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Elite Daily:

Why You Should Go After The Person You Think Is ‘Out Of Your League’

“They’re out of my league.”

No, she’s not out of your league. Neither is he, for that matter.

We really need to stop putting people in these categories. These categories were made up who knows when, and they’ve run our relationships for far too long.

No one is out of your league. There shouldn’t be a pool of people in your league, and a different pool of people out of it. There should be one big pool with everyone in it. That just makes sense.

If you see everyone as out of your league, then everyone is an equal challenge. There isn’t a distinction between people who you think you can and cannot get. If you see no one as out of your league, then everyone is at the same level. This makes everyone fair game.

By labeling someone as “out of your league,” you’re limiting yourself. You’re also kind of degrading the people who you think are “in your league.”

You’re basically saying to them, “You’re not hot enough to be out of my league, so I’ll try to get with you because my chances of success are higher than they would be if I tried to get with, let’s say, that hottie over there.” Uh, no thank you. I’d rather be with someone who actually thinks I’m a prize.

If, for some unknown reason, you can’t get over the thought that he or she might be out of your league, at least don’t let it stop you from going after him or her. Use this person’s perceived unattainability as a driving force, and actually get him or her. Prove your own thoughts wrong.

By going after people who you consider to be too good for you (even though they shouldn’t be), you challenge yourself. Boy, do we humans love a good challenge.

We are beings who thrive on overcoming adversity and accomplishing things we never thought possible. If we try to get someone who we never thought would be interested and succeed, think: How amazing would that feeling be?

Of course, there’s a chance this person won’t go for you. But at least you tried, right? Odds are, your chances of success are higher than your chances of failure.

The issue of “they’re out of my league” goes further than limiting yourself and degrading the people who you think are “in your league.” If you see someone as out of your league, chances are, you place him or her on an extremely high pedestal. It should be the other way around, though.

If you’re convinced you’re not going to pursue this (seemingly) unattainable person, then why are you worshiping him or her? Focus your attention (and your imaginary pedestal) on a person you’re genuinely interested in.

Don’t place these “more attainable” people on such a high pedestal that they feel they need to be worshipped, but do place them high enough to think they are prizes. The people we date are the people we have feelings for (obviously). These are the ones who we think are great, and we believe they could make us great too.

Instinctively, when we start getting to know these great people and our feelings for them start growing, we place them above other people. We don’t only put them above others in the sense that they come before most people. We also believe they are genuinely better than most of the people we know.

Holding people to a higher standard raises your expectations of them. Although that’s more pressure on the people who we put on that pedestal, it helps keep us from settling.

Settling is something I think people take too lightly. If you settle for someone, your relationship just kind of plateaus. That’s no fun.

By going for people who we think are beyond our reach (and getting them), we can keep the relationship from plateauing. So, when you find that someone who’s worth putting on a pedestal, do it.

Why Dating Someone In An Open Will Always Lead To Heartbreak

Open relationships don’t exist.

Sure, there are “no strings attached” relationships and “friends with benefits” relationships, but those aren’t actually open relationships. Someone always gets attached, and to that person the relationship is very much not open.

The reason this happens is because the odds of you being physically intimate in an open relationship are pretty high and intimacy leads to emotions. It’s just hard not to gain feelings for someone when you’re letting them into a really private part of your life.

If you’re in a real open relationship — the type where you both agree on not being monogamous — then you know that at the end of the day, no matter who else your SO was with before you, they’ll always come back to you.

In these new age open relationships (no strings attached and FWB) there’s no guarantee the person you view as your SO will come back to you because they don’t have to. Technically, they’re free to come and go from your life as much as they please, and as much as you let them.

I wouldn’t be able to be in an open relationship because I would constantly be thinking about all the other people the person I liked was getting with.

As is, I constantly compare myself to other girls, so I can’t imagine how it would be if I had to do it in bed too. My confidence would probably plummet.

Open relationships lead to heartbreak almost every time; one person almost always falls for the other who in turn doesn’t fall for them back.

An open relationship sometimes seems like the ideal case if you’re just starting off with someone. You get the best of both worlds: You get to be with other people, but you also get to come home to one person.

But then a problem occurs. At some point you stop getting with other people because you only want to be with your partner, but they don’t. What happens then?

Then, you’re sitting at home, eating shit, waiting for your SO to get home from a night spent at the bar doing their thing with a new person they happened to meet.

Finally, they get home and you each talk about your days. If they’re honest they’ll tell you about the person they were with and then you’re left feeling shitty because you were waiting around for them to come back.

My roommate was in somewhat of an open relationship and — expectedly — her feelings for the guy started to grow a lot.

He had told her he didn’t want anything serious, and she said that was OK. But, when he ended it because they wanted different things and it was unfair to the relationship, she was left heartbroken.

It should’ve been expected because college is supposed to be about having fun and meeting new people, right?

It makes sense, it does, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less when you really like someone only to find out that their feelings aren’t entirely reciprocated, or even reciprocated at all.

The feelings gained in these types of open relationships don’t compare to those of meeting someone at the park, hanging out with them and being like “Wow, I could like this person.”

The feelings gained in these relationships fuck you up because they branch from intimate experiences. To some people sleeping with someone, or even just cuddling, may not seem like a big deal. But to most, these are intimate experiences that leave feelings of like, or even love, lingering in their minds for days after.

When you’re in a relationship that induces these feelings, knowing that you’re not good enough for someone to be engaging in those activities with you and only you can be traumatizing. It leaves you questioning yourself, your worth, your beauty and essentially every other quality you possess.

The connection of intimacy is meant to be for people who are dedicated to each other, so it’s unnatural for us to have that connection with someone who we’re not trying to be with, both emotionally and physically.

If the person you want to be with wants to be in an open relationship, proceed with caution.

Go into the relationship with the mindset that if you get emotionally involved with this person and they’re not doing the same, you need to bow out quickly and gracefully.

It may hurt at first, but it will hurt a lot less than the pain of knowing the person you’re emotionally invested in may be emotionally invested in someone else.

How Social Class Can Still Play A Low-Key Role In Your Relationship

It’s kind of sad to think that in 2016, social classes still matter. They don’t matter as much as they did in the 18th century, when associating with a “lesser” class made you lesser, and we definitely don’t marry in order to boost our social class anymore. The archaic nature of social class is thankfully no longer the status quo, but we’d be kidding ourselves if we said money had little to no effect on personal relationships every once in a while.

They matter in the sense that people in different social classes have undeniably different mentalities on all things money. I wouldn’t say I’m rich, but I am well-off. My friends always kind of knew, but it just wasn’t something we ever really discussed.

It wasn’t something I flaunted, and it wasn’t something that ever really came up in conversation. It was just sort of there. I grew up not really knowing the value of money. Slowly, but surely, I’m learning.

My boyfriend, on the other hand, didn’t grow up that way. His family didn’t live paycheck to paycheck, but they did have their fair share of struggle.

This poses an issue sometimes. He grew up one way, and I grew up another. It’s hard going against things we were taught all throughout our childhoods because they’re not even things we were taught, but rather things that were a reality for us.

My reality was spending money on things we wanted that would bring us joy, even if we didn’t need it. His reality was a little less wanting something and getting it, and a little more getting it only if you needed it. With different realities like that, it’s kind of difficult to match up circumstances from time to time.

We make it work, though. It’s not something that could break us apart, but it’s something we have to deal with and something that isn’t going away. It’s a perpetual, low-key elephant in the room.

Relationships really come down to how you get over things that could tear you apart. Obstacles present themselves, and how you and your significant other work through them will be defining points in your connection to each other.

Money is always going to be a thing for us. Sometimes money’s going to be something we don’t really clash over, but sometimes it’s going to be something we just can’t avoid. It’s sort of an issue, but it’s also not a big deal. It’s very ambiguous while being simultaneously complicated. There are times when societal differences will cause a wedge in your relationship through no fault of your own or your partner’s.

It’s not a bad thing to spend money on someone you care about, but there’s a difference between spending money that you have and someone spending money you could be saving (or maybe even money you don’t have at all).

Money will be an issue at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of your relationship (and possibly the start of your future beyond just plain old dating). In the beginning, you’re going to spend money on “month-iversary” gifts, on little chocolates to remind your boo he or she is your boo, on first dates and on flowers.

In the middle, you’re going to spend money on things that are more serious, like anniversary dinners and gifts, promise rings (if you’re into that kind of stuff) and maybe even family trips. At the end of a basic relationship (and the beginning of the next phase), your money is going to go to things like moving in together, getting a dog, getting engaged, your wedding, etc.

When you start getting to the “end,” that’s when the real spending starts. Let’s say you and your boo want to live in New York. For you, it might be easier for you to rent something in the middle of Manhattan than it will be for your boo if he or she struggles more financially.

If you want the big diamond you’ve always dreamed of, the big white dress and the big wedding (lots of big things happen later on in life, so I hear), he may not be able to financially give you those things you want. It’s up to you to decide whether or not that’s a problem.

As a relationship gets more and more serious, the gifts you want to give to your SO get more serious as well. And the more serious things get, the more money you’ll have to dish out.

Really, the whole different social class and spending mentality thing comes down to how you deal with it. If you see it as a problem, it’s going to be a problem. If you see it as an obstacle that you need to get through or skip over, then so be it. If you see it as something that’s present, but not an actual issue, then it won’t be.

So, yes, social classes are still a thing. And yes, they do still effect mine and others’ relationships to a certain extent, but they’re not as severe as they once were.

If I want to marry my boyfriend, I sure as hell can do that, and no one can stop me. And that, my friends, is progress.

Why, For A Traveler, An Airport Becomes A Kind Of Home Away From Home

The thought that — with the purchase of one ticket — you can go anywhere in the world is baffling. Can you imagine walking into the airport one day with only your carry-on and passport in hand, randomly choosing somewhere to go and just going? Something that amazing is only possible in an airport.

I’ve been traveling —statewide, nationwide and worldwide — my entire life. It’s something my family has always done. My dad comes up with these random ass places to travel to, and well, that’s what we do. It’s what we spend the majority of our money on.

When you’re in and out of airports as much as I have been, they become somewhat of a happy place. The white surrounding walls with tacky, yet comforting designs, the sound of planes taking off and landing from the same strip of concrete and the multitude of things to do in all in one place are all staples of my childhood.

When you’re an avid traveler, your early morning drives to the nearest airport are second-nature. The night before you set off is always a sleepless one because you’re too busy last-minute packing or bidding people adieu. The hour-long wait in security on really busy travel days are simultaneously annoying and (somewhat) inviting.

While most people go home from school or take time off from work to spend the holidays with their families, I spent winter break in Japan with my family. My trip to Japan started with an 18-hour flight day, which included five hours to LAX, and then 13 hours from LAX to ITM (Osaka International Airport).

In those 18 hours, I slept maybe a total of seven. In between flights, my family and I went into the airport lounge and ate everything in sight. We had to get all the food we could because we didn’t know when the flight attendants were going to be serving food, and a 13-hour flight is daunting.

Throughout that nearly day-long endeavor from the US to Japan, and all the hours spent in the airport leading up to our flight, I never felt one pang of homesickness. I was home.

Spend enough time in an airport, and you’ll begin to memorize its details. After some time, you’ll have your favorite restaurant, shop and bar picked out just to ensure your next stop at the airport is equally as thrilling. Air travel is daunting for some, but to me, it’s as comforting as crawling into my bed after a grueling day of classes.

Airport familiarity comes with the territory. You travel, travel and travel, and at first, it seems like a nuisance. But, the memories you create at these destinations make all the travel worthwhile. That’s what I love about airports: the promise of adventure.

I’m 20 years old, and I’ve been to 20 countries. I’ve been to 20 countries in my 20 years of life. I’ve had 20 years worth of adventures with my family that I won’t soon forget, and they all started with an airport.

It’s a shame that science hasn’t figured out a way for us to live until we’re 196 years old because if that were the case, I could visit the other 176 countries I have left to visit. I’d visit one each year until the day I die.

That’s my crazy, far-fetched goal in life. I want to visit every country in the world, even the ones that don’t seem appealing at first glance. Each country in the world has something for someone, and I’m determined to find out what that something is.

One day, I’m going to walk into the airport with just my carry-on and passport in hand, pick a destination and go. And while I wait for my flight to board, I’m going to wander around the airport that has now become my second home.

I’ll shop, eat, read and maybe even get a massage, and then I’ll go on my adventure. And you should, too.

The Independent Florida Alligator:

Second annual Cupid’s Consent Week

The days leading up to Valentine’s Day are full of love, but they’re also a time to review sexual safety.

STRIVE, a GatorWell organization, aims to raise awareness about sexual violence throughout the week around campus with the second annual Cupid’s Consent Week.

“(Cupid’s Consent is) a positive sort of look at healthy relationships, a real celebration of healthy relationships, the idea of consent, listening to the limits and boundaries people put up,” said Rita Lawrence, Interpersonal Violence Prevention coordinator.

Consent Week is meant to promote equality and respect for all genders, she said.

“(The mission is) to communicate a positive message about healthy communication and respect for sexual boundaries … and truly asking and listening for consent,“ Lawrence said.

Annie Carper, victim advocate in the Office of Victim Services, said she believes the issue of consensual versus nonconsensual sex is an important conversation to have.

Consent Week started Friday at GatorNights with a celebrity kissing booth.  The organization’s first Dirty Talk 101 session will be held at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Ustler Hall Atrium. It’s intended to help up to 80 students enhance their love lives, and Lawrence said she thinks it will be the most effective event.

“The workshop teaches you how to communicate your desires to your partner(s), whether it’s the first, the hundredth, or the only time you will engage in intimate activity with them,” she wrote in an email.

STRIVE and Peer Educators are ending Consent Week by tabling on the Plaza of the Americas on Thursday at 11 a.m., Lawrence said. Members are hoping to double last year’s attendance, about 100 students.

Food tasting at First Magnitude

The First Magnitude Brewing Co. is hosting its first local food tasting.

To kick off the event, Forage and Blue Oven Kitchens are bringing in multiple vendors including Fables Catering and Wild Man Foods, FED Food Co., The Cookie Parlor and Bubba Luigi’s Road Trip. The event will take place from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, and tickets are $15 at the door.

Meg The Losen, the president of the First Magnitude Brewing Co. at 1220 SE Veitch St., said members of Forage, a nonprofit farm in Gainesville, did a special citrus tasting during the fall that was well received by the community. This time, they wanted do something else with more food vendors.

The food tasting was supposed to be a casual event but the response was so overwhelming they started pre-selling tickets to avoid running out of samples. The cap for the tasting is set at 150 people, and advance tickets have sold out.

“It was actually put out, sort of casually, as a Facebook event,” The Losen said.

The Losen said she hopes that if this event goes well, First Magnitude, Forage and Blue Oven Kitchens could work together again and have a bigger event later on.

“We’re just going to have a tasting of some kind, so you can spend a ticket at (Forage’s table) and then at the Blue Oven table,” said Val Leitner, president of Blue Oven Kitchens. “I’m going to be doing a marmalade tasting.” 

The Florida Catholic:

Summer camp in Haiti: ‘Amazing … humbling’ experience

MIAMI | Living up to their group’s name — Amor en Acción/Love in Action — a group of young adult missionaries from Miami made their way to Haiti in mid-June for a 12-day mission trip in Môle St. Nicolas.

A little town in the northwestern part of Haiti, Môle St. Nicolas is in the Diocese of Port-de-Paix, the poorest in Haiti and also the sister diocese of the Archdiocese of Miami. The objective of the trip was to run a summer camp for the children in the area.

The five young adult missionaries — Brittani Garcia, Christy Piña, Jonas Erthal, Joaquin Pannunzio, and Paulina Rios — were accompanied by two mission leaders, Raquel Lauture and Andres Novela, Msgr. Edward Pace High School’s campus minister.

The group spent their days in Môle St. Nicolas teaching almost 200 kids different lessons from the Bible, feeding them and playing outdoor games with them. Each missionary was assigned one classroom and had at least one young adult leader from the town assisting them.

Amor en Acción is an archdiocesan lay missionary group that has been serving in Miami’s sister diocese for more than 30 years.

“This year’s summer mission to Haiti was moving, eye-opening, and a manifestation of the universal language of love,” Rio said, citing the missionary group’s name.

Often, people believe that mission trips mostly impact the people who are visited. However, the reality is that mission trips impact the missionaries almost as much, if not more, than the people they visit.

“The mission to Haiti was a complete success as well as an incredibly humbling experience,” Erthal said. “The community of Môle Saint Nicolas were very welcoming while cooperating with us in order to ensure that the summer camp would be an amazing week for the children.”

The missionaries described the trip as an amazing and life-giving experience, even though the extreme poverty in the region was the most saddening part of the trip.

“Spending time in Haiti gave me a tremendous change of perspective as to how to see the world. We live so close to these people yet our realities are worlds apart,” Pannunzio said.

The most heartwarming thing the missionaries experienced was that the kids remembered them by their names, Garcia said. The missionaries and the people of Môle are looking forward to next summer when they can all come together again.

Wuso, a special needs young adult from Môle, phrased it best when he said, “Go, so you can come back well.”

Reporter Christy Piña was one of the missionaries who went on this trip. She is a graduate of Msgr. Edward Pace High School in Miami currently studying journalism at the University of Florida.