As a student at Grant High School, you hear all the gossip about the perfect couple. When someone hooks up at a party, everyone knows. Other students stay away from dating, wary of the weight of relationships.

But what’s the norm for relationships at Grant and other high schools? That depends on whom you ask. In our parents’ generation, a lot of couples went steady, sometimes dating all the way through high school. “The goal was to find a spouse, especially for women,” says Randy Blazak, a professor of sociology at Portland State University.

Today, though, technology has changed the rules of dating. Social media, texting and other forms of communication have made it easier for teens to communicate. This generation of teens “have never lived without Internet or phones,” Blazak says. They “have new and more ways to connect with people. Internet relationships mean more safety. Rejection hurts less.”

Students these days have moved away from just having the typical exclusive relationship. Instead, we’re falling into categories. Here are a few people who have stories to tell about their relationship preference.

 

The Friend Group

Senior Morgan Grover says that’s why she likes having a close group of friends made up of girls and boys. Guy friends are light hearted and make “less complicated situations,” she says.

It’s common for people in her group to date because they all spend so much time with each other. “We each have different friendships,” she says.

Grover dated a close guy friend last year. After they broke up, they still remained friends because she looks for people she wants to be friends with before dating them. A lot of people in their group are dating other people, and she says they “try really hard to be respectful.”

It changes the dynamic because “it brings more to the group,” says Grover, noting that new traits often come out.

Grover says when she thinks about relationships in the future, she doesn’t want to get married. “You shouldn’t really have to label it like that,” she says, adding that she doesn’t believe in soulmates.

“Relationships are about timing and luck, but no one is perfect.”

 

The Dating Circle

It was seventh grade when it hit Hannah Nissen.

“I had an epiphany,” she recalls.

She realized she was thinking more about girls than guys. The only problem was that she had a boyfriend at the time. “I didn’t want him or my parents to freak out,” she remembers.

So she kept it hidden until the next year. She was painting a mural at school with her two best friends when she decided to say something: “I think I might be bisexual,” she told them.

Their paint brushes dropped to the ground. The next thing Nissen heard was her friends saying: “Oh my god, we knew it!”

A week later, Nissen told her friends to ignore what she said. She had made a mistake, she told them, and put it out of her head.

The following year, another friend kept asking her if she was gay. Nissen said no but the friend persisted. She gave in and decided to come out of the closet. “A lot of people expected it,” she remembers.

She says she never got teased or bullied, but feels confident that she could handle it if she had to stand up to someone. Her motto is: “I’m Hannah Nissen. I’ll get through it.”

Today, at 16, she’s in what she calls a “dating circle.” She dates, but it’s more casual than having a serious relationship. To her, dating isn’t a huge deal. It’s a part of her life, but she believes that high school is more about finding out “who you are, what you want to be and how you want to get there,” Nissen says.

Nissen says she hopes her experience might help others.

“To anyone who feels they might be gay or is even questioning it, the only way to figure it out is to explore it,” she says. “Listen to other people’s stories. It might not be just like your story, but it will help.”

 

The Couple

They sit at Starbucks, gazing into each other’s eyes, sipping on the same drink and planning their future together. They are the high school sweethearts everyone knows.

Juniors Dasha Kraft and Leo Stein had their first kiss on New Year’s Eve, taking the friendship they started in 2011 to a relationship in 2012. Nine months isn’t a long time, but in the world of high school it’s an eternity. And for Kraft and Stein, this is more than just a high school fling.

Stein, 16, remembers the day he first saw Kraft. She was “beautiful, sweet and kind,” he recalls. They became good friends and remained that way up until New Year’s Eve. Stein brought a rose for her to a party. “It was a lot of work trying to hide it from her,” he recalls.

These days, they finish each others’ sentences routinely. They walk together in the halls. Rarely do you see them apart. So what does the future look like for these high school sweethearts?

“We want to get into the same college,” says Kraft, 17.

Stein says: “We’ve talked about it. Honestly, we don’t know what we want to do.”

“We’ll see how things go after high school,” Kraft declares as she looks at her boyfriend with a smile.

Will they stay together? “Oh, so you mean like marriage?” Leo asks.

They look at each other again and Kraft replies: “Well, I guess we’ve talked about it.” They say they would like to, but don’t know for sure.

For now, they’re content to have fun riding their bikes and eating burgers, as long as they’re together.