I hate to break it to you, but there’s a good chance that your 10th grade geometry class crush is not the love of your life. While, yes, some do get married to their high school sweetheart and live happily ever after, let’s be realistic: Entering college while still in a relationship from school years past can limit our experience in ways we might not expect.

My most obvious concern is the time and effort required to maintain a relationship. Whether halfway across the world or a 20-minute drive away, constant updates on status and location, nightly FaceTime calls and in-person visits can take up a significant portion of your social life.

Making new connections and developing friendships should be a top priority for college students, especially first-years. It’s during those first few months of freshman year when no one knows each other, and everyone wants to know each other, that you get the greatest chance to assess the social scene and find your people. When your priorities are split between your high school relationship and college social life, you may be limited in your ability to dedicate yourself to both.

Regardless, who you are now is likely quite different from who you were in high school. A relationship from the past may keep you from changing into a more mature, self-identified person.

I can attest that how my friends in high school saw me is totally different from how my college friends see me — and for good reason. The transition between adolescence and adulthood is a critical point in forming our identity and the development of our frontal lobe, socially and biologically changing our behavior.

Now is the time to make mistakes, learn from them and improve. It’s the time to try out new styles and activities and spend time with people we may not have before. Staying in a past relationship can dampen our ability to grow into a new person or cause conflict if we or our partner change in an unfamiliar way.

I’d argue the most cause for concern is the lack of comparison. You say that you love this guy named Jake from freshman year art class, but can you say for certain that you even know what love is?

When we get into a relationship, we evaluate it based on what we think we should expect, what we think we want and what we think is right. I mean, the evaluation I would have conducted on a guy at the age of 15 is so fundamentally different from that of my 20-year-old self, and thank God for that. Research has also shown that before age 18, we tend to make immature decisions in emotionally heightened situations due to a lagging psychosocial maturity level.

When we can’t compare how one person made us feel against another, what the relationship offered us and how we were treated, then we may have difficulty figuring out what our expectations should be and identifying when they aren’t met. What I’m trying to say is the people we are in college are different from those we were before, and as we adjust to adulthood, our identity changes. Staying in a high school relationship resigns us to a past time when we may not have had a relationship that is best reflective of the people we are today, and that stays within the boundaries and expectations set by the person we were before.

Okay, but who am I to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do in your relationship? I don’t know you, or who your prom date was, or how often you text your ex or where you had your first kiss. How could I possibly know whether this geometry class crush actually is your soulmate?

It would be ignorant to assume all relationships before college are null and void. I know many friends who are happily with their previous partners and adults who met at 17 and are now 40 years married. However, I truly believe that if you are meant to be together, you will find each other again. In the meantime, you should be prioritizing creating a strong college social circle, growing into a more mature identity and developing a better understanding of your relationship expectations.

All that to say, high school and college are critical times for personal and social exploration and development. We should take advantage of this time to challenge our identity and goals, to make mistakes and learn from them and to sort through the complexities of adulthood and adult relationships. Take advantage of this time and break up with your high school sweetheart. It’s time to say goodbye to your geometry class crush.