1. Even before you got into a relationship, you always gravitated towards the fictional couples who were deliriously happy — Disney royalty, Noah and Allie, Charlotte and Harry — without even knowing why.
2. While everyone else is talking about how hard monogamy is to maintain, or how it might not be (GASP!) possible in our modern age of internet hookups, you are left wondering how anyone could NOT want monogamy.
3. In your relationship, you’re never afraid to go without makeup, wear sweatpants and a messy bun, or reach for the last slice of pizza. You honestly never considered that these would be uncommon in certain relationships.
4. As much as you try not to start sentences with “My boyfriend,” or “We,” you sometimes can’t help yourself.
5. (You know that this probably makes you a little bit obnoxious sometimes, but you’d prefer being happy and honest about it than pretending not to care about your relationship to fit in.)
6. A lot of your biggest weekend plans are “hanging out at the apartment, watching some movies, and maybe ordering a pizza.” And it’s the thing you’ll look forward to the most by far, way more than going to bars or house parties.
7. As much as you try to relate to a lot of the pop culture that’s geared towards you — shows about struggling to find a boyfriend, or just going from one hookup to another — you just can’t get where it’s coming from. Relationships have never been THAT complicated for you, and when you were single, it just wasn’t the end of the world.
8. You actually like the idea of weddings when summertime comes around, because you find them a fun and beautiful ceremony, and something you hope to have one day in your own life. When everyone is constantly hating on them, you’re like “Yeah, definitely!” but don’t actually get all of the anger.
9. You genuinely hate all those quotes that girls share about how “If you can’t handle me at my worst, blah blah blah,” because, in your experience, the only relationships that work are the ones where BOTH parties are trying to be the best version of themselves.
10. You resent the fact that part of “being a modern 20-something girl” has become “struggling in relationships and resenting the entire institution of monogamy and/or marriage.”
11. Whether or not your parents are still married, you believe deeply in the idea that two people can make it work for a lifetime, as long as they are committed to the idea of love and the idea of each other. You hope to have this someday yourself.
12. When people ask you why you would be okay with settling down in your mid-20s — which you don’t think is weird at all, by the way — you don’t know how to say “I think it’s just as weird to wait until your early 30s to do it just so you can say you weren’t too young.”
13. At the end of the day, you are in a happy, monogamous relationship, and even if that means that there are certain parts of 20-something culture you may not get (like Tinder, for example), that doesn’t mean that you’re weird. Because Happy Relationship Girl is something we should have more of, even if we get annoyed when she talks about how much she loves her boyfriend.
