Do Childhood Sweethearts really work out?

Hello lovely lady! Let me just tell you that I am 100% in love with the Alice books and spent my whole childhood reading them! I’m in my last year of college now and I’m going to be a biology teacher. I know Alice married Patrick who was her Childhood Sweetheart, THANK YOU A MILLION TIMES FOR MAKING THEM END UP TOGETHER! But I do have to ask you, do you really believe childhood sweethearts can get married and live happily ever after just like Alice and Patrick did? Everyone I’ve ever met says it’s impossible but you tend to be brutally realistic in the series so I just thought Id ask. Once again you did an amazing job on the series, especially the final book, i very much enjoyed them!

Anything is possible.  I know couples who were going together in high school and are still married in their 80’s.  Have they had difficulties?  Probably.  More than any other couple?   Who knows for sure?  Some just seem so compatible that they simply agree on most things.  I think they might have a better chance of staying married if they dated other people.  Maybe, like Alice and Patrick, they knew each other in grade school and were “childhood sweethearts,” but who really knows about love then?   I think it says a lot that Alice and Patrick both dated other people seriously and then, in the final analysis, realized that they’d never loved anyone else as much as they loved each other.