I’m putting this in IMHO rather than GQ as I welcome opinions/personal stories in addition to hard facts, although the latter would be great to have as well.
In short - how well do relationships that begin as childhood sweethearts fare, compared to “regular” marriages? (Tim Minchin appears to be happily married to his CS for closing in on 2 decades - that’s a great data point!)
I ask because my son is in a childhood sweetheart type of relationship and it is really quite lovely. I realize that most likely they will break up, and that’s perfectly fine. But what if they don’t? I honestly think she is an excellent match for him, but is marrying your childhood sweetheart courting disaster?
How old? “Childhood sweetheart” for some reason seems like a different connotation to me than “high school girlfriend.”
I have a bunch of friends from school who started dating in high school and are now celebrating 15+ years together. At least 3 couples I can think of off the top of my head, together since about 1993 or so. The one couple has 4 kids, the other couples have 1 kid each. They got married after college I think.
I do know one couple that just got divorced after being together since high school. But, such is the divorce rate
Statisically, young marriages do often end in divorce. Here’s a link to a studyon marriage and divorce. The table that’s most relevant to your question is Table 6, “Duration of marriages begun by individuals ages 15 to 46 in 1978–2010 by age, gender, and educational attainment.”
And this is stated below the table:
Here’s another articlethat says the same thing, that divorce rates tend to go down as marriage age goes up:
It’s hard to predict what will happen for specific couples. For your son and his girlfriend, they might break up, they might get married and stay together forever, or they might get married and get divorced. If I was in your place, I wouldn’t worry about them getting engaged, just let them live their lives. If they do announce that they’re engaged, I wouldn’t try to push them one way or the other, I might ask gently as possible if they were on the same page regarding kids and money and where to live and other things that can lead to divorce if they aren’t on the same page. But I would only ask if I could do it in the kindest, most non-judgmental way, and I’d only ask one time and then drop it.
Also, divorce rates tend to be lower for people with higher education. So that’s another reason to encourage your son (and his girlfriend) to pursue higher education if possible.
That study is about young marriages, not childhood or high school sweethearts. I actually know a number of people who married their high school sweethearts at the age of 24 or 25, not 18 or 19 or even 21. My daughter is 25, has been with her boyfriend since she was 16 and they are at least 2 years from getting married, since they haven’t booked anything yet.
I grew up with two friends who started dating in 5th grade, and 20 or so years later, they are still together. The parents did a lot to help nurture / foster the relationship, and I can only think of a brief few weeks where they weren’t together, back in sophomore year of high school. They have been married for almost ten years now (IIRC) and have three kids.
They’re a good match for each other, but I really think they are the exception that proves the rule. I just can’t imagine that most people are suited to find their “soulmate” before they can even drive.
I also wonder if the parents’ involvement might have been a major factor (for better or worse) in them staying together (at least through the school years). But, they seem to be insanely happy now, and that’s what matters.
IMO these numbers are misleading and inconclusive.
First off, you’re looking at the wrong column in the table, IMHO. You can’t look at the overall likelihood of divorce as you’ve done, since the younger-marrying cohort will have been married longer, on average, and will have more time to have gotten divorced. The columns to focus on are the divorce by duration of marriage columns, which also show a difference by age-at-marriage but not nearly as stark.
But even over here, there’s another factor at play. Because it’s likely (IMHO) that older people are less likely to get divorced than younger people, given the same level of happiness in marriage. The rationale being that older people have less opportunity and inclination to start all over again from scratch than younger people do. So the cohorts are still not similar. Someone who has been married for 10 years but got married at 22 is now 32, while someone married for 10 years but who got married at 32 is now 42 - it’s likely IMO that - on average - the first will be more inclined to start all over again than the second, given the same amount of success in the relationship.
So there’s no real way to measure how much is attributed to age-at-marriage, and at any rate these types of stats don’t show it at all.
When we met, I was 17 and she was 16. We married 1-1/2 years later, had 4 kids, and are now retired 57 years later. Some say those teen-age marriages just don’t workout, but ours did.
A friend of my dad married his childhood sweetheart and they are still married many decades later. My dad has commented that he suspects that the guy has regrets about never begin with anyone else and has a certain longing for that, but that is only a suspicion which I believe has more to do with him and his upbringing then anything actually in the mentioned relationship.
Other then that I refer you to Romeo and Juliet about the consequences of interfering with young love that must be.
I’ve had a few friends who married their childhood sweethearts echo that sentiment. One said, less than a year after his wedding, that he somewhat regretted being tied down with his girlfriend, because it affected his decisions for college and other things. He chose to stay local because it was what she wanted him to do, so they wouldn’t have to suffer a long-distance relationship.
It was hard to hear because some of us warned him about basing important life choices off of not wanting to lose the first serious relationship he’d ever had. (They’d been dating for six months, during our senior year of high school.) I think there were some other factors that contributed to his unhappiness, including an overbearing father-in-law, but every now and then, he would speculate about “the path not traveled,” where they either tried to make it work while he went away for college or where they broke up on good terms so they could grow and mature. It’s a little sad, but he doesn’t bring it up often anymore, so I suppose he’s come to terms with his choices.
I tried to keep the question general, but in this case they are in 11th grade. They have known each other since 6th grade; she then moved away. They started “going out” three years ago when she came back for a visit but their relationship has been entirely via Skype since then, except for a visit we just made so that they could get together in person.
There is little danger of them marrying ridiculously young. A scenario where they remain romantically involved (probably with a lot of LDR) and eventually marry in their late 20s is a far more likely scenario, in their particular situation.
Sam Lowry, I’m not trying to push them in any particular direction. I will respect my son’s choices, whatever they are. (I suppose if he wanted to drop out of school and get married right now I wouldn’t respect THAT choice, but that’s not going to happen. They are both sensible kids.)
I have two friends who fell in love back in primary school when they were like 11 or 12 and they are now in their thirties, happily married with one daughter and something unknown on the way. They never had any breaks, always together. So yeah I guess it’s like everything in life: sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
They are high school kids in a long-distance relationship? In this case, I wouldn’t be concerned about they getting married as much as I’d be worried that my son might be missing out on other experiences by being in a relationship with a girl that he’s seen, in person, less than a handful of times in the course of three years.
My parents are the closest case I know to what you describe: met when she was in Teachers’ School, he in Commerce School, at what would nowadays be “high school” ages; during their courtship, spent more time apart than in the same town (first she got her degree and a job in a mountain village from which she’d ride down most weekends, then her family moved back to Barcelona and she followed, then he went to visit and got a job and a room in a boarding house). While there are many aspects about their marriage I’d try to avoid repeating if I ever do marry, they’re clearly from their personalities and backgrounds and not from having met in their teens.
I also have several friends who spent time apart during their long courtships, again having started their relationship very young and getting separated by military service, college or jobs. The majority are still married and living together, some with kids in college or grandkids in school. Two couples are separated; if they were American they’d probably be divorced.
Getting married too fast: bad.
Getting married because “we’ve been together this long, we can’t just go and break up now”: bad.
Getting married because “we had a big fight and then made up and there was an oops”: bad[sup]3[/sup].
Dating someone for a long time because your relationship started young, then deciding to marry because each of you is the person with whom the other wants to spend the rest of their life? That’s… pretty much what I consider normal, adjusting “length of courtship” as a function of “age at start of relationship”.
My grandparents dated in high school and married in their late teens, and were together for 67 years, until my grandfather died. (They broke up for a while when they were dating in high school, but got back together and were basically inseparable their entire adult lives. I get different stories every time I ask re: why they broke up – my mom’s theory is that my grandmother wouldn’t put out.)
Right now I am doing a green card application for the wife of a couple who met in grade school in Moscow in the 1960s, he emigrated to the U.S., she married someone else and emigrated elsewhere, and then divorced after a long marriage and 3 kids, and then they reunited and eventually married last year. I don’t even know whether they ever dated as teenagers, but there must have been something there for them to have the urge to get in touch with each other after all that time.
Then there are the 2 (female) high school friends of mine who were best friends as children, until one stole the other’s boyfriend senior year and eventually married him (after they both graduated college). The scorned friend started dating someone else shortly thereafter and eventually married him (again, after graduating college). Both women are still married to the same men, and both got married in their early 20s. Another HS friend of mine married her senior prom date as well, although not until their mid-20s, and is still married to him, happily as far as I know.
Offhand, I can’t think of anyone I know who married someone they dated for any length of time as a teenager, and has since split up. (A friend of my sister’s had a shotgun wedding shortly after HS graduation, though, and that marriage didn’t last, largely because if she hadn’t been pregnant, she probably never would have married the jerk to begin with.)
She had just turned 16, and I was 17. We went together for 4 years and married. Just celebrated our 50th in August. So far it seems to have worked. Seems as if we actually like each other as persons!
But…We are the only ones of all of our high school friends that remained married.
