Many of us come to college leaving our significant others behind in high school. They are still living in your hometown, going to your high school, and leading a life you were familiar with for so long. You, however, have started a new life. Your life has changed, and you’re in college now. You’ve met new people, you’re forming a new social life, and you’re getting adjusted to your new surroundings. It’s been a transition for you–suddenly packing up and leaving a life you’ve known for so long, and a big part of that life was your significant other.
You may have doubts about maintaining your relationship while your boyfriend or girlfriend is in high school and you’re away at college. That’s totally normal. You may think the distance will drive you apart, or you’ll miss each other too much. These are all things we don’t expect to become a reality, yet they do. I myself have a boyfriend who’s a senior in high school. He lives locally, as my hometown is only 30 minutes from New Paltz. We see each other almost every weekend when I come home, or he comes to see me at school. While we’ve been managing to make it work, we still struggle with the reality that we both live separate lives now. We don’t see each other every day like we did in high school, and we don’t have the same schedules anymore. Coming to this realization has made us miss each other even more, and the idea of being in each other’s company all the time is something we wish we still had. But part of growing up is realizing that situations change, people move on and start new chapters of their life, and when you have a high school relationship in college, adapting to these circumstances is part of it all.
What I’ve learned is that couples don’t necessarily have to have a physical distance between them to put a strain on their relationship because the bigger picture is the mental distance. Some of you might wonder what I mean by this; when one person in the relationship is in college and the other is still in high school, there becomes this distance between them that isn’t necessarily physical. The separate lives they are living have put them in different mindsets. One person is still living their life in high school, focused on applying to college and what not, and you’re already there. You’ve gone through the stress of applying to school, of figuring out what you want to do out of high school. You’ve grown up more than your significant other, and you are going after what you want. In my case, my boyfriend (still being in high school) is not really sure where he’s headed. He doesn’t have it all figured out yet, and that’s driven him to doubt our relationship. We’re not mentally or physically in the same place anymore, so it’s hard to be in sync with one another. It’s hard when we talk on the phone and hear about how we went through our separate days, and the things we did with other people but not with each other. We miss that, and we wonder if we’ll ever get back to that happy medium.
For me, maintaining my relationship in college with my boyfriend who’s in high school has been about acceptance: accepting that we don’t see each other in school every day and that we do lead separate lives. If I have advice for college students who are still in a high school relationship, it's that you have to focus on you. Fight for whatever you have that’s worth fighting for, but the most important thing is how you’re going to make yourself happy. Don’t sweat the small stuff, because maintaining a high school relationship in college is definitely a struggle, and not an ideal situation.