Early Marriages

The BBQ Pit
101

It doesn’t seem that way to me either, and I’m someone who did not want kids at 18, did not want kids at 25 and doesn’t want them at (nearly) 30.

What it seems like to me is ‘I don’t want kids right now.’

I also have a cousin who had her first kid at 39, less than a year after getting married.

It’s different for everyone. I look at that rent I pay every month as my freedom from mowing the lawn, shoveling the snow, cleaning the gutters, re-asphalting the driveway, etc.

It’s all included in the lease price, which makes me happy as I have no inclination to do those things even if I had the time to do them.

There are those who look down on people who rent, though. Not that you are doing that, but it does happen. There are those people who believe that people who rent are ‘unable’ to buy a house and thus are lesser people. It’s easy to get frustrated at those who judge my choice to rent as an inability to own.

Thing is, no matter how a person lives his or her life, someone else somewhere will have a problem with it.

I’m not married, don’t want kids, don’t care if I ever get married (maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but it’s not a goal of mine), don’t own a house, have a pretty good career, make a decently comfortable living, and have the freedom to go where I want, when I want without discussing it first, and somewhere there’s someone who has a problem with that.

Oh. Fucking. Well.

102

This strikes me as extremely funny since I’m risk averse about pretty much everything in my life. Now I get to be labeled as rash!

For me, getting married at all is a big risk. I don’t care if you’ve known each other five minutes or five years, it’s still a risk.

And, conversely, it’s not that big a risk. We’re not talking the fate of the world, here. [Jack Bauer]Marry the right person, or millions of people WILL DIE![/Jack Bauer]

103

Yeah, because marrying the first guy I take a shine to within 6 months is a GREAT way of shaping my life. I like how 25 and unmarried suddenly becomes, “not bothering to think about the shape you want you life to take.” My life has a nice shape to it, and I’m going to keep it that way by not fucking it up with hasty bad decision making like rushing into marriage or kids.

104

Nope, but maybe we’d be compatible! :cool:

I only think your “very good people” are retarded if they got married to practical strangers. That’s not responsible in any sense of the word. It’s also not about being smart- what bothers me is that a lot of otherwise smart people are marrying people they just met. And I don’t understand why I’m bitter, either. If I were single, maybe. :wink: Why can’t I disagree strongly with a societal trend without being “bitter”?

Sometimes. Sometimes not.

105

Holy crap night rabbit, you need to chillax on decisions that don’t really affect you one whit. You have a particular POV so you’ll self-select for the disasters that “justify” your world-view, point and laugh while simultaneously ignoring all the other people who are quietly living happily in the same situations you find so troublesome. The model of marriage you’re holding up as ideal is a damn recent invention, and not really looked upon favourably by most of the world anyway. Read Stephanie Coontz’s “A History of Marriage” if you must spout off.

Seriously, like most American kids you live in a pretty self-involved bubble with a pretty narrow world-view. Yours truly included in that category but at least I don’t spend my time whinging about people’s hijabs and marital decisions. How would I know?

106

NO ONE IS TELLING YOU TO GET MARRIED.

NO ONE IS TELLING YOU TO HAVE KIDS.

NO ONE IS TELLING YOU TO BUY A HOUSE.

What people are telling you is to PLAN your life. That having no plan is just as stupid as marrying a guy you met four weeks ago at the tender young age of 19. That time is going to go a hell of a lot faster than you can possibly believe at 25.

107

Everyone is assuming that my life has no plan! I never said it has no plan. I have a great life plan. Right now, it doesn’t include kids. Or buying a house, even though I am saving and those savings could possibly comprise a downpayment at some point down the road. I’m also saving for retirement. Guess what? 25, not married, not a parent, and not a homeowner does not equal NO PLAN. And “marriage” doesn’t mean, “plan”, the terms are not synonymous.

108

What I disagree with is marrying someone you’ve ONLY KNOWN FOR A FEW MONTHS. My “model” of marriage be damned, most people who marry so quickly, in the US, aren’t citing a political or economic theory of marriage, even though that would make more sense. No, it’s “I have a feeling he’s the one”. I think that’s bullshit, frankly. A feeling doesn’t make it so. And if you feel he’s the one, great, why do you have to immediately get married? What the hell is the goddamn rush?

“I just know he’s the one, I feel it.” “I just KNOW that god exists, I feel it.” Great, but that doesn’t make it so. I think these two statements are very similar. How people can laugh at the latter but throw so much of their lives into the former seems disingenuous.

109

Can I just say, for the record, and as reply to both of the ‘getting married’ threads, that I don’t give a rats ass when other folks get married, or even if they do? I mean, unless you’re some one close to me, I really don’t give a fuck. And if you’re some one close to me, and haven’t asked my opinion, I’ll keep it the fuck to myself.

There’s as many stories about why folks got married when they did as are folks getting married. Some are good ideas, some aren’t. Age is only one of hundreds of factors. I have absolutely no idea why so many people give a shit on a generalized basis.

I mean, I did a mental :rolleyes: when I hear Pam Anderson (decidedly **over ** the age, if not IQ of early 20s) was marrying RIck “one night in Paris” SOloman. I gave a giggle this afternoon when I saw that she’d filed for divorce. and another one a few minutes later when she recinded. (link ) but I really don’t understand at all why this topic generated not one, but two threads of multiple pages consisting mostly of “well I did and it was good” and “I did and it was bad”.

110

Most people in the US get married because of their feelings, not for economic or political reasons. And if he is the one, you’re right–there is no reason to rush. Nor is there any reason to put things off. I mean, if we’re gong to get married anyways, what’s the point in waiting? (And sometimes, there are outside reasons for pushing it forward, besides pregnancy)

Some people rush into relationships. Others stay in bad ones for years. I don’t think that length of courtship is that good of an indicator of how a marriage is going to turn out. There are too many other variables, such as the personalities of the people involved.

111

Why does it bother you?

Assuming this IS a trend, you can disagree with it without being bitter. But your comments still came across as bitter.

112

I started dating the future Mrs. Montoya at age 15, married her at age 25, marriage finally crumbled at age 37 when the kids were 8, 6 & 4. Had we gotten married right out of high school or even college the kids would have been grown up (or nearly so) and we’d both be young enough to find someone else to hang out with for the next 30 years or so, or embark on whatever other adventurous lifestyle we wanted.

There’s a lot to be said for early marriage & parentage, not the least is that when the kids are fledged and you enter mid-life you find yourself with quite a degree of flexibility.

One thing I have learned, you can never know what cards the future is going to deal you. How you play the ones you hold right now depends entirely on what you want out of life. I could get behind a pitting of society demanding that marriage is a requirement for a complete life, or society upholding lifelong manogamy as the model of perfection when more than 50% of such attempts fall far short of the mark. There is a stronger argument to be made that our instincts tell us to hook up and breed early, and to seek mates that will satisfy our needs depending on our position in our life cycle: Good genes for the breeding mate, good companion for the mid-life mate and good resources for the retirement mate.

But pitting folks for following their instincts and marrying early when there is as much evidence to suggest that waiting doesn’t help either…just comes accross as bitter.

113

I think people who smoke are brainless idiots because they are, without question, damaging their health and hastening their death. Do people who smoke care that they are doing so without my explicit endorsement? No! And quite frankly, it’s not my business even if my motive is to save them from their own crappy decision.

114

The difference between those statements is that feeling that god exists has no impact on if he does (he doesn’t, but that’s another thread. ) Feeling that someone is right for you has a big impact on whether marriage succeeds.
Age is less important than where you are in your life at a certain point. (That goes for kids and houses also.) There is a big difference between marrying your first serious partner and marrying when you’ve had the opportunity to see what doesn’t work as well as what does. I’m not opposed to people living together, but is marrying because one person wants to and the other agrees because breaking up would be inconvenient any better than marrying in haste?

Obligatory anecdote: I got married at 26 to someone who I had know for five years, but we never lived closer than 600 miles apart in that time, weren’t talking to each other for a good bit of it, and spend less than 3 weeks actually together before we got engaged. We both knew it was right, and given that we’ve been married 30 years, we were correct.

115

Is Night Bunny trying to save them, or is she just bitching in the Pit? I didn’t see anything prescriptive in what she was saying, just that it irks her. If you think people close to you are making a mistake, and you know it’s not OK to tell them, what better venue for your venting than here? Unless, of course, what you’re saying something unpopular that makes people defensive, that is.

116

I’m 26. My girlfriend of a bit over 8 months is 32. This is my second serious relationship, and her fourth, and neither one of us is looking to get married any time soon. Yet many of my married friends keep hinting that we’re likely to get married soon. In the last two weeks, I have had three (!) friends ask me if I was going to propose/we were likely to get married soon. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at them. I mean, really? We haven’t even known each other for a year, and while I think everything is going really well, I am not at all ready to make a lifelong vow.

Kudos to those who are ready that soon, and who have happy marriages, but I think y’all are insane.

117

Hello. I’m Paul Beitz.

I read almost none of this thread.

I met my wife in December of 1979.
Proposed on New Years Eve
Married in January of 1980 at the age of 19. Both of our family/parents approved.
1980 is not 2007, but it’s also not 1950.

And no, she was not pregnant, nor did we think she was pregnant.

I was married when I went away to college, and when I went away to the academy.

We are still married.

Neither of us has ever moved out or filed for divorce.

We have 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl. The youngest (a boy) is 22.

I still fuck the living shit out of my wife at least 4 times a week.:cool::smiley:

We own 3 houses, 2 of which we rent out (one admittedly to our son).

I retired last July from a police department after 25 years, but still do work as a consultant plus I took a part-time patrol gig with another department. Financially we’re solvent. I’m actuallly making more dough in retirement than when I was working full time!:cool:

We are, and have always been, doing quite fine, not withstanding the fact that we married so young. We did so without any financial help from our families. We never needed it.

What’s your fucking point?:confused::mad:

118

What, like I’m the only one who has ever pitted other people’s decisions? Seriously! I feel the same way about smoking but at least it’s carrying more of a stigma than it ever did.

I just don’t understand basing your future on someone you’ve only known for a short time. Family is a very important concept to me. An intact, loving family is the most important thing in life, hands down. To claim that your family means so much to you and yet build it on a marriage foundation of haste is like building a house before looking at the ground where you’re building it. Is it clay? Is it sand? Is it in a flood-prone area? Etc. I mean, I spend more time reading Moby Dick than some people do getting to know eachother before they got married! And it bothers me the way it bothers me when I see people smoking, or mistreating their dogs, or mistreating their children, or voting republican, or sending their kids to sunday school. No, it doesn’t directly concern me, but I think it’s retarded, and that’s why I’m pitting it.

pkbites, the only reason I can think of for proposing to a girl that quickly is that you felt desperate. I wish I could phrase that in a better way, but it’s not meant to be an insult. But really, what kind of girl accepts marriage to a guy she just met? I think you’re both goddamn lucky and not a bit wise.

119

I think the fact that you cannot think of any more reasons reflects your lack of imagination more than anything else.

It is not at all obvious that time spent dating beforehand is a good predictor of either length or happiness of marriage. You have have convinced yourself that this is true in order to rationalize your own choices, but this does not make it true in the wider world.

120

If your dying grandmother says that you’re getting no inheritance unless you’re married when she dies, I’d accept that as a reason :rolleyes: