1. High school sweetheart.

It’s seventh period and you have athletics. You see that cute senior football player that you’ve had your eye on. Wait a second, is he coming over here? What’s that in his hand? He comes over to the bleachers you are sitting on and hands you a note. “Well, I’ve gotta go back to practice, let me know.” You wait until he walks away to open it. The note reads, “Will U go out with me? I think U are really pretty. Are U going to the football game tonight? I’m playing. Write me back.” Your entire life is made. You date for about six months before a very serious discussion occurs: The Promise Ring Talk.

This is the love of your life, despite what your idiot parents say. What do they know any way? Seriously. They are like 100 years old and they are just a bunch of losers that give bad advice like, “Break-up with your boyfriend, he’s too old for you and will take advantage of you if he can. You are not allowed to date him.” Do they not realize that you are 16 and you can handle yourself because you are clearly a grown-ass woman? Ha, you’ll show them. You later find out your boyfriend made-out with a girl on your cheerleading squad. You slap him in the face, throw your promise ring at him, and cry to all of your friends at lunch about what a bitch Emily is for doing that to you. Two weeks later, you see Emily and your ex-boyfriend making-out after school in his truck. You discretely key his car.

2. College sweetheart.

After your horrible high school break-up, you swear off the whole damn thing. You go to college and just party for like two solid years. Then one day, you meet this really cool person. You think, “Okay, I could do this. I’m older and much wiser now.” You date this person for a couple of years during college. You might even think, “Hey, should we get married after college?” Then you think, “Hell no. I want to explore my options and I might come back to you later if you aren’t dating anyone when you are 30 or something.” Your lives take completely different paths and you eventually decide that it just isn’t going to work. You are both adults now, and things just aren’t the same. Two years later, you will find out via Facebook that your ex got married to a doctor. You are still single and hooking up with randos from the bar. You automatically hate your life.

3. Casual fling.

After your college sweetheart breakup, you are going to find yourself in a series of casual flings, until you find someone who really catches your interest. Your fling is nothing serious and both parties involved are aware of this. You do your thing and they do theirs. You might get jealous if you see them hanging out with someone else, but only for like seven seconds and then you are over it. Then, when you least expect it, one of your casual flings will drunkenly confess they… gasp… have feelings for you. This is horrible. You were literally just about to tell them that you met someone and you can’t see them anymore. Instead, you decide to slowly cut off communication with them. They send you hateful text messages, then they apologize, then they leave you a drunken voicemail, then they apologize for that, then you never hear from them again.

4. 1st marriage.

After the casual fling stage, you date a wonderful person for a year or two. You decide to go ahead and take the plunge and get married. All your friends are doing it, so you need to do it too. More importantly, you want to prove to your ex from college just what a catch YOU can score. The wedding photos look beautiful and you are sure to post them all over Facebook. You and your husband look like a living Barbie and Ken. At first, every thing is exciting and new. Then, after a few years you get bored. You start making spreadsheets documenting your sex life (apparently that’s a thing now?). Your husband never seems interested in you. You decide to have a kid to see if that will spice things up. It just makes things worse. Now you feel like you are obligated to stay with this person until the kid is 18.

You want to be a good parent, so you stay committed and vow to push through this marriage and wait until your child grows up. One day you come home to a message left by your significant other, saying that he is moving out and to expect divorce papers. He met someone at yoga class named Juan and he is very in touch with his body. He can even put both of his feet behind his head. You should have known your husband was gay. You glance over at your wedding pictures that are sitting on the mantle of your fireplace. The spray-tan, the perfectly combed hair, the bleached teeth, when he yelled out “Jerry” on your honey moon – it is all so clear now. You sink into a depression for about a year, until you start online dating.

5. 2nd marriage.

You are perusing profiles on Match.com one day, when you unexpectedly get a message in your inbox. Someone has sent you a winky face. “Oh,” you think, “they look pleasant.” You decide to meet up and get to know this person. They have some baggage, but you are willing to work with it because you do too. You decide to keep Juan and your ex-husband a secret for awhile. This relationship can go one of two ways. You can date, get married, and live together until one or the other dies, or you can get married, only to find out later that this person is a psycho. If your second marriage fails, you will more than likely just give up on the whole getting married thing.

6. Senior citizen boyfriend/girlfriend.

You are now at the tail end of life. Your ungrateful children have left you to die in this godforsaken nursing home, entitled something like “Happy Homes Sunshine Resort.” You are so pissed off and old. After awhile, you start to lighten up. As you walk down the hall to meet up with the ladies to play cards, you spot a chipper “younger” fella. His hair is combed back in a nice salt-and-pepper 50s style. He is even sporting a cute little bow-tie like the college boys used to wear. You can’t help but notice that you’ve also caught his attention. Eventually, he makes a pass at you during a game of chess, telling you that you have, “inviting eyes.” You spend the rest of your days with “Carl” and you both die holding each other’s hands in bed, just like the last scene of The Notebook.

Just kidding. That’s not real life. Carl dies eight months later. You go to his funeral, where you meet his older brother, Melvin. They look very similar and have the same thick mustaches. You know Carl would approve. You old hag, you.