My boyfriend and I just recently celebrated six months of dating. I know that doesn’t seem like a long time, but in a world where ghosting, lying and random hookups have become the norm, six months is actually pretty monumental.
We originally met three years ago at a track meet, exchanged numbers, barely spoke for years and now here we are.
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I love him. He’s my best friend and my better half.
Everything is going pretty well. His family loves me, and I love them. My family loves him, and he loves them. We argue, but we talk it out, and sometimes, just have to agree to disagree.
We’ve grown a lot individually and as a couple in the past six months.
That includes going through his mid-life crisis at 20 years old. Granted, I didn’t know what I wanted to know when I first went to college either.
But, he didn’t even know if he wanted to finish college. We sat down, did the research and now he’s transferring to my university to do something he will actually enjoy doing.
But that decision came with some hard judgments.
Everyone immediately thought that he was only transferring so that we could go to the same school.
They didn’t take into consideration that this university is the top in the country for this major. Or that it isn’t too expensive. Or that it’s not too far from home.
None of that mattered.
The judgments got even worse when we announced we decided to get an apartment together. I was struggling to find a roommate for the new lease year, and on-campus housing is outrageously expensive.
He also didn’t want to live with random people.
We got some major eyebrow raises for that decision.
Everyone kept asking “What happens when you break up?” They had already assumed we were going to break up and that we couldn’t do it.
That this isn’t going to last, and we are going to be stuck in an awkward situation for the rest of the lease year.
News flash: We are both 20 years old.
While we certainly don’t know everything there is to dating and living with someone, we are old enough to make adult decisions by ourselves.
I’ve been relatively on my own for quite a few years now. I pay my own bills, have my own place and all that jazz. He pays his own bills, works and goes to school.
We are both fully functioning adults.
We might not always adult well, but we still adult. We are still learning, but there is no reason to judge us and try to put us down when we are fully capable of making these kinds of decisions.
But, I get it.
We live in a world now where people are getting pregnant after knowing someone for a week. Getting matching tattoos after a month of dating. Getting engaged after a few months of dating.
We live in a world where people our age make some pretty questionable decisions.
And I recognize that. If it works out for those people, then good for them. But more times than not, it doesn’t.
But, we aren’t those people.
We are both extremely mature and know this is what we want. We talked about it months in advance and really thought it through. This isn’t just some on the whim decision that we want to happen because we love each other.
This is a decision that is going to help shape the rest of our future, individually and together.
We’ll learn as we go. Who is going to take out the trash and who is going to do the laundry (probably me because he hates doing his own laundry now). Who is going to cook and who is going to clean.
We will figure it out and make it work. But we certainly don’t need judgments from anyone during this milestone event.
Just be happy and supportive.
