“High school sweethearts” seems like an endearing and awe-inspiring title to have, but the reality of it, unfortunately, isn’t really as adorable as it sounds.
There are many factors that display why it isn’t as “sweet” as it seems, but the fundamental one — is immaturity. As of 2017, the divorce rate for high school sweethearts is 54% within 10 years of marriage, which is drastically higher than the 32% divorce rate for average American couples in that year.
Couples that are rooted from high school simply have more room for error than couples created later in life. After all, high school is a place where kids truly begin to grow up. However, just because this is where they begin to grow up, it does not mean that’s where they will become completely mature.
2018 alumni Kade Coudron has learned a lot about himself since leaving PV. “Everybody is still a kid in highschool; even the seniors,” said Coudron. “After only two years of being in college, I’m already a completely different person than I was in high school. When you start being independent and live on your own, you learn a lot more things about yourself and quickly start to steer away from the kid you once were in highschool.”
Simply, four years is not enough time for anyone to completely grow up. It’s immature to think of someone from high school as a soulmate when there’s still many years of life left to live — especially since life changes so drastically after high school is over.
However, just because it’s not wise to go soulmate searching in high school does not mean it’s not okay to date. If anything, high school relationships are great learning experience; it helps one figure out who they are, what they want and how to even be in a relationship to begin with.
“Because high school is the last time you’ll ever have the luxury of living under someone else’s roof, I think it’s good to put yourself in learning experiences like dating then, rather than starting when you don’t have that safety net anymore,” 2018 graduate Ava Stigler stated. “Even though it’s not smart to think your high school relationship is going to last, it doesn’t mean that a relationship would be for nothing. It teaches you a lot of lessons you can’t teach yourself.”
Overall, it’s just good advice to focus on accumulating life experiences in general. Whether it be dating, working or anything else, it’s never wise to assume that the first few tries of anything will end up being the final ones. It takes a lot of jobs and to get to the one that will make the most money; the same principle goes for relationships. So don’t be stupid; there’s time to get married later.
