What's Love Got to Do with It?

Everything. During the college years, it seems like everyone is looking for love.

By Susanne Rockwell

I am sitting at a conference table in Cowell Student Health Center with eight undergraduates discussing the oldest topic in the world. Actually, I want to talk about students in love, but because these are peer counselors in sexuality, they focus on far more practical issues related to love.

Brandi from Oakland says this generation is both more sexually aware and more conservative. The older traditional value of "saving oneself for marriage" still holds true for her and many of her friends.

The opportunity for finding love in college is a lot better than it was in high school, says Tracy from Oakland. "Almost everyone I went to high school with was a dateless wonder."

That's not true for most of the students at this table. Of the eight students here, five have significant others. Rather than play the field in college, as their parents advocate, they say they are perfectly happy to be in long-term monogamous relationships. Most are having sex with their partners.

As for the two unattached women, they say they and their friends are a little bitter: Having expected to find their mates in college, they're disappointed no one special has come along.

Attached or not, members of this group can clearly articulate an issue that dominates college life.

"Love is a comfort thing, especially when you are so far away. It offers you security," Tracy says.

The human need for this "comfort thing" is actually a major biological force not just on campus but throughout the primate world, says UC Davis psychologist Phil Shaver. He has spent the past 14 years studying mostly undergraduates to explain how humans need to love and be loved and what impedes them. For researchers like Shaver, UC Davis is a perfect laboratory for testing their hypotheses. There's a simple reason for that, points out John Boe, another faculty member who has been steeped in student-love issues for the past two decades. He says the most memorable, most emotionally significant and ultimately the most important part of going to college is all about being in love.

The students I interviewed for this story inhabit those familiar states of love and non-love we all remember, from being rapturously embraced in its hormonal clutches to being aloofly unattached, living in hopeful anticipation of Mr./Ms. Right or being sadder but wiser. Can there be anything different about student relationships in 2001 from those of 10, 30 or 50 years ago? The romantic clichés still exist. Just as in decades past, students say women are more likely than men to want to abstain from intercourse until they are married. At the same time, no matter what is decided about physical intimacy in a close relationship, sex is always an issue to be negotiated—even if your girlfriend is in Italy for the year. Love is still a desired state of being for many. The college students I spoke to say they want to be in that state of ecstasy with a special other. Those who have felt the thrills crumble into disillusionment are ready for monasticism. Even so, they remain hopeful, expecting eventually to be back in the dating game, looking again for true love.

Despite these constants, the love life of students today is different on a number of fronts, say staff members who have worked with students for decades. Although no UC Davis-specific studies over time exist to quantify a change in sexual behavior, Brandi's theory that UC Davis may be a more sexually conservative place is verified by staff members who work closely with students. In fact, some staff members say students appear to be less ready to have intercourse than they were some 30 years ago in my era, when The Pill's availability at Cowell began boosting the health center's popularity among my female friends.

The big influx of immigrants into California over the past quarter century—now totaling 26 percent of the state's population—is one reason for the changing student attitude, says Pat Lindsay '70, assistant director for health education. An estimated half of UC Davis students are first-generation Americans, whose families are more conservative about sex. Whether first generation or not, many students come from families that have instilled the notion of celibacy until marriage.

"I'm seeing a much more conservative student population than even five years ago," says Theresa Montemayor, who advises Asian Pacific and Native American students through the campus Student Programs and Activities Center. She believes that undergraduate students are more aware of the hazards of sexual intercourse and more willing to wait until marriage. "Students used to share stories with me about one-night stands," Montemayor says, "but now I'm hearing more stories from young women about their plans to get married, stay home and raise children."

Montemayor's observations are echoed by a winter/spring 2000 health-assessment survey of UC Davis students. The survey found 40 percent to 42 percent of the men and women responding had never had sexual intercourse and 5 percent to 6 percent had not had any form of intercourse in the past year. It was sent to 1,641 undergraduates and 42 percent, or 686 students, responded, which leads those who conducted the survey to believe that the results are "reasonably" representative of UC Davis undergraduates, Lindsay says.

Although a large number of UC Davis students are abstaining from sex, they don't think their peers are. A full 91 percent of respondents believed that most other students are engaging in intercourse one to 20-plus times monthly—even though most of the respondents (61 percent) had not had sex themselves in the past 30 days. "Folks who are not sexually active feel, 'It's everybody else but me,' " Lindsay says.

Sexually active students do exist on campus and many visit Cowell Student Health Center for help in avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Those who believe intercourse is a natural accompaniment to a relationship are not just worrying about unwanted pregnancies these days. As you might expect, students today must now worry about HIV, herpes, hepatitis B and C, and other diseases that can lead to infertility or death, Lindsay says. The peer counselors in sexuality have been charged with teaching students about these issues since 1979. They also work on broader issues of partner communication and sexual responsibilities.

Yet another difference from previous generations is somewhat surprising given the increased conservatism of some students. Among the 52 percent of undergraduates who are having sex, a number have been sexually active for a long time. "Now we have the children of the 'flower child' generation," Lindsay says. "The biggest difference I see is the age that these students first had sex is so much younger now." A small percentage of students started having sex in sixth or seventh grade, and many have had several sexual partners since junior high or high school, Lindsay reports.

These undergraduates may have learned about having physical sex several years ago, but they are still working out the far more complicated issues of relationships. Admits one senior majoring in women's studies who started having sex in her senior year in high school, "I wasn't ready for sex, but I was curious at the same time." Once she had intercourse, the student says she realized she wasn't ready. "Sex made the relationship more serious than I wanted it to be." Another student graduating in Asian American studies says he started having sex when he was 15 and has had three long-term relationships since. "I just broke up with my last girlfriend, and I'm still angry about how our relationship turned out. She was too possessive and expected me to be with her at her campus and vice versa."

"Love can be fickle," agrees Allison Subasic '82, who coordinates the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center—open just since January 1999. In her role as a staff mentor and friend within the community, Subasic over the years has helped many an undergraduate traverse a stormy relationship. But a big change for UC Davis relationships is that gay and lesbian students are much more visible members of the community than they were two decades ago when Subasic was a sociology major. And there's a wider acceptance of students who are bisexual.

"It's easier for bisexuals than it used to be because there is more of an understanding that sexuality is on a continuum and many students are somewhere in the middle," Subasic says.

Although one male student interviewed says it's not socially acceptable for him and his partner to kiss each other hello in public, it's not uncommon to see young women affectionately embracing outside the Memorial Union at lunch time. Gay and lesbian students are active in fraternities and sororities, working as peer counselors in sexuality or hanging out at the LGBT Resource Center, located in a shingled bungalow next to Voorhies Hall.

There you might find 20-year-old Gustavo Soc, born in Guatemala and a graduate of Los Angeles High School. Even though he's been on campus for less than a year, Soc may be the most connected gay in the undergraduate student body. Attending UC Davis on a community scholarship for gay students, the first-year student was elected president of the Queer Student Union, a group that includes 175 undergraduates as well as many graduate students. Soc interns at the LGBT Resource Center, is a member of the national gay fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, and is heavily involved in LGBT social events.

Soc has known he was gay since he was 10. He's had boyfriends since he was 14 and came out to his friends and relatives three years ago. That early acceptance of himself as gay and working through sexual-orientation issues make him part of this new college generation, Subasic points out. The fact that he has dealt with his sexuality early—and experienced a handful of love affairs—has given Soc the confidence to openly explore the UC Davis gay social scene. He's had it easier than others, he says. "Two of my boyfriends who broke up with me had just come out of the closet," he explains. Each had been embarrassed by public displays of affection. "They were just starting to know about themselves and couldn't be normal as a couple."

Within the past several years, gays and lesbians have created a supportive subcommunity on campus where couples are accepted, protected and nurtured. "Things have changed for the LGBT community," Subasic agrees. "It used to be that there were not that many visible role models and no program like the center," she says. "Most students were struggling in their sexual orientation and weren't sure where to go except possibly to the counseling center." While it is still true that many students come to terms with their sexual orientation in college, Subasic says, "Now, parents call me in the summer and ask, 'What do you have to offer for my kid?'"

When parents push their children—whether gay or straight—out of the nest into the college residence hall, many students undergo a wrenching emotional disorientation, says psychology professor Shaver, also known by many as UC Davis' "Dr. Love." Perhaps that's why some students are anxious, clingy and in need of constant reassurance when they first arrive. As Shaver explains, love relationships are basic to the human condition—and it's something that hasn't changed over the generations of college students. "You do not outgrow your need for attachments, and life's new challenges are much scarier without them," he says.

On the UC Davis psychology faculty since 1992, Shaver has been mapping out the paths that adults take in forming intimate attachments. He finds they are similar in many ways to how the adults attached as infants with their mothers during a time of special vulnerability. Like the infant-caretaker relationships, adults seek physically close, emotionally intimate relationships as a twosome. Such relationships become both safe havens from the outside world and secure bases from which individuals venture forth into society. Adult romantic relationships differ from infant-caretaker relationships in that adults both need to nurture and be nurtured. Sex is part of the package, since mating in late adolescence and early adulthood is part of evolution's program for human reproduction, Shaver says.

In his studies of adult attachments (using mostly students as his research subjects), Shaver says he sees parallels between the parent-child attachment patterns and those for adults. More than half of the population is able to develop secure, long-term relationships because both partners are able to balance their ability to give affection and support with their need for receiving love. About 25 percent avoid intimacy due to an inability to attach emotionally, and the other 20 percent are anxious, wanting a relationship but sabotaging it through jealously or self-fulfilling prophecies of failure. His research has found that about half of the first- and second-year students at any one time are involved in romantic relationships, and he surmises that the percentage is higher for upper-division students as they mature. "Parents might be surprised that their children are looking for—and often finding—long-term boyfriends and girlfriends; they are not usually playing the field," Shaver says.

Justin Malvin of Burbank is one of those thoroughly attached guys. But the first-year biology student's parents and girlfriend were physically far away, and just as Shaver's theories would predict, Malvin found that detachment from those loved ones wrenching. He was very lonely. Although he was Mr. Active in high school as a member of the school choir, an actor with his own agent and a regional fencing competitor, Malvin says he was reluctant to get very involved at UC Davis. He has been going out with his girlfriend, Jennifer, for 18 months, since the summer before his senior year in high school. But when he came to UC Davis, his girlfriend stayed at home for a semester, trying to decide where she wanted to go to school. She ultimately decided on San Francisco State. "I was going crazy trying not to put pressure on her [to go to a school near UC Davis], even though I wanted her to," Malvin admits. "It was really, really hard to be apart seven weeks. I decided to pretend that I was in the Navy."

Malvin represents yet another demographic difference in the love scene. A growing number of couples identify themselves as being of mixed race. Their existence parallels the 2000 California state census, which showed that about 5 percent of the people identified themselves as coming from a mixed-race heritage. Malvin is African American, Native American, Irish and Italian, and his girlfriend is Native American, German and Irish. Proud of his background, Malvin said he is comfortable with being romantically involved with somebody with a different mixed background. In fact, that's his expectation, given that he grew up in a Burbank community filled with mixed-race kids.

If there's anyone on campus who has a close read on the power of love on campus, it's composition lecturer John Boe. Painful breakups are his weekly reading matter. As an English teacher at UC Davis for the past 20 years, he's waded through hundreds of essays about undergraduates in love. It's an especially popular topic during spring quarter. The truth is that Shaver's not the only "Dr. Love" on campus. Boe was so dubbed in a May 1990 Playboy article called "Why Guys Can't Say 'I Love You' " by Bay Area humorist Alice Kahn. Perhaps because he's a romantic through and through, Boe claims never to have become jaded by so many essays on college love, however bad the grammar. Or perhaps it's because he's intrigued by the many variations on a theme.

"There was one guy's astounding paper about how to juggle three girls at one time—and none of them ever found out. This student was quite athletic and having sex three times a day," Boe relates. When Boe expressed admiration for the student's stamina, the undergraduate admitted, "I'm really tired. I want one woman. I'm ready for monogamy." Boe also reports that his classes have also been shocked by students writing about their bisexuality or acceptance of menage a trois arrangements.

After teaching undergraduates for two decades, Boe concludes there has been one constant over the decades, if not centuries: Men and women approach love differently. "First-year women's emotional maturity is so much more than the men's, who are about four years behind," he says. "Guys are possessed by love, but women are so much more conscious of it. Why do you think men write lyric poems—slam, bam, thank you ma'am—while women, like Bronte and Austin, write novels? Women have a more conscious understanding of love."

Boe maintains that love is the most powerful experience in a college career. "Most of us will remember everybody we kissed—but not half the courses we've taken," he says. For all of the breakups he's read about, Boe believes students remain cynical and jaded about love just until they fall for somebody new. He's got a drawer full of wedding invitations to prove it. In fact, Boe proposes that it's not food but love that is the most necessary element of life.

First-year student Justin Malvin can relate to Boe's theory. He felt those seven weeks of fall quarter away from his girlfriend were like purgatory after having spent nearly every day with her the previous year. Now that Jennifer has moved to San Francisco, the two visit each other every weekend, alternating between UC Davis and San Francisco State. Malvin concludes with a big grin, "I am a completely, ridiculously, happy guy."

Susanne Rockwell '74, M.A. '96, who writes about the social sciences and humanities for the UC Davis News Service, met her husband The California Aggie in 1973.