Last night, I leaned over the back of the couch to kiss my husband good night.  I still like you, I whispered before kissing his cheek.

An odd thing to say, sure, but still the truth.

We met seventeen years ago in eighth grade P.E. class.  Friends only, it surprised me most of all when I found myself falling hard for him just four years later at the start of our senior year.

But falling, for us, wasn’t fun or sweet or romantic.  It was hard and real, it was shocking and terrifying.  It was learning to accept love with conditions, and that reality for two seventeen year olds doesn’t usually work.

Except for us, it solidified everything.  I stand by a claim I’ve made so often that it should be written on my tombstone.  Having to make hard decisions together so early on paved the way to the kind of marriage I thought I’d only ever dream of.

We were forced to decide if being together was really what we wanted only a month into very casually dating.  I won’t get into details, but we knew if we chose to stay together we’d face some difficulties for the rest of our lives.  When you’re seventeen, it’s really easy to just walk away.  Sure, your heart might hurt, but that’s the beauty of teenage love, you get over it.

But we couldn’t stomach the idea.  I don’t know how we knew or why we knew, but somehow deciding that no, this is what we want no matter what was the easiest decision we’ve ever made.  Neither one of us had ever known what forever was like, but we were sure.

I get asked a lot how we got from Senior Prom to Wedding Bells.  But our situation was so very different, something we couldn’t manufacture.  And really, our situation was designed to break us.  Instead, it just made us two individuals who were strong enough to handle all the shit that life throws at us together.  Our situation forced us to develop coping mechanisms.  It afforded us the opportunity to strengthen our communication and voice our concerns, working things out together.

It’s funny to me now, actually.  The whole thing was an epic nightmare, a story for another day.  But in the end, it gave us both the most precious gift we could ever hope for–it taught us how to love unconditionally.

It takes a certain kind of strength

to make it from senior prom

to wedding bells.

Have the hard conversations early.