Freshman year: Long distance relationships

So I just want to take a few minutes to address an issue that I think might be fairly prevalent with a lot of college freshmen. I was commenting on another person's blog about dancing at parties with people other than your boyfriend or girlfriend. Its a tricky issue that can cause some feelings of jealousy if not properly addressed. Being in a long distance relationship requires a lot of trust and good communication. Heres my two cents:

My girlfriend and I go to college about 3 hours apart (she goes to Tech.) Both of us agreed that its ok if we go to parties and dance with other people. However, this can often cause strife (usually on the guys side.) The root cause of this issue is that a girl's intentions at a dance party are often much different that a guys. This topic that caused more than one argument between my girlfriend and I, but through good communication and trust, we've gotten better at resolving it and seeing it on the same level. Heres the main issue:

Girls go dancing at parties to have fun. They do not need to go up to a guy and ask them to dance with them. Guys come to them. Girls don't have to put any effort in to make this happen; they just dance and its not about who they are dancing with, its just about dancing itself.

Guys have a much harder time in this situation. In most cases, guys do not just go to a dance party to dance and have fun. If they are on the dance floor, they have to do all the work to find a chick and (hopefully) make her want to dance with him. Most guys aren't going to want to have to do all that work unless they are going to "get something out of it." This makes going to dance parties less fun for guys in relationships because its simply not as easy to have fun on the dance floor.

All in all, the disparity between the reasons a girl goes to parties and the reason a guy goes to parties is what causes this conflict. As a guy, its hard to understand why your girlfriend would want to dance with other guys and have fun because its not that easy for a guy in a relationship to do. To guys, its a threat because dancing is viewed sexually (which, to be fair, is a reasonable viewpoint considering the way people dance today.) To a girl however, dancing is not usually viewed sexually, but it is just a way to have fun: no sexual intentions are there.

If this is a problem in your long distance relationship, my best advice is sit your boyfriend down and explain and really convince him that you don't have any sexual intentions when you dance with other guys, that to girls it is merely dancing. Tell him that you would much rather dance with him than anyone else; that you feel much safer and more comfortable with him than without him. Tell him that you think about him when you are on the dance floor and wish it was him you are with. (Maybe even tell him that you only find dancing sexual when its with him.) These are all things my girlfriend said that made me feel better about it. Other than that, he will have to accept the fact that guys and girls are just different in this area. Also tell him to go out and dance with other girls because you want him to have fun and you trust him. It definitely helped me to get over this by dancing with other girls. It helps restore your manhood, and that is something very important to every guy.