The relationship gift set comes with sex as a special feature. However, sex most definitely does not come with a relationship. In fact, it seems that in college, emotions are sold separately and are only available at select store locations.

With no magical map to lead the way, single ladies (and single men) are left to fend for themselves in an ever-shifting Never-Never Land of college dating where sex is as prominent a landmark as the Eiffel Tower is in France.

I may not be Carrie Bradshaw or Bridget Jones, but I have seen my girlfriends go through numerous dating disasters and have experienced my own fair share of humorous mishaps (which were somewhat tragic at the time) to know that in college, the protocol of real world dating generally does not apply.

While sex itself is a timeless act (and in some cultures surrounded by much ritual and ceremony), it’s the contemporary undergraduate circumstances surrounding sex that turns the situation into a strange (and often comical) hybrid product of co-ed lifestyle.

Factor in the party scene and the nocturnal bar sub-culture, and your dating experiences are basically a game left up to chance, bound to be a hit or miss, making sex a nice bonus at the end of a night out.

I could probably write a book filled with hookup tales starting from freshman year to senior graduation that would become a bestseller based upon the fact that, whether single or taken, many young women (and no doubt some men) from universities across the country could say, “Hey! That happened to me!”

Over in Never-Never Land (aka college), the formula of girl-plus-boy-plus-sex could equal: a) a relationship, b) friends with benefits, c) a one-time hookup that has been reduced to an occasional “hey, what’s up,” or d) an emotional train wreck that perpetually floats around between all of the above.

Our society has done a thorough job creating expectations of emotion and sex through romanticized media, but it seems as though, in college, the two are like oil and vinegar. They simply don’t mix — especially when finding someone to have a relationship with can be so hard, and finding someone to have sex with can be so easy.

Literally.

And with hooking up being the game of “the seven degrees of so and so” that it is, the chance of not knowing at least two other people that your current object of affection has “hooked up” with is slim to none.

The funny thing is, even if you are in a relationship, there’s all the drama that comes with dating within a collegiate network that increasingly becomes smaller and smaller as you approach your senior year.

There are the spies of your significant other and the loyal friends who document and report your every move to the point where you feel as though Big Brother is watching. The only thing that seems to be missing is a weekly tabloid documenting the weekend bar-hopping gossip, events and drama complete with blackmail-worthy photography.

Wait, we have Facebook.

Then there is the ultimate battle, the one that puts sex at the forefront of all dating endeavors: Why have sex with just one person when there are so many opportunities to play the field? Well, at least there might be. Keep in mind that these additional opportunities vary for the sexes, depending on your school’s male-to-female ratio. You could luck out, or your love-life could start to look like an old episode of The Bachelor.

Wonderful.

My point is: while we are stuck in this alternate dating desert, we need to realize the world in which we are dating and having sex and relationships. It’s a mini realm that we can’t see we are stuck in because, well, we really are stuck. I’m not saying all sex in college is casual, random, and under more or less shabby conditions, because there is always the exception.

That is exceptionally rare.

However, pay attention because there is good news — a little light at the end of the dismal dating tunnel. Once we are on the outside looking in, when our post-college lifestyles begin, sex, dating, and relationships will inevitably be upgraded from the tattered mayhem that college students experience.

It’s true, and if you’re lucky and resourceful, this enhancement could possibly even happen prior to graduation, if you take a step outside of this dating world before you officially become alumni. It won’t be perfect, as there still will be no enchanted guide map or authorized rulebook entitled “Dating 101 for Dummies,” but it will be kicked up a notch.

Whether you prefer to be in a fulfilling, committed relationship or enjoy the liberating freedom of the single lifestyle, the mere possibility of sex within a more sophisticated and mature environment takes us out of the desert and a little closer to paradise.

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