We can't compare our own personal relationships to relationships of other couples. Also, don't let other people compare your relationship to their own relationship or to others. This is something that a lot of us, including myself struggle with.
I don't know if my boyfriend even knows this, but I have struggled with other couples who have dated less time than us getting engaged. Here recently, my newsfeed has been post after post of people who have been dating a year or less getting engaged or married. My boyfriend and I have been dating for five years. We've said things like, "Oh well if we end up getting married...", but we've never had a serious conversation about actually getting married.
Honestly I don't even want to get married right now, but I still struggled for a while thinking, "Am I not good enough? Am I not marriage material? Does he not want to spend the rest of his life with me?" But, I had to stop and realize that our relationship is different from those couples. Sure we've been dating A LOT longer than they have, but our relationship is at a different point. Each couple has their own journey together. He and I attend different colleges, whereas the other couples who are engaged or married either attend the same college or chose to enter the career path after high school. They're at a point where they can be married and live together. We're not. Also, we're honestly both still a little immature (him a little more so than me), and the other couples have reached a point of maturity that we haven't yet. Or there are couples who have dated less time than we have, but are older than us. They met and began dating at a later point in life, so it's their time in life to get married. It's just not our time yet.
Just because our relationship isn't at that point yet, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it. In fact, it just makes us that much stronger and builds on our foundation. So, if you struggled in the same way that I did, just remember that your relationship isn't ready for that step, yet. It is still blossoming and growing into something amazing, well more amazing than it already is.
Something that bugs me is when people try to compare my relationship to their relationship (or if they're single to what they think a relationship is). For example, my boyfriend and I don't text 24/7. I'm fine with that. He's fine with that. That's how our relationship works. We speak on the phone sometimes, we text sometimes, we snapchat sometimes. We don't have to be in constant communication to know that we love each other. We don't have to constantly know what each other is doing. Also, when we finally see each other in person, we can have long conversations face to face about our week, because we haven't already informed each other of every little thing that went on. And I'm not saying that couples who do that are in the wrong. That's their thing. It's just not ours. Every person is different, so don't you think every relationship is different, too?
On the other hand, if you compare your relationship to mine, because you want it to be like mine, I'm happy that you see mine as a role model or #goals. But, yours can't be just like mine, so don't get discouraged if it's not. Your relationship is good for you and your significant other, just like mine is good for me and my boyfriend.
Don't compare your relationship to others, embrace it. It will make you so much happier if you focus on what your relationship is, rather than trying to make it into someone else's.
