College is all about extremes: you work hard and party harder, but most importantly, you indulge yourself in all your whims and desires. This goes for drinking, smoking, partying and getting your groove on. There’s all kind of sex: some people have one night stands and don’t even acknowledge each other the next day while other people have sex with their friends, a fun platonic activity.

Sex means many different things to different people these days. For some people, it’s a meaningful way to solidify a relationship with someone you love. For another, it’s with a random person at the end of a drunken night out.

Sex is also used to get back at people and for making others jealous. A girl may sleep with the friend of a guy she likes; it’s an extreme version of the “hard to get” game. It may also be used when a guy or girl is on the rebound.

“Guys might do it to regain self confidence, and looks aren’t that important when a guy is on the rebound,” said a good friend of mine.

Some people do it for attention, while others do it to feel better about themselves, to validate that they’re attractive enough to wrangle a certain guy or girl. It’s also used to show someone they like or care about them.

Sex, particularly the reasons we have it, is in such a gray area. Still, I can’t help but wonder if in the end, it’s all done for the same reason: to find love and a relationship.

Being single is a lot of fun and is exciting, but I feel like it’s human nature to want to be with one steady person every now and then. People that say they don’t want a relationship just mean they haven’t found someone they love enough to compromise some independence. Everyone would be open for a relationship, I feel, if the right person came along.

Sex is a complicated thing. It is a subconscious desire, but it’s mixed with how society views it. In college society, it’s a cool and almost mandatory thing to do. That’s why people might do it whether or not they want to, and sometimes regardless of who it’s with.

So this leads me to ask other questions, like whether sex is useful in finding a relationship and how much stronger, if at all, it can make a relationship you’re currently in?

I have a friend who is remaining a virgin until marriage. She’s been in relationships that have lasted over a year.

“I wasn’t ready. My boyfriend at the time loved me and understood,” she said.

I have another friend who had sex with a random guy the first night she met him, and they’ve been together and inseparable for almost 10 months.

So now I ponder, is there any correlation between sex and the closeness of a relationship? People seem to follow no sort of pattern when it comes to having sex when one is single, before one gets into a relationship or during it.

Maybe I’ve been asking the wrong questions. Maybe the only sexual relationship that makes sense is the one you personally have with the act itself. As long as it makes you happy, sex is good and healthy. Even before sex is performed between two people, it’s something you have to contemplate in relation to yourself and how you feel about it.

Micol Zweig is a sophomore English major.