Deciding what I wanted to do with my relationship with my boyfriend before I headed off to Indiana and he stayed on Long Island for his senior year of high school was probably one of the most stressful and emotional times in my life. I was already extremely anxious about the move to college, and having to leave my boyfriend did not make matters any better. So I turned to my family and friends for advice, hoping someone could just tell me what the right thing to do in this situation was.

The majority of the people I spoke to told me that I shouldn’t go to Indiana while I'm in a committed relationship. Instead, I should experience college and take it all in."You're going to feel like you're being held back," they warned me. In fact, very few people pushed me to believe in my relationship and take a risk, encouraging me to try it out and see what happens. “If you love each other then you can make the distance work,” they said.

If I’m being completely honest, I was upset by how many people told me I should move on. It was easy for them to say, but no one knew what we had been through together, and how, when I thought about breaking up with him, my stomach actually hurt. Regardless, I went off to school single. But we still talked all day, every day, and soon, I realized that I was single because everyone told me to be single and I thought that it was the right thing do. After a few weeks of going back and forth and after much discussion, we decided to take the risk and try to make the distance work. And I couldn’t be happier.

But still, I can’t help but stop to read all of these articles that pop up on my Facebook news feed about how being in a long-distance relationship isn’t smart, because it just holds you back from experiencing college. Bullsh*t.

My opinion is that if you feel like you’re being held back, then you’re not in a healthy relationship to begin with. It has nothing to do with the distance. As much as it kills me that I haven’t seen my boyfriend in 81 days (but who’s counting?), I have never felt like I can’t do something because I’m in a relationship with someone who’s 800 miles away. "Experiencing college” doesn’t mean engaging in random hookups every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, which is the only thing that being in a relationship is holding me back from. If your significant other is making you feel like you can’t go to that big frat party on Friday night or make friends or join an activity – the things that I think define “experiencing college” – then there are other issues that you should be addressing. Sorry to be so blunt.

I have still made friends (with both girls and boys), joined clubs, succeeded in my classes, and engaged in school-wide activities like tailgating for the football games – all without feeling “held back”. In fact, I’d say being in a long-distance relationship has helped my extremely difficult transition. In the beginning of school, I would call him crying because I was homesick, and he would comfort me like no one at school could, or I would excitingly share with him that I made a friend and he’d respond with only the most positive words. If I was nervous about going out, he was there for me to explain why I was nervous and help me through it. During a time when I was uncomfortable and alone in a new place, I had my boyfriend to lean on, even if I couldn’t physically lean on him.

You should be in a relationship because that person makes you feel good about yourself, makes you the best version of you, and only hopes for you to be successful. Sure, it kills me when I see couples around campus holding hands or hear about my friend's hookup last night when I haven’t been kissed in months, but I know that it will all be worth it when we reunite and I run into his arms for the first time since August.

So stop telling me to break up with my high school boyfriend. Thanks for your opinion, though.