My parents are divorced and bitter. Neither one of them seem to believe that any of their kids should get married, as theirs (along with 50 percent of other couples in America) didn’t work out.

So when they’ve continuously tell me that I’m too young to settle down, and I need to experience life before I fall in love, I want to rip my ears off the side of my face so I can stop listening to this garbage. I’m twenty-three, independent, and head over heels in love with the man of my dreams.

We met three years ago when he started working at my job, and I never gave the poor guy the time of day. If the story was flipped, I would have given up a long time ago. But he kept trying, and I kept saying no. Then one night, a few weeks after an awful breakup with my repeated ex-boyfriend, I gave him a chance.

My heart had already been torn into a thousand pieces time and time again by my ex, so I figured there was no harm in seeing what my current boyfriend was about since I felt like I had nothing left to lose. He was never supposed to be my boyfriend.

I was never supposed to fall in love with the way his hands felt around my waist, or the way he pulls my hand up to kiss it while he’s driving, or the way he hums the “Game of Thrones” theme song every single time it comes on. None of this was supposed to happen, yet somehow it did.

He might not be so young, but most would still consider me to be too young to be settling down. I’m twenty-three. I don’t think I’m making an irresponsible decision when I plan my future and picture him in it. I am experiencing the world, and I’m experiencing it with my boyfriend, my best friend. Since we’ve been together in the last year and a half, we’ve gone on five different trips. We’ve been to places that neither one of us has been to for the first time, together. I like sharing these memories with him. It gives our relationship character. We’re constantly learning new things from each other, and I’m always looking forward to the next thing he can teach me.

We both come from interesting (to say the least) families. Both of us are from broken homes. Both of us learned to grow up faster than we had wanted to. We are very different, and also very similar. I don’t see anything wrong with falling in love with someone I consider to be my person at my age. I am seeing the world. I am learning about life. And I’m also doing the irresponsible things that twenty-somethings do. The difference between me and maybe most other people my age, though, is that I’m doing it with someone that I can see myself spending the rest of my life with. And I couldn’t be happier with it.