High School Sweethearts in the Making BY BROOKLYN SAUER
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oung love in the high school hallways.
Many students at the school are in longstanding relationships. There are multiple couples at the school that have been together for years. These couples attribute their success to holding to some key values for healthy relationships like perseverance and communication. In terms of post-high school education, there are a variety of plans for how their relationships will continue beyond the school’s walls. Juniors Karley Britt and Kaleb Taylor began their relationship almost three years ago. “We never really talked before at all, we were in different friend groups,” Britt said. After talking almost every day for a few months, Britt and Taylor began their journey to the place that they are today. “I just think we’re very compatible,” Taylor said. Brainer and Bryant at Broad Run Park. Spending time together has allowed them to grow and influence each other over the years of their relationship. “He influences me in such a good way, I really look up to him so much.” Brainer said.
Similarly, seniors Kara Brainer and Carson Bryant have been together for three years. “We met each other in lunch and then we were just really close friends, like we clicked immediately,” Brainer said. Bryant and Brainer share some mutual friends, which caused a bit of a change when they first started dating. “It’s a lot easier for us to be with friends now. It wasn’t not easy, it was just really awkward when we first started dating,” Bryant said. However, this feeling subsided as their enduring relationship became a normal occurrence. Between the two couples, there are many similarities in terms of what they believe has kept them together for so long. One of these similarities is perseverance through difficult times in the relationship. “There’s a fine line between arguing, bickering and normal relationship arguing and toxicity, and I think people confuse it a lot. Like, going through a rough patch, that confuses people, but every relationship goes through a rough patch and I just think that it’s so worth it to push through because that person is so good for you,” Brainer said. After being together for so long, these couples have gotten good at understanding each other and through that, how to resolve any conflicts that may spring up. “It’s just about working through the hardships rather than just letting those get to you and, like, just leaving it at that. We never stop trying,” Britt said. Something that resonated with both couples equally was the issues with taking ‘breaks’ in a relationship. “I’ve seen older friends who take breaks in their relationship and we’ve never done that, and we’ve never wanted to because we feel like that would just make things worse…. They feel like it’s a way out of dealing with their hard problems,” Bryant said. “I feel like that’s what makes people really drift apart,” Britt said, echoing this statement. In both of the couples’ around three years of dating, neither has done anything similar to breaking up or going on a break, which is only a testament to how strong their relationships are. Being that both of these couples consist of upperclassmen, they have 7
Britt and Taylor at the Pretty Place Chapel in South Carolina. They have both spent a lot of time together, and even gone out of state like they had here. “We’ve just become so comfortable with each other,” Britt said.
both had to discuss their own personal futures with each other, and their relationship’s future as a result of that. Britt and Taylor’s situation is much easier to plan for, since they are both planning on going to the University of Louisville. “We either wanna get an apartment out there once we go there together, or we might stay home for the first couple years of it,” Britt said. On the other hand, Brainer and Bryant’s situation is a bit more complicated. Neither is committed to a college yet, and most of the schools they are considering are not the same. “I don’t wanna base it off of each other. I want us to both be happy and both go to college for what we wanna do,” Brainer said. In spite of this, they currently still plan to stay together after graduation and just not seeing each other as often. “I get a lot of inspiration from my sister, Mandy. She and her boyfriend have been together for three and a half years and so they’re in the same boat as us. Her boyfriend stays home to do Jefferson County and Technical College and my sister goes to Eeastern Kentucky University and she comes home like every weekend basically, so I feel like even if we don’t go to the same college, we’ll still see each other a lot,” Brainer said. While the transition from high school to college is often a rough one, these couples have enough experience with each other to know how to brave through it together.
