If I don’t know the real you, if you honestly want to come off the way you come off, that’s really sad. Like dying puppy sad.
Yep. And everyone has a wildly different idea of where that point is, and how precise and accurate the data have to be. It’s never going to be even close to risk-free.
If you honestly think you know me from this message board, or that your self-righteous little opinion of me has any meaning to me except to make me laugh, then YOU are the one who’s sad. Like, look, I made a really bad simile sad, to show how strong my feelings are! :rolleyes:
Give it a rest, bitch. This thread isn’t about your delusional ideas about how much you know about me. It’s about Early Marriages, and being really shitty to NightRabbit, a relative newb who has a valid point that everyone here thinks they can negate with a plurality of anecdotes. Want to talk about that? Cool. Not? Wrong thread.
And the sad thing is, despite the fact that you have done nothing but say you hate me for the last 10 posts, I will say I agree with you here. What I don’t agree with is the idea that your marriage works because you’re uncomplicated. Everyone’s complicated. You had good intuition on your marriage. A hell of a lot of people go into it with the same amount of love and certainty you have and are wrong. More of them are wrong if they’re really young, and if they don’t know the other person very well. I hope we can at least agree on those points… though I’m not betting on it or anything.
I was thinking about these three issues while keeping up with this thread today, and I think the OP is pretty much right about the first two. Despite all of the anecdotes to the contrary, I don’t see how anyone can argue that it’s generally a good idea to wait until you are a little older (say, at least 25) to get married, and that it’s generally a good idea to get to know your potential spouse for a while (say, at least a year or so) before you tie the knot. (As far as living together goes, I tend to be against it, but I don’t know enough about the statistics to make a statement about how it affects the divorce rate.)
On the other hand, my mother once told me that the Catholic Church used to recommend that people not draw out their engagement period too long…they felt that it was best to marry before the “honeymoon” feeling of being in love wears off. I’m not sure that’s bad advice, either.
To me, this discussion seems so abstract. There are a number of examples in my family of people getting married after knowing each other for only a few months, and all the marriages seem to be lasting. Most are over ten years old now.
I myself proposed to my wife six months after I met her, and we got married ten months after that (16 months after first meeting). I was actually sure she was “the one” within five months.
I don’t understand how people can generalize how much time it takes to learn all about a person. I saw all personality sides of my wife in those five months, and we were in many differenent situations.
Ed
I think you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions, OP, but I’ll save my ranting for after work.
Tah.
Well, generalizing doesn’t mean that you’ve accounted for all possible situations…it’s just a rule of thumb, as it were. I actually think that most people have an idea that the person is “the one” after a short period of time, and some just decide to test it out a little longer for whatever reason. My husband and I figured after about 3 months that we’d eventually get married, but thought we would give it some time so our parents wouldn’t freak out! Seriously, I don’t think it can hurt, and may very well help, to take some time to ensure compatibility for the long haul.
Interestingly, my parents had the opposite reaction: “Why are you having such a long engagement?” And frankly, it was more for logistical reasons than for anything else.
Ed
To the OP: With all your spouting off on the complexities of relationships, love, time to grow, blah, blah, blah, did it ever occur to you that not everyone is on the same timeframe as you? Christ, you’ve essentially answered your own damn question: the decision to marry is complex. Fine, you’ve been in a relationship for two years, you’re in your first apartment, you don’t live together (I’m of the opinion that you never REALLY know someone until you’ve lived together), and don’t know what the hell you want out of it. You “love him to death” but don’t know “if he’s the right one.” You’re worried that one of you wanting to move might be a deal-breaker. You think getting married is going to squash your dreams of a career, self-development, personal growth, etc. To me this shows a lack of, or at least limited, understand of marriage and love. Is it really that hard to grasp that there might be other people out there that can figure all that stuff out faster than you? And just because it’s faster doesn’t mean it’s rushed. Yeah, I agree that getting married after only a couple months is a bit of a risk, but 6 months? A year? Do you really need to know what foods give the person gas before you get married? What else is out there that two people who love each other can’t talk about in 6 months or else decide to figure out along the way?
I do agree with you about not liking the idea that some people don’t take marriage seriously. Those people usually reap what they sow, and just because it’s common in your circle of friends doesn’t mean it’s true of every early marriage.
I can imagine this happening when you’re younger. You might love the hell out of someone but your career gives you an opportunity elsewhere. Your partner may be in school, or be starting out on his/her career. Either one of you has to give up your dream job, or you have to separate. If you separate, it may herald the end of what might have been a permanent relationship. It’s a BIG decision.
Unfair, IMO. My mother felt that getting married and having kids squashed her dreams of career, self-development, and personal growth. Even though women have a lot more opportunities now, having kids still has an effect on our careers, causing a lot of women to delay marriage and childbearing. That’s a legitimate choice, and I don’t think it shows that the OP lacks or had a limited understand of love. Of her own limitations, maybe, but we all have them, and knowing what they are is a good thing.
I agree, but I have to think the OP is witnessing specific situations that seem dubious to her. Haven’t we all seen people marry in haste (or youth) and repent at leisure? 50% of marriages started before the bride is 25 end in divorce. That’s the statistic.
IMO, 6 months or a year could be enough time. One or two months? Probably not. You’re taking a huge risk. A year seems like plenty of time. Engagements that are too long cause other sorts of stresses on relationships.
No, it’s not. But even if it were, it would be rather uninformative. The only other alternative to divorce is death. The younger you are, the less likely your marriage will end with the death of one partner. We would expect to see more terminations by divorce than death as a result. As it turns out, even this bit of common sense isn’t really true.
Good point, Maeglin, I hadn’t thought of it that way. Also, as I said above (but I don’t think anyone noticed), the statistic (50% of marriages before the bride is 25 end in divorce) does not mean that marrying young is a causative factor in subsequent divorce. The statistic that Rubystreak keeps quoting is actually doing nothing to support his/her point. Correlation is not equal to causation. As a simple example, it may be that poor people marry younger. Being poor puts stress on the relationship, and thus more poor marriages end in divorce. So if you look at the age of the bride, then it looks like marrying young caused the divorce, but really it’s the financial stress in the relationship that caused the divorce.
I offered cites. You haven’t. Care to?
Your own cite says, “Nearly half of people who marry under age 18 and 40 percent under age 20 end up divorced. It’s only 24 percent for people who marry after age 25.” You contradicted your own cite to say that 50% of marriages by brides under the age of 25 end in divorce, which is what Maeglin was disagreeing with.
Also, your cites say nothing about correcting this age-divorce correlation for other factors such as financial state, religion, etc.
55 now got married in my teens,oh you don’t want to hear happy stories,
ok, defend?,We grew into different people together, and still liked what we grew into. But for the extremly self centered the world is all about YOU, probably wouldn’t work. Stay single
cite for the 50% marriage failure rate for under 25.
[url=http://www.contemporaryfamilies.org/subtemplate.php?t=pressReleases&ext=marryolder]Council on Contemporary FamiliesMost researchers agree that marriages contracted at very young ages are likely to be unstable due to a “maturity effect.” (Oppenheimer 1988) Young people often have inadequate self-knowledge and are uncertain about their own future prospects and potential. They are also prone to misjudge the characteristics and likely trajectories of their partners. In addition, many of their adult attributes have not yet even emerged, making it difficult for them to select a mate who will be compatible as both partners mature. A very young age at marriage is one of the best predictors of divorce.
People who marry at later ages, on the other hand, being more mature in all these respects, are less likely to make mistakes in the choice of spouse. In addition, people who marry late tend to do so when they have completed more schooling, which is another stabilizing factor.
[/quote]
Refutation of the idea that financial problems are a predictor of divorce.
I’m not even really sure what is going on in this thread anymore. I don’t think I, or NightRabbit for that matter, am pointing the finger at anyone here’s marriage and saying, “It’s doomed!” or “You shouldn’t have gotten married!” Lots of people, at least half, of those who marry young make it work. Many of them have posted here. There is another side of it, one that is not being represented in this thread, which is that marriage at an early age is a known predictor of divorce. I have offered plenty of cites. Everyone else is offering anecdotes (and tons of snide insults). It worked for you, great. It doesn’t work for other people, people who are not posting angrily to this thread. I feel that I have exhausted what more I can say, because my arguments are engendering bad feeling far out of proportion to what I’m saying.
That sounds like a terrible idea. It seems to me that if you still want to get married after the period of intense infatuation is over, you’re likely to be able to stick with it through all the troubled times sure to come. I’d say that if you haven’t had at least one knock-down drag-out argument, you shouldn’t even think about getting married.
Maybe the Church felt this way to reduce the chance of hanky-panky for those who couldn’t wait?
Ok, done with work. Man, NightRabbit did I think angry thoughts this morning at you. Mostly because of this:
which might be some kind of reference to my own situation, thus raising the ‘‘defense-o-meter.’’
I am nearly 25 years old, and I got married at 23, a year and a half ago. Believe it or not this was outrageously old from my perspective, since most people in my family married first when they were 17 or 18. I was finishing undergraduate school at the time of our marriage… and we had known one another for 5 years, and been in a serious relationship for 4 of them, at the time of our marriage.
I’m aware of the statistics, and for the most part, I trust them. I’ve always felt that I was significantly more mature than a lot of my peers in this regard… not to mention I’ve witnessed 80,000 marriages (old and young) fall apart… I’m familiar with how it happens.
Being in love, of course I was in a hurry to get married. Psychologically I was an anxious wreck: ‘‘Jesus, I better marry him before he is taken from me forever!’’ We waited anyhow, because mushy emotions do not a successful marriage make.
When we did marry–the summer after his graduation and the summer before I returned to college to finish my degree-- the timing was perfect. I can’t describe to you how satisfied I was to be with my ‘‘new husband’’ on my honeymoon, and realize there were no secrets, no burning doubts, nothing but me and him, essentially enjoying one another’s company the way we always do when we go on vacation.
So as a general rule, yeah, I think marrying impulsively is a bit of a gamble. While I married young, it was hardly an impulsive decision. It was exhaustively thought out. And yet my most fundamental personal beliefs about the impermanent nature of reality lead me to the conclusion that even having things exhaustively thought out yields no guarantee. He could be hit by a car and have severe brain trauma that changes his personality forever, for all I know.
The knowledge of the tentative nature of marriage (and everything, really) makes me appreciate my relationship in a full and beautiful way. It’s sort of funny… I actually have a lot of anxiety about losing him to some tragic death, but that very anxiety, that lack of security that he will always be there, has made me appreciate each moment I do have with him to an incredible degree.
And yes, we do have some dilemmas. Our career interests are diverse, but we both want to attend graduate school. Because I put it off, he’s applying before me… which means… you guessed it… I now have to choose between applying somewhere close to his school and having limited career choices, or spending a great deal of time away from the man that I love. I might even have to spend a year in another country chasing my own dreams. And I might even decide not to chase those dreams in the most ideal way because I don’t want to miss any of my life with him.
This might be the mindset you aren’t able to fathom. I find that regrettable, because compromise and the very real pain associated with it is a part of growing up… and I’d even call it a good kind of pain, a sobering pain that awakens you to what truly matters in your life. Whether I choose to stay close to him or go off and do my own thing for a while is not the point. The point is that such decisions are an inherent part of marriage, indeed, an inherent part of being a human being. In life, we don’t always get everything we want. Sometimes we have to make decisions that hurt.
If you don’t feel you’re ready for marriage, then I’m glad you aren’t allowing yourself to be rushed into it. I just don’t see the point in judging other people for marrying young. You don’t seem to be only judging young and married people, but people, like myself, who have to make difficult choices about career and love. You seem to think, ‘‘If she’d never gotten married so young, she would never have this decision!’’
What this means to me is that you cannot fathom the joy that I have in being faced with such dilemmas. It means I have a person in my life who is worth incredible sacrifice… and he feels the same way about me. Nothing–not my overachieving ego, not money, not a kick-ass career–is more important than another human being–specifically, the human being I have chosen to share the rest of my life with.
He is worth it not only on a personal level, but on a community level… there is a beautiful metaphor in a mediocre book called The Road Less Travelled that likens marriage to a mountain-climbing base camp. The camp exists to provide shelter and warmth in between cold and treacherous excursions out in the world. The purpose of life is to climb mountains, not sit around in the base camp… but you’d better make damn sure you take care of that base camp, because it’s an essential part of mountain climbing. I basically feel that my relationship enables me to achieve more for the good of mankind than I would be able to do alone. He feels the same way. It’s one of the reasons we get along so well.
So while I share at least a little understanding with regards to your bemusement when people marry after a short time, I do not share your perspective on what marriage necessarily ‘‘means’’ to young people, nor do I think of my current dilemma over career and family to be a regrettable mistake. It’s a fucking honor.
Sincerely,
Christy
So well put.
Before my wedding, people came up to me and expressed their dismay that I was marrying someone who could die really young. All I could think was, “Do you really think there are guarantees in life?”
I think so many people risk a lot for a little and then turn around and are afraid to risk a little for a lot.