Thank you so much for this thoughtful response. I've spent my entire life hearing that because I'm young I don't have enough experience to speak about lots of things, not just relationships. (I'm also, for example, very young to have held most of the jobs I've held and became an attorney at 20.)

To answer how I can give this advice, it is because I have a LOT of experience with intense friendships and friend breakups and I don't believe these experiences to be meaningfully different from romantic ones, for lots of reasons. For many years, I have been a sort of relationship expert for my friends, not because of wisdom but because I literally read tons of scientifically-backed friendship and relationship research for years. This research far surpasses the maturity of most 80-year-olds when it comes to romance, simply because everyone generalizes their own experiences too much and scientific research is valuable.

On that last note, here are some things I find ironic and I think you shouldn't assume someone hasn't had experience in, just because they're 24. It can be very hurtful. Perhaps it's just that I wouldn't want to out myself, had I had these experiences.

*Very decent people evolve and change, not always for the better.

*Add children to the mix.

*Add massive financial struggles to the mix.

*Add personal health problems to the mix.

*Add one or both of you experiencing temptation so that trust has to be rebuilt.

*Learn more about abuse within deeply intimiate relationships.

Again, I'm not going to share details, but let's suppose I happen to have in-depth, personal experience on these issues. The article would be the same. If there is anything I've learned from something I have had a full 24 years of experience in: being told I'm too young to do/say/write this, that, or the other, it is that age itself is never enough of a reason to assume lack of experience or maturity.

(P.S. I married the only man I've ever seriously dated or kissed because I'm asexual. Not because I'm naive.)