From a very young age, I remember watching classic romance films that involved lots of teenage love and ridiculous haircuts. Whether it’s "Grease," "Back to the Future," or even the "Star Wars" series, prepubescent infatuation always seemed to consist of three things: passion, desire, and lust. From the time I first saw Han Solo and Princess Leia fall in love, it was my goal to find a boyfriend to have a sappy, wonderful, and cinematic teenage romance with. At the time, I didn’t know that we would be together for six years. You are about to find out that maintaining a long-term relationship in your teens is highly challenging and requires a lot more than drive-in movies, bad pickup lines, and awkward first kisses.
My boyfriend and I first met in 2007 when he was 12 and I was 13 on MySpace. He added me to his “Top 8;” we began chatting on AOL Instant Messenger and met in person at a mutual friend’s house. We made our relationship MySpace official on May 20, 2009, and it has been a wild ride from that point on.
The first year (Pictured above) was loads of fun. We still felt like 14-year-old best friends and hung out whenever our parents would let us. We would go to the movies, create silly drama, and felt immensely heartbroken when we weren’t physically together. As you can see, it is by far everything I could’ve wanted out of my juvenile fantasy. The only “real” problems we had involved not spending every day with each other, or texting an ex-girlfriend from sixth grade. Overall, it was just plain fun.
Year two was similar to year one. By now I was in the 10th grade, and we could only see each other on the weekends. Each Saturday filled with parental arguments about why we couldn’t sleep at each other’s houses or why we couldn’t hang out until 2 a.m. Each Sunday was filled with dramatic departures and tears at the thought of being apart for six whole days. I was living Tina Belcher’s ultimate romantic friend-fiction dream, and my significant other was Jimmy Junior.
Everything changes in year three. The constant texting has dulled into once an hour, the nighttime phone conversations got shorter, and I was confusing the contentment of our routine for distance between us. The weekends were still filled with bad movie nights and Chinese food, but in my eyes, I felt like my picturesque idea of recreating an 80’s romance movie was falling apart. The drama simply wasn’t there, and the highs and lows began to meet more in the middle. I couldn’t tell if it was getting boring or just complacent, so my 17-year-old self just went with it. At the time, I didn’t know was that these feelings were actually a sense of comfort I had never felt before.
This picture is us dressed for prom in 2012. Neither of us are dancers, and not many of our friends went, so we left 30 minutes after it started (both years) and went out to eat in uptown Charlotte instead.
When year four rolled around, we had both had our fair share of change. Both of our families went through rough patches, I graduated High School and moved into my dorm room at UNC Charlotte (me being a year older and graduating a year before he did), and my life was starting to become more than just my relationship. I was interested in making new friends, joining clubs, participating in school events, and learning who I was as an individual, which was something I had never fully embraced before. I was definitely living more like Elle Woods from "Legally Blonde" than Pam (with Jim) from "The Office."
(this is us, matching, dressed to go to the library)
All of this change sparked a different kind of drama that I did not have in mind during the metaphorical Nicholas Sparks novel I had written in my brain. There was lots of fighting about time management, leaving each other behind, and everything you could imagine. There were talks of splitting up, discussions on whether or not it was worth it, late nights on exam days, weeks worth of tears from both sides, and many uncovered resentments that had been pushed aside for the sake of making the most positive experience out of our time together. This lasted months, and there was nothing passionate or envious about it.
When year five appeared, it seemed like it had come fast and with a vengeance. We were both surprised that we had made it to this, and finally decided that we were going to use year five to figure out how to grow up. This involved not being so focused on each other, letting the other person do their own thing, and tagging along for support. My 14-year-old self was certainly annoyed, but my 19-year-old self knew that this was what I had actually signed up for. This was the end of my "Twilight" series, and the beginning of the last seasons of "Boy Meets World."
Year six hit this past May (2015), and my relationship has been reborn as an adult/teenage affair of the heart. Both of us are busy; we work and only see each other once a week. The text conversations appear a couple times a day, and the phone calls are usually slept through. There are still "Twilight Zone" marathons and Taco Bell nights, but the most important conclusion has been made. Whether we are Kim and Kanye or just Jessica and Brian, it feels like home when we are together. That is what I really wanted all along.
At the end of the day, you are not in a movie or cheesy television series. Relationships with your significant other still involve drama, but it is not the kind that will evoke a late night visit with pebbles thrown at your window. Something that romantic comedies leave out are the long boring talks and real-life bumps in the road. The moral of the story is that being in a serious relationship in your teens is not all it’s cracked up to be. All of the “Oohs” and “Aws” are not what it’s all about. It is about the sweaty handholding, weekend rituals, and feeling more relaxed and happy when that person is around. Relationships are hard work at any age, and it only gets more intense as the years go on. So my advice to those in long-term relationships at a young age is this: it’s supposed to feel like home, it shouldn’t be a second job, and you should find someone who you’re willing to hang on to tightly, because it is going to be a wild ride.
(this is us in the ER at 4 a.m. Choose someone you wouldn't mind doing this with.)
