Romance
Romantic relationships can take different forms, from casual dating to long-term commitments. According to Pew Research Center, around 35% of teens have relationship experience. While these relationships can be a source of emotional support for teenagers, they can often include challenges.
Seniors Payton Hathaway (she/her) and Jeremiah Lundberg have been dating for two and a half years. They started talking towards the end of their freshman year and officially began their relationship the following fall.
“I couldn’t even imagine not having him in my life because he’s my best friend,” Hathaway said. “He’s my best friend first and then he’s my partner, which is such an important trait to have. If you’re not entirely — fully comfortable around them like you are with your best friend — I wouldn’t even know what to do.”
She said learning to be vulnerable with her boyfriend has made her much more confident in her personality and assertive in her personal boundaries, especially with friends.
“Freshman year, I was really shy and I cared a lot about what other people thought of me, and sophomore year I was like that as well,” Hathaway said. “But by junior and senior year, as I’ve been in the relationship for longer, I realized that I don’t care what other people think of me, and I think that has a lot to do with him, because of the way he’s lifted me up and allowed me to be myself and accepted me for who I am.”
While she initially anticipated difficulty in balancing time with her boyfriend and her friends, Hathaway said it’s been relatively easy because her friends are often busy. She sets aside time for friends, for occasions like ‘galentines’ and spends as much time as possible with her boyfriend, seeing him three times a week.
“I love my friends, but they take a lot of energy out of me, so it’s difficult to be with my friends for a longer period of time because I need to keep that energy up,” Hathaway said. “But when in a relationship, I don’t need to keep up energy that I don’t have. So with balance, I would say my relationship comes first and then my friends.”
After graduation, Hathaway plans on attending Western Washington University while Lundberg stays at home to complete EMT schooling. They intend to transition to a long-distance relationship, Hathway said, in the hopes of seeing each other at least every other weekend.
“As more time passes, I realize that I wouldn’t want to be with anybody else ever,” Hathaway said. “Even when my friends talk about celebrity crushes or whatever, I don’t speak, because my long term plan is to be with him for as long as possible. Obviously, I can’t predict the future, but as of right now it looks like he’s my future husband.”
Senior AJ Donohoue (he/him) also met his boyfriend at school. Donohoue started dating his boyfriend senior Astrophel Rose-Limback six months ago. They met last year in finance class, then asked each other out for homecoming. He said that before getting into a relationship, it’s important to be independent.
“Make sure you’re not overwhelmed with time. You have known this person for a while and there seems to be mutual feelings, and just making sure that the relationship won’t impact your life negatively with how you’re spending your time and attention,” Donohoue said.
Sophomore Aaron Guo (he/him) has been dating sophomore Amira Hoffman for the past year. He said that they met in sixth grade and were friends for a few years before dating. He said that being in a relationship is a good way to spend his free time.
“I would’ve spent (my time) doing something pointless like going on my phone, stuff like that,” Guo said. “I think it took up more time in a good way.”
Reflection
Ending a relationship can be difficult. High school relationships end for a multitude of reasons — most commonly struggles with long distance, disagreement about future plans and behavioral changes. The end of a long-term relationship can be especially difficult for teenagers given their emotional vulnerability during such a developmental period.
Senior Amy Klondale (she/her)* dated her boyfriend for almost three years when he broke up with her at the end of their junior year.
“It was really, really hard for me, not only when it happened, but for a month after I was probably in the worst mental state that I’ve ever been in,” Klondale said. “Because when I get attached to people and they’re intertwined with my life, for them to be just gone … it was literally an overnight thing. Almost every day for three years, and yeah, we were having some kind of trouble, kind of an up and down thing. But it wasn’t a possibility in my mind for us to break up.”
Klondale began dating her ex-boyfriend at the beginning of their freshman year after growing close as friends. For her, the hardest part of their breakup was losing one of her closest friends.
“Yes, we were dating, but I think that the thing that I valued most, and the thing that I’ve missed the most since we broke up, was not necessarily the boyfriend aspect, but the best friend,” Klondane said. “I just lost my best friend.”
While Klondale said the initial pain of the breakup was intense, she’s learned a lot about herself in the months since. She said that she always prefers to be around people, even if they’re just sitting in silence. In the first weeks after the breakup, she spent time relearning how to be comfortable on her own.
“In that time I really pushed myself to feel what it felt like to be alone, but not be lonely. Be okay in my own presence, and find ways to keep my mind occupied without needing somebody or relying on somebody else for it,” Klondale said.
Despite its eventual end, she said she’s glad she had such a deep and meaningful relationship.
“Looking back now, I have no regrets. I think both of us learned a lot in the relationship, and I will forever value the time we had together and the friendship we had and all the memories we made,” Klondale said. “I also think that I learned a lot from our breakup. Although there were a lot of ups and downs in the relationship and post-relationship, it was all worth it in the end; I learned a lot from it.”
