"Any relationship that survives survives because you have different activities and do different things," Valerie A. Bogdan '89 says. Both she and her boyfriend, Christian F. Liles '89, play rugby, and as a result, they spend many of their weekends apart.

As her relationship with her boyfriend Michael B. Darby '89, progressed, Lee says they did not need to spend as much time together as they had in the beginning. She says they were secure enough in their relationship to see less of each other while still maintaining their feelings for one another.

"By now, though, we've established a really strong foundation, so we don't need to see each other all the time," Lee says. "Reaffirming things is not as time consuming as getting to know each other."

Making time to see her friends was a major priority for Lee. She is heavily involved with Radcliffe activities, including helping to plan the first Women's Leadership Conference last fall. As a result, she says she really makes an effort to make sure that her friends play a vital part of her life. "I make appointments to see my friends. I make a lot of meal arrangements," Lee says.

"Scheduled contacts with other people are most important because contacts with Mike can be informal. We can be doing something or nothing at all," she says.

For Darby, the reverse is true. He says that he could have made more of an effort to make friends separate from the ones that he shares with Lee. "We have the tendency to hang out with other people, but sometimes I wish I had been a little more aggressive in seeking out new friends," Darby says. The two have a large number of friends in common, he says, in part because he spends so much time in Quincy House, where Lee lives.

Although they participate in their own activities, Steve J. Boranian '89 and his girlfriend of four years, Susan H. Spalding '89, try to include one another in these activities. Boranian says he spends a tremendous amount of time singing with the Glee Club, but he adds that Spalding never misses a concert: "She's like a Glee Club groupie."

Boranian says that one of his fondest memories of their time together here is when Spalding came to visit him in Europe during the Glee Club's tour in the summer of '87. "Having her there to share something that was so special to me really meant a lot," he adds.

Dealing with Separation

Some couples who were separated during the summer or for a semester decided to push their individuality to the limit and temporarily broke up with each other. But in all cases they decided that--contrary to the beliefs of their friends, parents or themselves--dating someone for four years does not necessarily mean missing an important part of their college experience.

During her junior year, Katsias went abroad for a semester, and she says that when she returned she and Smith felt awkward together. "When I went to England last spring, it was kind of hard because we hadn't seen each other in a long time," Katsias says. "We weren't really sure of how we wanted things to go."

"We both kind of went on dates [during that time] but it was nothing serious," she adds. "For him, and definitely for me, it made us see that we wanted to be with each other more than the people we were seeing. It strengthened our relationship."

For Lee, dating Darby for such a lengthy period of time was difficult because she did not envision her college life as including just one long relationship. "I had an intellectual problem with going out for four years," Lee says. "If I could have planned my life, I would have put my boyfriend in junior year."

Darby and Lee started dating in October of their first year at Harvard, when neither of them was established in activities or had many solid friends. Last year the two stopped seeing one another for a few weeks, before deciding that they wanted to remain together.

"I wanted to be sure that we were right for each other and not just that we had been together so long," Lee says. "Being apart also means that you can see yourself alone, and that's important, too." Lee adds that her friends also began to see the two exclusively as a pair rather than as individuals and this view affected her relationships with them.