Dustin and I are high school sweethearts. We essentially grew up together. We were both such different people when we started dating, and we were lucky to grow side by side in the same direction.
Neither of us has had any other serious relationships, and for this I am most grateful. We met so early in life that no time was wasted. Life is impossibly short and I am glad every day that we were blessed with a few more years together than many other couples. I am also glad not to have the ghosts of past loves haunting our lives, or lingering regrets of giving pieces of our hearts to others unworthy. We had our whole hearts, in tact, to give to each other. We've both had times when we may not have cared for this precious gift as well as we should have, and those previously in tact hearts now have a few cracks and dents, but staying together through it all allowed us to recover the broken pieces and help glue them back together. I consider us lucky to belong so completely to one another.
There is, however, one slight drawback to not having had any other relationships, and that is that we lack the perspective possessed by other couples who have learned from various failed romantic endeavors. Over the years, we have both had to learn that many things we may have thought were unreasonable expectations of us by the other were actually legitimate requests for a healthy relationship. I had to stop being so jealous and possessive. He had to be more emotionally responsive and affectionate.
Even now, we are still learning. But I think all couples should and do continue to learn and grow together. The most important lesson I have learned, however, was learned quite recently. Every marriage has a different dynamic, and ours is no exception. We make jokes with each other that others might find offensive or inappropriate. We play when others say we should be serious. We sometimes solve conflicts in unorthodox ways, we make concessions where others would stand their ground, and we have always spent a lot more time together than anyone ever thought was normal (at one point we lived AND worked together, but managed not to get sick of each other!).
We are happy. We may not fit the accepted mold for how married couples "should" act, but we don't need to! If the way we do things wouldn't work for you, then my advice is not to do them that way. But it works for us, and we don't need to be "fixed" by anyone else who thinks they do marriage better!
I have found that it can be detrimental to a marriage to confide in others who don't respect the marriage for what it is. If you find yourself constantly defending your way of life to others who question it and cause you to have doubts in what has always served you well, then you need to reevaluate who you discuss your private life with.
To each their own.