We all know the age-old stereotype: guys want the ass, girls want the relationship. The guys are the horny jerks, and the girls are the sensitive, caring ones. Let me take the opportunity presented to me in this column to explain to you (yes I’m talking to you, women of the world) why this is bullshit.

During the 20 years I have been walking this Earth, I have seen and heard quite a lot about relationships, hookups and the courting process in general. Many of the more drama-filled parts have been from my personal experience, but seeing as how I’m trying to illustrate how a certain stereotype does not apply to the world of men in general, and not just to myself, I will try to keep my personal experiences out of my argument.

Instead, I will focus on the words of two Binghamton University students whom I interviewed this weekend, and who, for reasons of anonymity, will be referred to in this article as G (the female) and E (the male).

G is described as “currently juggling four guys,” and is not looking for a serious relationship anytime soon. Being in college, there is nothing wrong with this, but I bring it up just to show that girls can be horny college students, too. Meanwhile, E had been hooking up with a female BU student on and off for about four months, but was unhappy and wanted more. E was shot down in his attempts to transform his hookup into a relationship because the girl was “just looking to have fun” and didn’t want anything serious.

Not the type of situations you’d normally expect, but this change in roles has become commonplace in the college dating scene. Now, that isn’t to say that every guy out there is like E, or every girl out there is like G. That would be just as bad as sticking with the original stereotype that has been bothering me. I’m writing this column in the hopes that we, as college students, can move past stereotypes like these. This will hopefully lead to a decline in the use of the phrases, “girls suck” and “guys suck,” two phrases which, I for one, am tired of hearing (and, I admit it, using).

Don’t blame your unhappiness over a specific member of the opposite sex on the idea that there is something wrong with the entire gender. Far too often I have been preparing to go to sleep at a reasonable hour when I receive an IM from a female friend saying she’s swearing off men, or vice versa for male friends. Can’t we all just realize when we’re in a situation with no happy ending in sight, cut our losses and begin the search anew, without blaming half of the world’s population for something that very well may have been our own fault?

It is your responsibility to find a partner who shares the same goals as you when it comes to relationships, not the responsibility of that person’s gender. So please, ladies AND gentlemen (sorry if it seems like I’m only calling out women, many guys are just as guilty of similar transgressions), let’s take a little responsibility for ourselves and grow up. I can guarantee you will be happier in the long run if you stay away from playing the blame game and focus on doing what you know needs to be done to make you happy, even if it’s outside of your comfort zone.

As several of my female coworkers like to tell me, “Stop bitching and grow a pair” (metaphorically speaking, ladies).