I have...

Can you get back together when you are 21? Can it be a relationship on hold until then?

Is this Civil Air Patrol mandatory, or is it a choice. I'm not telling you to quit the CAP, but I'm pointing out that you've probably got more choice than you think you do. Either way, it's going to be hard, but take the time to think, and make the right choice.

I'm speaking as someone who was in a similar situation, and found a way to continue dating. It's a good thing for my kids that I did.

As long as you realize you're making a choice, then you're probably making the right one. So in answer to your opening plea, I'll just send the hugs.

May you find love and friendship in your future in abundance, Eskimo.

song - I'll always love you - Dolly P.

To keep in mind, when you're feeling it almost too much, just remember you're both doing what you're doing to save lives. More people than you know thank you for what you're doing.

S

From passion to friendship. At 18 or 80, meeting a soul mate is a rare thing, many people never find. Friendship may be the best thing. Over the next three years, the trials you both will face, the disipline, the sacrifice and suffering will either cement or dissolve that bond. If you have truly found a soul mate, three years will be an eternity with a life long possitive result. Be possitive, capture your dreams, carry those dreams into the future, and the future will come to you.

Smiles and best wishes,
Bob

Stay together, and keep quiet about it. Love is a trump card.

It's not much consolation, but some times the right choices are the hardest. Other than that, here's a from me too.

Secret Separation.

And a great big (((hug)))

Aw - it's such a long time since I was your age and experiencing young love and its joys, Eskimo. But take a tip from an oldy. Three years seem an eternity now, but when you and your beloved are 70, looking back on your lives and spoiling your grandchildren, that three years will seem like a drop in the ocean.

Hang on in there. If it's meant to be, it will happen.

Sweetie, you're so smart and so right. This is the time to find your teddy bear and hold on. Play the music and know we care.

hugs.

S

{{hugs}}

I don't have any helpful advice, but I will tell you this: that amount of separation makes or breaks a relationship - and it will show you, without a doubt, if he is "The One." In my last year of college I made a commitment to spend the following year teaching in China. One month later, I met someone. I had never dated in my life, not ever, and since I was going to China I knew we could only be "just friends."

A month later we were dating. We only had six months together, total, before I went to China, but for the first time in my life I realized logic no longer mattered. I wanted every second I could have with this man. To go to China anyway, because I had made that vow and because I believe God told me to go - it was the most painful decision of my life. It was agony. But I went.

And you know what? We survived. It was hard. Really, really, really hard. But two days after I got back, he proposed. When we got married we had spent as much time separated as we had together. Now we've been married two and a half years. (And we're still attached at the hip.)

But if there's anything that year apart made us sure of, it was that we were meant for each other. There is NO DOUBT whatsoever that he is the only man I want. Every trial since then has seemed trivial to that year of separation (and trust me, we've had trials!) and I think for the rest of our lives we will think, "Yes, this is hard - but at least we're together." We can bear anything as long as we have each other to lean on.