I've been dating my boyfriend for almost three years now. I'm used to people asking how long we've been together and then proceeding to say, "Wow, that's a long time." I then see them begin to realize, based on my age, that my boyfriend and I must have started dating pretty young, and they would be right. I started dating my boyfriend not long after I turned 16. When I first started dating him, there were no expectations of dating through high school and then into college. We simply treated our relationship like any high school aged kids would. The first year we started dating, we would celebrate each month we were together even though it was no length of time to make a fuss about. When we hit the one year mark, we were kind of surprised by ourselves. We realized the "honeymoon" phase was over and things were a bit more serious even though we were still only in high school. Senior year went by with a series of stressors as we scrambled to plan our post-high school lives. We went into the summer still together, but we also knew the facts and had heard everyone saying the same thing: You'll break up in college if you don't go to the same school.

With our freshman year of college under our belts, we're still together. We can look back along with everyone else and see how young we started dating. You can see it in the pictures with the baby faces we used to have. We can laugh at all the dumb things we said and did. We can remember all the high school drama that used to interfere with our relationship and realize it's thankfully all over. Most importantly, we also realize that we are still young. We have been dating for almost three years, but I'm 19 and he is 20. We have no false allusions that we've made it through college and so now we can live happily ever after. We know that we have three more years of college and probably grad school ahead. When people make comments about us getting married we both say we really have no idea what the future holds. We are under no impression that we are mature enough to say for sure what we want.

We entered into this long-term relationship young and we still are young, but it's been amazing to be able to grow up along the way together. It's encouraging to have someone by your side who can realize how much you have matured as a person. That is all we can really hope for - to be able to continue to see each other grow whether that means we're together or apart. So while some may tell you beginning a long-term relationship at a young age is a bad idea, I can honestly say that for me it's one of the best decisions I've made.