19 Oct 2019

High school relationships are great. There’s nothing better than having someone to lift you up through the stress of exams, someone to message at all hours of the night and someone to chat to when you’re down (who isn’t going to freak out like ya mum would).  

As great as a high school relationship is, sometimes it’s best left at just that. A high school relationship.

Now, I don’t wanna sound like ya dad when I say that, though I guess I already did. But hear me out.

When school finishes, you’re gonna have some decisions to make. Things like whether to study or take a gap year, what to study, where to study, where to work, and where to live. How to spend that extra 30 hours of the week you’ve re-gained now that you aren’t going to school from 9-3, 5 days a week.

Your boyfriend/girlfriend is going to have to make each of these decisions, too.

And you, of course, want the best for them. You want them to get that scholarship they applied for, to travel the world if they want to, to go to the uni they’ve always dreamed of. You want to see them reach their full potential and you want them to be happy.

I suppose you can see where this one’s going.

“Don’t let them hold you back. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Your career is more important than your high school love”, and all that jazz.

Well, that kind of is the point. But there’s more to it than that.

You’ve probably already done and seen a lot in your life. You’ve got life experience, and despite what people say about teenagers, you’re not completely clueless about how the world works.

But honestly, by finishing school, you’ve really only just reached the point where life begins.

Think about it.

For your whole life, you’ve been following a path set out in front of you. When you were young, you went where your parents went. Then, for the last dozen years or so, you’ve had to go to school, Monday to Friday, four terms a year.

School gave you the toolset you need to make the most of life post-graduation. It set you up to live your new life to its fullest.

But now that you’re free, it’s literally up to you what you do next. For the first time ever, you are at the complete liberty to take your life wherever you want it to go.

And while your partner might have helped you be your best self during high school, now the opposite could very likely happen. Now they might be holding you back. Or you could be holding them back.

If tomorrow your partner tells you that they’ve been offered an amazing scholarship for their dream course, but it’s on the other side of the country, what would you say? Would you tell them to ditch it, and stay here with you?

What would you expect them to say if the roles were reversed?

By all means, if things work out that you can stay together and do everything you wanna do in life, then stay together. But it’s when you choose your relationship over opportunity - especially when you’re young - where the problems start.

At the start, you may feel a little let down that you let an opportunity pass, but overall happy that you did it for the good of your relationship. But over time, that little feeling of disappointment can fester, and grow into a hint of resentment.

If this relationship has a falling out, and it turns out they aren’t the one, where does that leave you? Single and realising the opportunities you might have missed for what ultimately came to nothing. That’s where.

At the end of the day, you know deep down what the right move is and if it can work, then great! But never ever let anything hold you back from doing what's in your best interest.