What's wrong with getting married young?

[Katy Belle]

I was 20 and DH was 24 when we married. We have been married 22 years We had already dated 5 years, he had graduated from college , had worked as an Accountant for a year, and I had completed 2years of college, 80+credit hours. We were pretty "grounded." Our parents were all still married, no divorces. We had come from similar backgrounds, were very compatible.

I can think of 9 couples that got married in their early 20s, younger than 25, and 7 of those couples are still married.

I think I will be ok with my sons marrying young. I hope they are mature, and compatible with their significant other.

I know some people who never married and i wonder if they regret not marrying young. It seems you have more choices when young.

Now that so many people live together, it is sort of like marrying young.

 

[RitaE]

Well for what it's worth - I was married at 19 and my husband was 20. We've been married almost 24 years.

We both have Master's Degrees. We've both traveled. We were never financially supported by our families and have never received any sort of government aid other than Financial Aid for college.

We are financially sound and have good careers. I know people like us ... who made it work. I also know people who were married at the same time and ages and it was a disaster.

I could say the same thing about people who got married at nearly every age.

I want my own children to live their own lives and do what makes them happy and successful. Neither one of them really have a "marriage candidate" so it really isn't an issue. To tell you the truth I'm just as concerned about WHO they marry as I am about their chronological age when it happens. If they meet somebody when they are young, that's fine. If it doesn't happen until the are 36 ... then I sure as heck don't think they should settle at age 22 just so they can get started on the baby-making.

 

[snapppyd]

I think life is expensive and good jobs are hard to find. If you have the opportunity to get a good education and travel a little before you settle down I think that is a good idea. My nephew is in his 3rd year of college and spending a semester touring Ireland, Italy, Scotland, etc. If he was already married with a baby that opportunity would not be available.

My parents married young and did not have good educations. My mother was a stay at home mom her whole life and my father worked on the railroad. I'm not saying we were POOR, but they could never afford to buy a house or a car.

I'm always amazed when I read these boards and no one seems to have grown up in an apartment We were five people in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. My first trip to Disney was my honeymoon.

I think the "live first" means get an education, travel, find a good job, have fun and then settle down. JMHO

eta: they were children of the depression, so maybe their reality would not apply these days

 

[RachaelA]

Living Life:
meeting different people
seeing the world
getting an education
getting your heart broken a couple of times
developing your instincts

I don't think I've lived life any less because I never had my heart broken. I met a and starting dating DH when I was 18 and he was 23. We got married when I was 23 and he was 28. I don't think I needed to date a bunch of losers and have my heart broken to have lived my life.

Plus you can see meet different people, see the world, get an education, etc when you are in a serious relationship. I went out of state to college (in a big city), worked in a foreign country, traveled, got an education, made friends from all over the world, all while I was dating DH. He never held me back. Now I don't think I could have done this if I married him at 18, but I see nothing wrong with people getting married once they graduate college as long as they can fully support themselves.

 

[happygirl]

I think it varies from person to person, I don't think any 18 years old are all the same in maturity wise.

 

[BeefJerky]

Well, it depends on the person. I married relatively young to my husband. Well, we met in high school and dated exclusively before marrying in our early 20s. We traveled the world together and both went to college. I had my own heart broken several times before dating him and I don't think that my career ever depended on him. I created my own career on my own as he made his own. We had children when WE, not my parents or family, thought it was right. Some people thought that it must have been something outside of our bounds for us to get married such as me getting pregnant but it wasn't like that at all and we dated quite a while before marrying.
On the other hand I have two cousins who married young as well. One did it because she was pregnant and before we were even 23, she had another husband and four children. She is doing ok but it was harder for her. My other cousin married a month before my husband and I did but they divorced before the first year anniversary because they both were just not suited for one another.

 

[hereyago]

At 18, there is no way I wanted to get married. I had certain things I wanted to do before I settled down. I would have had to be a paligamist and had a few husbands.


In high school, I was the only one of my circle of friends who didn't do this: date a guy and think about how our kids would look. that wasn't me.

A friend's DD19 will get on facebook and she "falls in love' easily with these guys, it doesn't last long with seeing them and she can't be "alone" and just date. I would hate for my DD to be like that.

 

[m&m's mom]

Oh my! I was a baby at 18!
I was just barely out of my parents house, was a freshmen in college and had not "Lived" at all.
I got a couple of degrees, met my DH about a year out of grad school and we lived together for years before we got married.
We traveled a lot and just enjoyed each other with out inteference. I think you need a very strong bond before you bring kids into the mix.
We had bought a house and saved enough for both kids to go to college before they were even born and when we had kids- we knew we were ready.
When I think who I was dating at 18, he was a very nice guy but I turned out to be very independent and that relationship was based on me being more dependent on him.

 

[Cinderella94]

At 18 I'll be a junior in college...no thanks.

 

[jodifla]

Another thing is, many of us who are now around 50ish had mothers who married very young. It's what you did during WWII and right after.

And frankly, many of them weren't happy in the long term. They felt pretty trapped after about 25 years.....no work experience, no education, kids who were out of the house, and a husband they either a) didn't have much in common with or b) had decided to ditch them for a trophy wife.

The daughters of those moms learned by the school of hard knocks that you'd better be able to support yourself, or life could be pretty darned miserable.

 

[Owlpost23]

Not everyone is able to choose a proper mate when they're young.I would've chosen poorly in my twenties,and besides,I was busy launching a cooking career,moving to L.A.,spent a summer in Israel and Egypt.Those were priceless experiences that my life would have been the poorer for not having experienced them.I married at thirty-finally at the point where my choice for a husband was a sound one.We've been married for twenty years.

 

[KimR]

I think it's best to wait until at least 25, for many of the reasons already stated. But also, I think it's important to have the experience of living independently. I got married right out of college and went straight from my parent's house to living with DH. I was afraid to be on my own then, and I think I'd be even more lost now, 25 years later. I wish I'd waited, lived on my own for a while and gained some sense of self-sufficiency as a result.

My DD is 18 and has always said she wants to wait to get married, which I encouraged. However, she has been in a serious relationship for about a year now, and I'm worried that she's going to go down the same road I did. She is much more independant than I ever was, but I still hope that she will wait. If it's true love, it will still be there a few years down the road. No need to rush!

 

[cinabug]

Getting married young may turn out just fine. On the other hand, if a couple marries young, often at least one of them gives up a lot of earning potential. That can also turn out just fine. BUT if something goes wrong, such as divorce, death, or extreme illness, a family can be thrown into poverty. This happens to many women who make being a wife and mom their one career.

In an ideal world, it's fine to get married young. Heck, there are even advantages. Since I don't live in an ideal world, I would strongly encourage my children to wait. If they married young anyway, I would support them and hope they beat the odds, but I would worry.

 

[Mkrop]

I got married just a few months after turning 18. 3 years later, I'm incredibly happy! My DH is 27 and I'm just short of 21 right now. I'm in college and he is a college grad. Most of my friends are all off at college drinking and partying every night. I never wanted to do that. I wanted my future to start a lot earlier. There's not much "living" when you're having hangovers or hours away from your family. DH and I live 30-45 minutes away from our family and we're perfect together. I don't regret a thing!

I am glad you are happy.

But there is nothing wrong with partying and socializing even if it results in said hangover BTDT

But I know two girls who got married very young, and then when they left their DHs, they "claimed" it was bc they never got to do the partying thing in college and got married too young, so instead they went off the deep end and started partying instead of taking care of their families. By the time they started partying the rest of us had it out of our systems and were ready to settle down.

 

[Becky2005]

I agree and the definition of "young" seems to change with the wind.

I got married at 22 (almost 23) and apparently that is young. I didn't think so. I still don't think it was. My mom I believe got married when she was 22 or 23 and she was considered old. So basically we both got married at the same age yet we were on the opposite sides of the spectrum!

I suppose it also depends on what you want to do in life. I have an Associate's degree and that was all I was planning on getting, then I went to work full-time and was happy with what I was doing. I lived in my own apartment, bought my own car and was pretty self-sufficient.

I actually always thought my parents did it the best way around -- they had the kids early in the marriage and by the time I was out of the house they were still relatively young. It was funny when I had my first though and everyone thought my daughter was hers.

Of course, it also always depends on when you meet "the one" -- I have an aunt who didn't get married until she was in 40's because she never met the right guy before that.

 

[Green Tea]

I liked what someone wrote earlier about the early 20's being a good time. There is something to be said for a couple getting set in their ways together, instead of 2 people set in their ways trying to come together later in life.

I would like to see board members of the LDS faith post on the thread. They tend to marry young and stay together.

 

[RitaE]

I can personally vouch for the fact that college-aged partying and being married are NOT mutually exclusive activities.

I enjoyed my "young" years with my husband. We were young and wild and carefree - but together. As we enter our mid-40's and I have friends who have lost their husband's to heart attacks, cancer and other tragedies - I've come to realize just how lucky I am for every.single.dayandyear I've gotten to spend with him.

The way I live my life isn't for everybody but I really didn't give up all that much other. I got my education. I have my career. I've traveled, met people and I sure as heck partied with the best of them when I was younger and could handle a hangover better.

But also, most people don't meet the man they want to marry when they're 16 like I did. But for me personally, I'd do it all over again in the exact same way.

 

[indimom]

We married relatively young (both 22). We seriously considered getting married at 20, but waited because we knew our families would be "concerned." We had our first child at 24.

We are now pushing 40 and have no complaints. We've never considered marriage and family to have kept us from living life to the fullest. He has seen the world, I don't have a burning desire to cross the ocean. I have 3 degrees. He is a self-educated jack of all trades. We've met new people and made career changes along the way. I don't feel marriage or children got in the way of any of that, but maybe our goals were smaller/more easily attainable than others.

 

[BeefJerky]

I got married just a few months after turning 18. 3 years later, I'm incredibly happy! My DH is 27 and I'm just short of 21 right now. I'm in college and he is a college grad. Most of my friends are all off at college drinking and partying every night. I never wanted to do that. I wanted my future to start a lot earlier. There's not much "living" when you're having hangovers or hours away from your family. DH and I live 30-45 minutes away from our family and we're perfect together. I don't regret a thing!

Whoa whoa whoa...just because you married young doesn't mean you don't have to stop the hangovers or moving away from the family. We wanted to move away..it's just easier for us and as for the hangovers..well...I don't know how many times I whispered to my husband to just shoot me after a night of heavy drinking. We managed to think of a cure for that.

 

[Art 1]

Most of the time getting married young is a bad idea. Statistics prove this to be true.