If you had asked her five years ago what she thought her first relationship would be like, she'd tell you that it would be magical. She'd tell you that she was going to fall in love the minute she entered college and be very, very happy. That she'd fall in love with a smart, sophisticated guy with a perfect family who her parents would approve of, have 2.5 kids and live happily ever after in their white picket-fence home.

It had turned out completely different.

Through her four years of being an undergraduate, not once did she ever seriously like a guy. It hadn't been because of lack of cute guys, she just hadn't clicked with anyone. She had started out shy, barely able to speak to guys after going to an all-girls school her whole life. Guys intimidated her, scared her. She didn't feel comfortable around them, and although the rest of the girls from her old school adapted to college life very quickly, it took her at least a year to be able to treat men as if they weren't a different species altogether.

During her second year she made many, many male friends. So many, in fact, that she had more guy friends than girls. She found that she clicked with some guys better than she did with girls. This, however, did not turn out to be an advantage when it came to her love life. She was still as boyfriend-less as ever. Before, it had been because of her shyness. Now, the boys merely saw her as, well, one of the boys. It stayed this way for the rest of her undergraduate days and by then, she had nearly given up on love entirely. It didn't make her any less happy, she enjoyed her life the way it was. And just as she started to grow satisfied with her lack of a significant other, he came into her life.

He didn't fit her idea of a perfect guy. Not by a mile. He wasn't very smart or very sophisticated or very handsome, and he didn't share any of her interests. So what had attracted her to him? After being in love with him for a year, she still couldn't tell you. What made anyone fall in love, anyway? Was it his heart-stopping smile? Was it the way he could keep her laughing for an hour or make her smile even when she was down?

She didn't know what had made her fall in love with him, or even when it had happened. All she knew was that she had fallen, hard. He made her heart beat faster and her hands sweat every time he so much as looked at her. She had learned to like things about him that she never thought she would accept in a guy. Every time he got jealous or lost his temper, she would forgive him almost instantly. Whenever she was talking to a guy, any guy, he would come up to them, put his arm around her and say, "Sorry, she's spoken for," with a grin, and although a year ago she would have been angered to see any guy do that to his girl, now she just looked up at him with her heart swelling with pride. Being in love had definitely changed her for the better.

She knew her parents would never accept him. He was undereducated and from a completely different ethnicity and culture, and those things were important to them. He wasn't very religious and he cared about all the wrong things. Although she knew this, she continued to fall in love with him, more and more every day and decided to live in the moment, knowing that soon, everything they had could fall apart. But during those moments, the two of them together- it was all that mattered.