I Married my High School Sweetheart: Lessons About Love

I know the look, and I know the question behind the look. It happens every time that someone hears that I married my high school sweetheart.

You are probably thinking it right now. Have we been going out consistently since high school? Did we ever break up? Those are the questions that people ask. But what they really want to know: have we only slept with one person our entire lives?

The short answer is that my husband and I have been together since I was 15, we had a few brief on-and- off periods. My sexual health is fine, thank-you.

The longer answer is more complicated. The trajectory from making out in front of my locker to having a family with three kids and a dog is one more fraught than the white picket fence fantasy of high school sweethearts would let on.

I would like to tell you that I believe in soul mates and destiny, that we are constantly surrounded by the frothy glow of an Oprah-approved TV movie. But I can’t. The reality of marriage is that is hard work; it doesn’t matter if you met at 15, 25 or 35. There are days when we drive each other crazy and days when we are madly in love. And most days are somewhere in between the two extremes.

Our marriage has less to do with how long we have been together, and more to do with the choices we make today, and every day.

But we can never escape the label of “high school sweethearts” and the eye roll that goes with it. My kids think it’s totally normal to have parents who met at a young age. But I don’t want them to feel that our love story is somehow better or more pure than what will, in all likelihood, be a bumpier journey for them. 

My 13-year-old son is starting high school next year and I want him to know that there is no expectation that he will find his life partner loitering near the smokers’ doors, in fact I would rather he doesn’t. Or does, or whatever. It’s his life, I just hope that loving (responsibly) and being loved (honestly) is a part of it.

I expect that there will be slammed doors in my future, as well as a lot of cries of “How can you understand? You met Dad in high school!!” But there are things I will understand; the insecurity; the raw pain and emotion of young love; the delicate balancing of friends and significant others. There will also be things that I don’t, but parenting isn’t only about teaching from your own experience. How could it be? The lives we live aren’t the same as our parents’. And the lives our kids lead won’t be the same as ours.

I may not have lived through what it is like to have had a number of serious boyfriends or girlfriends. But I do understand what it is like to feel elation and pain, to make choices in love. 

Most days, I can show them what a good relationship looks like and what mutual respect, a shared sense of humour and the desire to build a strong family can create. I may not want my kids to marry their high school sweethearts but I can hope that they end up in the same place as me – with someone who loves them for who they are today, not for who they were when they started dating.