I think I knew I had picked a good guy when my roommate liked him off the bat. They met for just a few seconds in passing, but she mentioned to me later on that he seemed really nice. Since then, they’ve interacted many times and her approval has been cemented.

It sounds almost sad to say out loud, but this is the first time I’ve gotten close to someone without a bunch of red flags going off. This is the first time I have felt like my feelings are valid, like I don’t have to constantly be making excuses for how I feel. I never have to worry that my words will be taken out of context and cause an unnecessary fight. Most of all, for the first time in a long time, I feel secure about my place in someone else’s life.

It’s a common saying that timing is everything. Maybe if the timing was better, certain relationships would have worked out. I, for one, disagree. If I was at a different place in my life, in a different time, I still think I would’ve ended up where I am; my old relationships still would’ve fallen apart. So when I had been single for a while and my now-boyfriend and I discussed the idea of dating, I said it wasn’t the right time, I needed time, we had to wait for a better time. After a while, I started realizing that there was no “right time.” If we kept waiting around for the timing to feel right, we probably would have never started dating.

How does timing play into relationships? I started talking to my boyfriend not long after my previous relationship ended, but I knew I needed to heal before I could move on. There’s no handbook to guide you through heartbreak, no timetable to show how long you’ll need to recover. I didn’t want to wait forever, but I didn’t want to rush things and turn our relationship into a rebound.

The truth, as I’ve learned through experience, is that you need to gauge things at your own pace. Recovering from heartbreak may take weeks, months or even years, depending on who you are. For me it may only have taken a few months to start dating someone else, but I still feel the sting of hurt sometimes.

My previous relationship defined a long portion of my life, and it’s not something I’ll be able to brush off and forget in such a short period of time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try again with someone new. I was blessed and cursed with an open heart, and I don’t want to rob myself of offering my affection to someone just because I was hurt by someone else.

Heartbreak and love are weird when you’re a young adult. I certainly don’t know everything, but I can take my previous experiences and apply them to the relationship I’m in now. All I can say for right now is that I’m happy I didn’t wait around for a “right time,” because I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time.