My relationship has lasted three years. We will be getting married in two years. It has taken a lot to get me to this point. To be perfectly honest, I have probably had more boyfriends than I can count on my hands. Things just never worked out before with anyone else, and I never knew why, until I met my fiancé.

Now, I know; it’s because I am probably the most independent woman in the universe, who also wants to have a partner at the same time. That’s a really contradictory statement. I want independence, but I want to be in a relationship. How confusing is that? How weird am I? The answer is very confusing but utterly not weird.

Every guy I was with before just did not understand this concept I am made of. Ever heard the song "She Will Be Free" by Josh Abbott? Listen to it, and you will know a little bit more about who I am. I need my space. I need to build my own life, and I need to chase my own dreams. I want a partner for that.

I could never deal with someone stepping on my dreams, so I always left. I could never deal with someone telling me who I could or could not hang out with, so I always left. I could never deal with someone making me feel smaller than I really was, so I always left. If any guy ever told me what to do in any way at all, I left. Then there came the time that I completely gave up the idea of finding a partner, the idea of having a family one day, and finally made a choice to live for myself and the family I already had. It was a really freeing moment, actually. To choose to start living only for you and not for the sole purpose of finding someone else is liberating.

Then I went to Florida for the Disney college program and stumbled upon what I’d been searching for all my life. I found my partner.

Now when I say stumbled upon, I mean I literally had no intentions of meeting “the guy” at all. When I met Uriel, we just sort of fell together. When we saw each other outside work for the first time, there was absolutely no intention there at all; we were just friends, hanging out with other friends. The more time we spent together, the more I began to like him and vice versa. The weird thing about the beginning of our story is that there was never a moment where we doubted. We just happened. We fell in love like John Green describes it: “Slowly, and then all at once.” What was so different about him? Honestly, I had no idea.

Then I came back to Texas, and we decided to try and make things work long distance.

Long distance is terrifying to most people, and honestly, it was terrifying to me back then. Now I look back, and I could not be more thankful for it. Here is where I tell you what is so different about him and where I tie in the title of this whole spiel.

He let me become me, with no help at all. He never tried to mold me into something he wanted, and he never tried to tell me what to do. He still has not to this very day. He let me go out and make mistakes that I needed to make without saying “I told you so.” He let me live my college years to the fullest and was never anxious or over-worried. We were long distance for two years, and he had never been to Texas before he met me. He knew approximately zero of my friends, none of my family and nothing about the place I lived, yet when I told him I was going out with my guy friends he said, “Okay, love you.” When I told him about my dreams of volunteering abroad after graduation, he never said, “It’s too dangerous,” or, “Can’t I come with you?” He lets me be but helps me build a confidence in myself I have never had. We are a team that functions seamlessly. We work together. We each have our own lives and our own dreams that we encourage each other to achieve. We are partners in life, neither one of us dominating or making decisions for the other. We live independently but together. We have such a freeing type of love, and I am telling you this kind of love could take over the world.

I am young, and I am lucky to have found my partner so early in life. I feel so humbled and blessed to have found a soul like his, one that harmonizes with mine so beautifully. I know some other people are still searching, and I am telling you this: Stop searching because they will come (when you least expect it), and under no circumstances should you settle. Live for you until you find a person that compliments who you are, not a person that tries to change you. Go for your dreams, and when you find your person, do not stop going. It’s possible to have independence in a relationship: You’re still you.