We have all been there, in the room with a couple who has been together since they were fourteen.

Somehow they read each others minds and giggle constantly about inside jokes that no one else knows.

They humbly brag that they’ve known each other for half of their lives. Quickly doing the math, for the thirty year old couple it checks out.

You think about how nice it must be to have given yourself to only one person. How nice but also how odd and unfamiliar.

You wonder if the awkward teenage kisses morphed into something more erotic as time went on.

How did they even stay liking each other after their puppy dog love wore off?

As much as we romanticize this couple, it will never be us and realistically, we shouldn’t want it to be us because it’s un-relatable to most of the world.

It’s fun to dream about being taken to prom by the same boy that walks us down the aisle, but thats only two percent of the marriage pool.

The story that we will tell our kids in the future will be much more realistic and relatable.

We will tell them that we got ready for yet another date after swearing off dating.

That we have sat at a restaurant alone, checking our phones insistently waiting for someone to show up.

We have cried over one person while curled up in someone else’s arms.

That some Valentine’s days were spent with the girls, giggling and eating cupcakes. Other years were spent searching for the right gift to give someone while secretly hoping we would wake up to a dozen roses.

We will tell our kids that they may go through lots of life events alone. That buying a house, graduating college, getting a promotion may all be celebrated with family instead of a partner.

We will tell them they will probably endlessly swipe on dating apps. Downloading and deleting in the name of self care.

That it’s okay to romanticize the cute couple but, we explain that we didn’t marry our high school sweetheart…or our college sweetheart, or the cute guy that worked with us in the office.

That the lab partner we dated in grad school eventually broke our heart. That twenty-nine felt like the end of the world as we blew out the candles on the cake.

But eventually things worked out and we have everything that we were jealous of. The house, the kids, the marriage.

Now we get to share our mistakes in hopes that they won’t make the same.