Sometimes people really do meet the right person when they’re young. But your personality changes so much throughout your late teens and early 20s. What if you meet someone in college, and you go through some big changes, and they don’t?
It’s the same way I feel about choosing a college/ major. Your late teens is usually too young to know what you want out of life. I think a lot of people end up on the wrong career track because higher education is set up this way.
For young people, I lean toward being single/ playing the field. One of my favorite times was ages 18–19, being happily single, hanging out with my friends, working on art, and dating someone cute here and there.
Young adulthood should be a time of self-discovery. It’s a time when your personality gets “bigger” as you grow into the adult you really are. If you haven’t gotten there yet, it’s easy to mold yourself to fit a relationship. Here is a series of photography I really like, where that is one of the themes.
For young people in serious relationships, I’d advise them to keep a balance in their lives. The relationship should be one part of your life, along with all the other people you care about and things that make you happy. It’s very easy to get sucked into spending all your time with a person, or doing all the things they like, if you’re young. The best way to keep a balance is to spend time with friends and family, enjoy their own separate hobbies, and do some honest introspection from time to time. Like, “am I really happy here?” or “is this who I really am?”