I love you—three simple words that take a whole lot of courage to say. After tongue-tied attempts and hours of contemplation, those three words can change the entire dynamic of a romantic relationship.

According to a recent Bark survey, 52.5 percent of students answered “yes” to having said “I love you” to a significant other, friends and family not included. More freshmen have said “I love you” than any other grade level—62.5 percent of freshmen have said “I love you,” while only 42.5 percent of seniors have said the words.

Junior Haley Turner said “I love you” to her boyfriend, junior Weston Ruhland, only a few months after their relationship began in freshman English.

“We’ve been in a relationship for a year and nine months, so in that amount of time it’s kind of obvious that we would say ‘I love you’ at some point,” she said.

Turner said the words moments before Ruhland left for a three-week trip to Peru, thinking that if she didn’t say it, the couple might not make it through nearly a month of not seeing each other.

“It was surprising, but it felt right, like it should’ve happened,” said Ruhland, who said it back right away.

“It took a lot of pressure off,” Turner said. “It made things easier.”

Senior Sophia Sapuppo said that when she heard her boyfriend say it to her, she felt less skeptical about successful teenage relationships.

“It was very self-assuring,” she said. “I felt really good about everything at that moment. Girls a lot of times feel like they’re getting used, or that guys never want to commit to anything serious. Hearing him say that made me feel less skeptical about love existing.”

Sapuppo’s boyfriend, Joseph Perrella, who graduated in 2013, said the words to her last year after he took her out to dinner for her 17th birthday. They had been together for six months.

Turner said that in middle school, she told her boyfriends she loved them over text messages. She said that reading the words in a text doesn’t nearly have as much impact as hearing or saying them in person. This time, she said, she was serious.

“I wanted this one to be different, so I made it different,” she said. “I thought that if it was going to be a real relationship, I should say it in person. I wanted it to be meaningful.”

Sapuppo said a serious relationship only works whe nboth people are mature and ready. “There were several times when I was younger when I thought that I was in love with the person I was with,” Sapuppo said. “But there’s a point where you realize that you’re both mature enough to not just throw the word ‘love’ around, and you actually commit yourself to a relationship and do all of the stuff that adults do.”

Turner, Ruhland, and Sapuppo represent a small percentage of Redwood students who are in a relationship. According to a recent Bark survey, only 18.75 percent of the student body is currently in a relationship, while 25 percent are casually or exclusively “hooking up” with someone—single but engaging in some form of sexual activity with another person. Interestingly, the percentage of seniors who are “hooking up” with someone, casually or exclusively, is higher than any other grade, at 30 percent.

“I think that because we’re in high school, people don’t want a real commitment,” Turner said. “They want to be able to go out and hook up with people, go to parties. They may be scared of getting too deep into a relationship and getting hurt.”

Ruhland said that he and Turner rarely go to parties.

“We don’t go out a lot. There’s no point. The majority of people go to parties to go to hook up with someone, but we obviously don’t need to,” Ruhland said.

Ruhland added that maturity may contribute to the low percentage of students who are in a relationship.

“Some people aren’t mature enough to deal with problems that might come up in a relationship, so they run away from that,” Ruhland said.

Sapuppo said she is not surprised that one in four students are currently “hooking up” with someone. She said she thinks that one-night-stand hook ups based on physical attraction without emotional attachment are “the easy way out.”

“Although hooking up with someone can be fun at times, because it’s not anything serious and you don’t have to dedicate a lot of your time to them, in a way I think that hooking up degrades the whole meaning of love,” she said. “When you’re hooking up with someone, you almost feel guilty afterwards.”

Although the numbers are slim, Turner and Ruhland both agree that it is possible for high school students to be in love.
“He’s my best friend,” Turner said. “I want to be with him, and I’m just happy. I think adults would describe it the same way. I think love is the same no matter what age.”

Sapuppo said that as she’s gotten older, the words “I love you” have become more serious.

Ruhland said that although the words are powerful, that doesn’t mean they should be used sparingly. Turner and Ruhland say “I love you” to each other every day when they go to class and every night before they go to bed.

“You never really know what’s going to happen that day. It’s best to say ‘I love you’ [when we say good-bye] because if there was to be some big earthquake and everyone was off the grid and our phones didn’t work, the last thing she knows is that I love her. If I were to never see her again, she’d know that,” Ruhland said.

Sapuppo said she’s never loved anyone the way she loves Perrella.

“Everybody tries dating a bunch of people before they find that certain one,” Sapuppo said. “I definitely feel like I finally found that person. I actually think I’m meant to be with Joe, or at least for this time.”