It is the summer of 1998. The hot valley sun beat down on Serena Gupta Gandhi’s ’99 face as she sipped her drink, dancing and talking with her friends at a birthday party, while she tried to enjoy the last bit of her summer before starting her junior year. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her friend’s younger brother make his way toward her. When Dayan Gandhi ’00 asked her for a dance, Gupta Gandhi was initially uninterested. She took his shaking hand in hers with some apprehension, glancing around the party for an excuse to slip away. Regardless, Gupta Gandhi said she accepted the offer, not knowing this would be her first dance with her future husband.
“My first impression was, ‘Who is this 14-year-old guy trying to ask me to dance?’” Gupta Gandhi said. “At the time I was 15-and-a-half and thought I was much cooler than him. We started school in September, and we were both at the same campus. He kept following me around, leaving notes in my locker, buying me candy from the cafeteria and asking me out. I kept saying, ‘No, you’re younger than me. That’s weird.’ Finally, I gave in, and then we started dating.”
The Pew Research Center reported 35% of 13 to 17-year-olds have had experience with romantic relationships. The Gandhis are among the 113 alumni couples from the school who reported that they are still together, according to archivist Alexis Arinsburg ’98.
For Julie Merson ’86, her first romantic interaction with her now husband Richie Rothenberg ’85 went against the wishes of her friend Liz Priyor ’85, who had a crush on Rothenberg. Merson said she kissed Rothenberg for the first time at a joint Harvard and Westlake party.
“[Rothenberg] would tell you this, but so will any other girl that went to Westlake at the time,” Merson said. “He was by far the cutest, most popular and most adorable guy at the school. I was a year younger, and he was very close friends with my friend Liz Pryor, who officiated our wedding. It wasn’t until 10th grade that I started going to Harvard and Westlake parties, and I started hanging out with him. He was super cute, but I was kind of nerdy, Liz had a crush on him. I thought he was adorable, nice and easy to talk to, so we kissed once in high school after a party. I kissed him in the backseat of [Priyor’s] car, which was breaking girl code. I felt terrible about it, and so after that I really never talked to him anymore.”
Gupta Ghandi said the intensity of her relationship in high school made it difficult to make and maintain friendships.
“I am in touch with some people, but honestly, this is one of the disadvantages of being in a serious relationship in high school,” Ghandi said. “Even though we were children, we were like, ‘We’re going to marry each other.’ We kind of knew that in high school. Because I was in such a serious relationship, I started focusing too much on that and not on hanging out with my friends. It hurt my long-term relationships after I graduated because I wasn’t in touch with so many of the friends that I had in high school.”
Upper School Psychologist Emily Joyner said high school relationships can create tension or conflict in existing friendships, especially during high school.
“When you’re a teenager, emotions like love can be even more consuming than when you’re older,” Joyner said. “Sometimes people can get swept up in the experience of a relationship, especially if it’s a first relationship or a really intense one. Friendships can suffer, and so it’s important to be honest with your friends and stay really balanced, so that your sole focus isn’t the person you’re dating.”
Of 111 students surveyed, 66.7% of students said they felt like their parents do not or would not support them having a serious relationship in school, according to a Chronicle poll. Gupta Gandhi said her parents didn’t approve of her relationship throughout high school, in part because she was older than her now-husband.
“Back then, we didn’t have cell phones, so we would call each other from a landline and our parents would see the phone bill and ask me, ‘Who’s this number that you keep calling?’” Gupta Gandhi said. “My parents disapproved because he was younger than me. I come from an Indian family, and so does my husband. Back then, [an age gap] was not ideal.”
From their first date at the ninth-grade Disneyland trip to attending college together in Boston, Willa Fogelson ’22 and Miles Cardillo ’22 have been together for nearly eight years. Cardillo said the expectations for maturity at the school translated into expectations for maturity in his relationship.
“Harvard-Westlake treats you like an adult, so it felt a lot more natural to have an adult-style relationship,” Cardillo said. “That’s the reason why we’re still here. Even when we were basically children and immature, we were able to have a slightly more adult perspective on how we wanted to move forward with ourselves and our relationship.”
Of 36 responses, 33.3% of students report they are planning on ending their relationships before college, according to a Chronicle poll. Gupta Gandhi said while she and her husband tried to make long-distance work, they ended up breaking up several times throughout college.
“College was hard,” Gupta Gandhi said. “There were a lot of ups-and-downs, a lot of drama [and] a lot of breaking up and getting back together. But that was the time when that all should happen. It’s unrealistic to think that you’re not gonna be interested in anyone else from the time you first meet someone when you’re 14 years old. It was a growing time for both of us because we were not in the same place. We were able to have new experiences but still be in touch and sometimes be together, sometimes not. When I came back to [Los Angeles] after college, that was when we decided we wanted to be in this relationship and that we were going to get engaged.”
Instead of trying to make long-distance work, Fogelson and Cardillo opted to both apply for colleges in the Boston area. Fogelson said applying to colleges in Boston allowed them to apply to a variety of schools that both of them were excited about.
“Honestly, the biggest solution to our problem was Boston,” Fogelson said. “There are so many schools that we would have liked to go to, so we just applied to all the schools in Boston. It was just about stacking the odds in our favor and having that conversation early. Not a lot of people get the opportunity to have three or four years to think about college before the end of high school, so we got that opportunity to talk about it because of how early we started dating.”
The school promotes an extensive alumni network, from professional events to reunions. Even though her wedding was decades after she graduated from Westlake, Merson said many of the guests attending were Harvard or Westlake graduates.
“Half of our wedding were people from Harvard-Westlake, even though we were in our 40s and knew so many other people by that point,” Merson said. “There was such an incredibly strong bond from our six years together. For Richie and I, it’s amazing to have a shared past and context to the relationship.”
Cardillo said they grew closer because of the academic culture at the school.
“It’s easy to bond when you’re struggling and the school is hard,” Cardillo said. “The thing with Harvard-Westlake that is true in all aspects is it’s gonna make whatever you do next feel a lot easier. A lot of people, when they talk about relationships, they talk about moving out or college being a big obstacle. But honestly, the most challenging part of our relationship was when we were dealing with homework and exams. That was a trial to get through, but now we’ve moved on to the stage of our lives where we get to go to college very close to each other. Every step into adulthood after Harvard-Westlake feels very easy.”
Long-term relationships have been shown to improve mental health, lower depression and anxiety and boost your immune system, according to Better Health Channel. Fogelson said her relationship with Cardillo has evolved as they have matured and grown together.
“I found my voice in a lot of ways because of this relationship,” Fogelson said. “In my relationship with Miles, even during our platonic friendship, he was always the first to encourage me to speak up for myself. That’s something that I needed at the time, and so in my own way, I was able to grow. I became a more self-actualized person after we started dating because I had all of this support behind me to think about what I wanted and almost to be selfish in certain aspects of my life.”
Gupta Gandhi said even in the early years of her relationship, she knew her husband was the person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
“We both knew that we would be together for a long time really early on,” Gupta Gandhi said. “It’s shocking to be fifteen or sixteen or even seventeen, and know that you want to marry someone. Everyone around us, our friends and all our parents, were thinking, ‘They’re crazy. They don’t know what they’re talking about. This is just a phase. They’re gonna grow out of this.’ But early into our relationship, even in high school, we both just knew.”
