers would steadily go up. How can you get people to become a part of a faith or find your faith interesting if you don’t know who they are on the inside, what their personal/or emotional needs are or what their background is? Campus Christian organizations often defeat their own purpose.

Their failure to get to know individuals on a deeper level often reflects and affects their worship services, as well. There’s been many a time where I heard a sermon or been to a bible study where I thought the topic was irrelevant to a college student’s life or needs. When you think something is irrelevant, uninteresting or not useful to you, what do you do? Check out and unplug. When people choose social circles and groups to be a part of, they do it based on usefulness. Wanna design a program that people will gravitate to? Want people to join your faith? Make it useful to them. How do you figure out what will be useful to them? GET TO KNOW THEM. Ok, I’m done ranting now. :)