Passing Glances
Photo illustration by Kit Leffler
By Jayme Wiley, Jayplay writer
My boyfriend is a good-looking guy. He's tall, trim, stylish and has gorgeous hazel eyes that people would kill for. With a guy this good looking, I expect women to check him out when we head out for a night on the town. The only problem is he knows he's good looking. He checks girls out just as frequently as they check him out. It tends to get annoyed each time I see his head do a 180-degree turn to look at the beautiful girl that just walked by.
So the saying goes: guys will be guys. This is something women are just supposed to expect when entering into a relationship. Men are flirts. They look at women and get excited by those three-second passing glances. So what happens when a guy is in a relationship and his girlfriend doesn't want to accept this? What happens when guys check out that gorgeous blonde in the miniskirt as she passes through the room, and when does "just looking" go too far? All of these questions are typical for a woman or a man who are in a relationship with a flirt. "It's important for couples to talk about these things from the get go," says Nomi Redding, a clinical social worker. "It's also important for one to enter into a relationship knowing if this person has a wandering eye or not. I work with couples who deal with this problem later in their relation-
ship, so it wasn't something they had the choice of accepting in the beginning."
Redding also says that if a couple is comfortable in the relationship this shouldn't even be an issue. But, if both are comfortable but one is starting to get upset, there may be other underlying issues. He or she may not be getting enough attention from his or her partner, Redding says.
Getting enough attention is essential to a relationship. Kelsey Butler, Des Moines, Iowa senior, knows this all too well. She was in a long distance relationship with her boyfriend and visited him whenever she could. They would go out when she got there in hopes of having fun, but her boyfriend's flirtations with other girls quickly became a problem. Butler says their relationship came to an end after realizing that his wandering eye wasn't letting her to feel the way a girl should feel in a relationship; like No. 1.
"I had more respect for myself than to be with a guy who would rather look at other girls than look at me," Butler says. "I felt disrespected, and he didn't take my feelings into consideration. I know that guys will look, but when he blatantly watches a girl walk all the way across the room, that is the breaking point."
Jason Ward, Lawrence resident, says he has a beautiful girlfriend and he knows that it's a natural instinct for men to look at her as she enters a room. He also says that there is nothing wrong with looking. But to Ward, stepping over the bounds is approaching his girlfriend right in front of him. Ward says he feels disrespected at this point, and he and that person who was "just checking her out" are going to have problems. For some, the feeling of taking glances too far depends on the atmosphere that their significant other is in. If I'm out on a date with my boyfriend and he is making glances at our waitress, that is when I become upset," says Elisia Bourland, Lawrence resident. "It's all about where we are and how focused I expect him to be on me. At a bar, both of us look around and check out the goods. There is nothing wrong with that."
There are many different factors that need to be considered when it comes to passing glances. Is your loved one getting enough one-on-one attention from you. Are you in a place where your drooling is not going to draw attention or cause a scene? Redding says it is natural instinct to look, but people should ask themselves if they are taking their natural instincts too far and hurting the ones that they love.
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— Jayme Wiley
He said she said
"You want to meet my friends?"
If you're a guy hearing this from your girlfriend, the best bet is to tread carefully. How her friends respond to you could be the difference in
whether your relationship succeeds or fails. "Meeting the friends is kind of like meeting the parents," Valerie Tarbutton, Overland Park sophomore says. She says girls often rely on friends a lot in relationship matters, so they place great importance on their friends accepting their significant other. Tarbutton hasn't had any problems with her current
boyfriend, Olathe junior Jason Bentley, but she recalls a previous boyfriend her friends gave a bad review to. "That really kind of shortened our relationship severely," she says. With guys, it's not typically as much of an issue. Bentley says guys may care a little about what their friends think of a new girl, but it's not usually a make-or-break situation.
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— Joe Bant
Jayplay 11.18.04