Not sure what gives you the chutzpah to think that anyone needs to defend their choices to you. Let me offer you some free advice: Let go of things that are outside of your realm of control or you will eventually drive yourself, and everyone around you, utterly, mind-boggling insane.
This genuinely confuses me. Why would anyone criticize something without hoping to change something about it? The only situation I can see doing that in is in questions of pure taste, i.e. music, in which everyone is aware that there is no criteria for what is “best”. You claim that NightRabbit thinks she has a universal criteria for something that, you believe, is not universal – why would you point that out for any reason other than to try and make her realize that her “universal” criteria isn’t universal, to try and change her opinion about it? What is your reason for your criticism?
You’re new to the Pit, I think. I usually stay out of snarkfests and pileons, but today and for the past few days, I’ve been itching to vent some bile. So, I’m in a horrible mood, someone posts what is essentially stupidity and I called them on it. It’s that simple. That is one reason for the Pit–for people to do this. I have no responsibility to set the OP straight (or you either, but I’m not that mean). I have no vested interest in doing so. IMO, the number of scales falling from eyes due to disparagement in a Pit thread is probably close to zero.
If the OP had started a thread in GD or MPSIMS, stating her position in less inflammatory language, she would not have received the snark.
Heh, yeah, I’m not exactly familiar with these parts. But then, the whole concept surrounding the Pit does confuse me at times. A forum on the Straight Dope, whose motto is “Fighting Ignorance”, to allow people to be completely disrespectful to each other, and to say things that seem, well, ignorant? (It’s more what the whole idea of criticism without explanation seems like to me. Not referring to any specific instance of it.) But then I suppose that would be a topic for another thread, another time. 
In the meantime, I hope the people who wished to snark have satisfied their desire, and that anyone who hoped to educate or be educated has successfully done so. bows out
The Pit can spark some really good debates sometimes, and I think the no-holds-barred atmosphere helps that. If someone says something really stupid you don’t have to bite your tongue while writing out a polite response, you can call them an asshole and tell them to stick their head in a blender, and then write out a not-so-polite response. You get to vent at the stupidity AND fight ignorance at the same time…what’s not to like? 
I wouldn’t be so sure that people don’t get the point when a pitting turns either. When forty people come on to tell you you are being a jackass (not that that is the case here, the original post has a point, she’s just painting with too broad a brush - and probably painting with that brush a few years beyond where she’d get general agreement - 20 is too young for most people to get married, 25? She’s 25! Hell, yes, people get married at 25. If you want to have a fiftieth wedding anniversary and be young enough to enjoy your grandkids and you’ve found someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, time to get crackin on that whole marriage and breeding thing - not that a fiftieth wedding anniversary and grandkids is or should be everyone’s goal), sometimes you realize you are, indeed, a jackass. Happens surprisingly often.
It’s not a matter of you needing to buy a house at 25- no one needs to buy a house at 25. But you do need to figure out where you want to be at 40 or 50 or 65, and figure out what you have to do to get there.
For example, I got married at 24 ( no rushing involved- we’d been together over 5 years) , bought a house at 25 and had my first child at 26. Part of the reason for the house and kids was because I belonged to a pension system which allows me to begin collecting a full pension when I’m 56. My mortgage will be paid off when I’m 55, my kids will be done with college (and grad school if they choose) and I’ll be able to afford to retire at 56. I could have waited to buy the house and have the kids, but it would have left me in a very different place. For example, I could have waited to buy the house until I was 35 or 40- except that the housing prices in NYC ( I live in Queens) went up so much, I wouldn’t have been able to afford the same house at 40. I would have had to leave NY, which I didn’t want to do, and I wouldn’t be done with the mortgage until I was at least 65 (more likely 70).
Nobody gets to have everything- I couldn’t have waited until 35 or 40 to get married, buy a house and have kids and still be able to retire at 56. 25 may be too young for you to get married, buy a house or have kids. But it’s not too young for you to decide where you want to be at 35 or 40 or 60, and it’s certainly not too young for you to realize that other people have different priorities than you do.
True. And I hope I haven’t run off a new person.
Dangerosa–you’re right. It just sometimes seems like we’re all just shouting and talking across one another… 
In my opinion early marriages are not good.It cause more problems.By “early” I mean 18-22. Is it too young? Just right? What about having kids young (18-22)? I say if you’re mature enough and you are financially stable then it is not a bad idea. Besides, I want to have a BIG family and my wife and I couldn’t wait too long.
Jeebus, my marriage is doomed! Why, oh why, didn’t someone tell me sooner? I got married at age 20 after only knowing my wife for 4 months. We are from such different backgrounds, surely we have nothing in common. We had our first child by the time I was 21. Babies having babies. I better break it to my wife, we’ll never make it (another) 10 years, because NightRabbit thinks its a bad idea to get married young. :rolleyes:
Wow, welcome to the 21st century. You know what’s great about getting married early? I’ll only be 40 by the time both my kids graduate high school. I’ll be young enough to enjoy being retired (by age 50 no less!) and my house will be paid off before I retire.
Gee, I guess by waiting to get married your kids will still be in school and you will still be paying the mortgage on the house you waited to buy, well into your 50’s and 60’s. I’ll be travelling the world and spoiling my grandkids. Oh, yeah and not working and still with my wife of by then 30 years. Good luck with that.
I’m not a big fan of early marriages, necessarily…I look back at my HS & college boyfriend and breathe a sigh of relief that we broke up instead of getting married. And not because there’s anything wrong with him at all…he’s a great guy. I just don’t think it would have worked out very well in the long run. (However, everyone’s different…my brother got married at 22, and just celebrated his 20th anniversary.)
However, I don’t disagree with what Dangerosa has been saying. Not that you should run out, get married, and have kids as soon as you can, but that it’s smart as a young person to think about the kind of life you would like to have, and try to plan accordingly. If you think you may want to have a family some day, don’t stay with a person now who is dead set against it. The years go by quickly, you find yourself to be 30 with a strong desire to have kids and a partner who refuses. Then what? You break up, it takes you a year or two to find someone else (if you’re lucky), you date them a year or two or three before you get married, you want to be married a year or two before you start with the kids, and lo and behold you are 38+ and just beginning to work on that family. It happens a lot faster than you think it will. It’s not about HAVING the kids young, it’s about thinking about whether or not you may want to eventually, and trying to arrange your life accordingly.
And as far as buying a house, sure, it’s a lot of responsibility that you may not be ready for, but the earlier you start making investments (in real estate and otherwise), the easier your life will be and the fewer worries you will have in the long run. If you want to lash out in anger at that concept, I guess that’s your right, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
Correlation != causation.
People who get married later in life tend to have longer marriages. You can guess as to why this is - younger people are more impulsive, etc. But the fact is, you don’t know if the age when people get married is actually a factor in the ending of that marriage. It may be, for example, that the age that people get married and the chance of success are both dependent on a third, unknown factor (e.g. income level). Be careful when using statistics to prove your point.
Okay (maybe final) point: I’d imagine that the population o f the SDMB is capable of making good decisions more often than bad decisions, so possibly the “good decision by marrying early” to the “bad decision by marrying young early” ratio on the board is skewed.
That being said, for all of you who married after knowing eachother for 4 months, you played the lottery and you won. What can I say? I’ll never be convinced that marrying someone you’ve known for such a small amount of time is a good decision. It’s a risk, and if you want to take risks with your life, then do it! I’ll continue to think you’re absolutely retarded, though, and I’ll really never trust someone with something important if I realize/discover that they’re making such large decisions so rashly.
Not I. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I got married at 19, my sophomore year in college. She and I worked the marriage hard for 9 years, realized it wasn’t going to succeed and managed to salvage a friendship out of it.
All the folks who gave us reasons why I should NOT get married then were absolutely right. I wish we had listened.
Heh. For some reason, I find myself wondering if NightRabbit’s boyfriend is VCO3.
I’m 25, unmarried but dating the same girl for the last year and a half. I’ve got no plans to get married soon, and neither of us is sure we’ll do it at all. We’ve never formally broached the topic and it doesn’t bother me either way.
I don’t think marrying young is a virtue, but I also don’t understand why the marriage of strangers bothers the OP. Do you feel like you haven’t accomplished much with your life compared to people who are already tying the knot, NightRabbit? Live your own life. Or at least shut up. I know a bunch of very good people who got married at 22, 23, 24, and it’s none of your business. You think they’re retarded? Okay. (Odds are that almost all of them are smarter than you - not to mention coming off as more decent.) I think you sound like a nosey, bitter asshole. You’ve got a nice rant going, but sometimes people know what they’re doing and still do things differently from you.
Practical advice: if you are a college person, you will have an easier time finding compatible dates while in college (large numbers of similarly -aged, -educated people). The pool of eligible dates in an office is a lot smaller. It is generally logical that college people would tend to marry each other, either during or shortly after college.
(Anecdotes about meeting your spouse in your office not solicited; this is a generalization, YMMV.)
The thing is, people get married for all sorts of different reasons. And, people settle into relationships at different speeds and for different reasons. It’s wrong to assume that you can judge how long it takes other people to decide between the two of them whether or not they know enough to get married.
As for me, I’m 27, and I think it’s preposterous that so many of my friends have gotten married young. Mainly because once they get married it’s a lot harder to get them to come and hang out with me. My social life has suffered since friends started getting married.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’m 27. I’m finishing up grad school. I am not yet “gainfully employed”, having depended on graduate assistantships for the last four years for my employment. I do own a house with my ex-fiance, which is a hassle right now as I plan to be out of here in a year.
After our breakup, I finally admitted to myself that I do not want to be married yet. I definitely don’t want kids of any size, shape, or personality. This is a good thing because I wouldn’t be able to survive birth anyway. (Problem, meet solution.) I want to explore the world and figure out my place in it. I thought I had figured out my place at 22, but it turns out I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, so I went to shave the corners off the peg.
I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my 20s. (And I’m not done yet!) It’s taken me five years to figure out what I want to be and do for the rest of my life. I think I’m on a good track right now, but it’s not the one I thought I’d be on at 22.
This doesn’t mean that other people don’t figure it out a lot earlier than I did. Some people can be married at 18 and be happy for the rest of their lives. Some people haven’t figured it out at 68. That’s life. As far as marriage goes, some people find The One (they can live with) at 18. Some people never find him/her/it. Some people find him/her/it at all points in between. I’m glad I didn’t marry my fiance or my long-term boyfriend before him. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to rain on the parade of any of my friends who get married just because I’m not married/not getting married in the foreseeable future. They’re ready for it. I’m not. C’est la vie.
Now if you (NightRabbit) were ranting about kids in high school having babies, I’d be with you all the way. Marriage? Nope, not going to get involved in “always a bridesmaid” syndrome.
Not spending any time thinking about what you want to do with your life and making no plans for the future is a risk, and if you want to take risks with your life, then do it! I’ll continue to think you’re absolutely retarded though, and I’ll really never trust someone who doesn’t even bother to spend time thinking about such important decisions.
It works both ways, kiddie. If you don’t want “The American Dream” of house, kids, and comfortable retirement on a clam and orderly schedule, more power to you. But for those of us that do want it, it all costs, and TIME is what it costs the most. You want the house to be paid off before you retire? You better buy it soon. You want to have grandkids when you’re not too old to enjoy them? Well, you better start structuring your life in such a way that you can do it, and you better start thinking about it sooner rather than later.
You’re down on people who get married early, but it sounds like you aren’t even bothering to think about the shape you want your life to take. Now who’s more irresponsible, the person who found someone they want to be with (sometimes ill-advised, but not always) and knows what timeline they would like to have, or the person who can’t even be bothered to think about it, so they dismiss it and call it stupid?
I think most people are in a continual state of “figuring it out” their whole lives. I want this, changes to I want that. Sometimes it little things - like “what I really want is a decent purse”, sometimes its big things - like “I think I want to move to Europe.” Very few people start with a vision and pursue that to the end, get it, and are then content, story over. And that doesn’t matter if you are eleven and want to be a ballerina when you grow up, or 21 and think your new boyfriend is the guy you MUST spend the rest of your life with, or 40 and decide you need to go back to law school cause you missed your calling, or 65 and decide to take up golf now that you are retired.