Hey now… I got married when I was 19 and we just celebrated our 9 year anniversary with no end in sight.
This was just 6 posts below that, Opal. I’m merely questioning relic’s timing, not the stability of the relationship - I have no insight in that, nor do I have so in your relationship.
Relic,
I was just reminded yesterday that I too, proposed when I was 22. She said no, because we were young and we had been apart too much, (she lives in Frankfurt, Germany, me in Minnesota) and because we had both been unfaithful. But she called me yesterday out of the blue. And I know she’s still the one. I’ve known since the day I met her, when I was 19. I wish I’d followed my heart when when I was younger.
I’m 29 now and haven’t been happy since I lost her.
What I wouldn’t give to be 19 and in love again…
I have yet to see a connection among age, amount of time spent dating, and the validity of a relationship. My in-laws married 3 days after MIL turned 18 - it’s been 52 years. My mother married at 18 and had 3 kids before she was 23 - they reached their 48th anniversary last month. My sister and her husband dated exclusively thru most of high school and part of his college years - 7 years total - before they married 17 years ago when she was 22. My husband and I dated 4 weeks and eloped - not quite 17 years ago - just a month before I turned 30.
Love and the longevity of a relationship are dependent upon the individuals involved. Of course, if MY daughter even THOUGHT of eloping before she finishes college… well, what does she know - she’s jsut a teenager…
relic - you come across to me as a level-headed person of maturity and judgement. I wish you the best!
Congatulations, OpalCat!
Thanks FairyChatMom! Compliments like that make me glow. :o
To say that I could tell you 20 stories just like yours would be an understatement. I know many many girls just like you… blinded by what they want to call “love” and afraid to experience anything else in the world b/c they are “comfortable” where they are. This is not comfort… it’s fear of rejection and having to be on your own. You are one of those people who doesn’t know how to define themselves alone, they need someone else there to support their existance. I know too many girls like this! What are you going to do for THREE years!?! This are the best years of your life, you are just in college and supposed to be experiencing all the things the world has to offer. You are going to throw this all away on a thought of marriage to some guy… who is probably the only guy you’ve ever really been even moderately serious with. The day I graduated high school I though that I knew it all, and that thought lasted until my first day of college, when I realized just how stupid I really was. You have so much life ahead of yourself, don’t throw that all away over some fleeting relationship that you “think” is going to last. As for many of the people who give stories about how their parents and friends all got married at 19… that was a different time and a different era. The mentality is totally different! Please relic… give yourself some space and learn from the world… don’t go through these years with blinders on because of some guy… you will miss out on so much!
Relic,
First of all I am glad that you found someone that you love, and want to spend the rest of your life with. I hope, that for your sake, it does work out.
But why the marriage? Why the Ceromony? I have no intent to even have a ceromony until I have lived for a long time with the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.
Thats even if I have a ceromony. A womans word that she wants to spend the rest of her life with me is good enough for me.
Excuse me? Did you read what this is supposed to be about? Look everybody! A prime example of what I’m talking about! Except now I’m also an air-headed girl that needs a big, strong man to support her, 'cause she’s too scared. Who the fuck are you to say we’re not in love? And I don’t know how to define myself alone? Alright, I am a well adjusted 18 yr old woman, who loves kids, dogs, and ferrets. I am getting a degree in psychology because my mission in life is to council teenagers who need help. I love to read and don’t watch much television. I love music and adore the movie Fight Club. I hate my History class, but love my English and Sociology classes. I like the artist Edward Gorey. I love Fairies, and Dragons. I write poetry occasionaly, and in fact am a finalist in a contest for two of them. How’s THAT! I would write more but I have to get ready for class soon. Fuck you and the horse you fucked on the way in. Just who do you think you are? The great know-it-all of who I am? FUCK YOU!
Wow… I knew she would be pissed, but I didn’t think she would be THAT pissed! 
Good shot.
I was thinking the same thing, wireless. I should propbaly keep my nose out of this whole business, but…
relic_11:
you started dating in January and got engaged in April? And during the whole time you have been dating you’ve only seen each other on weekends?
I don’t intend to be condescending, but getting engaged after such a short time, not seeing much of each other, but being utterly convinced that you want to spend the rest of your life with this man doesn’t sound very mature.
I am in my mid thrities and have had a lot of relationships. 80% of them would have been absolutely fabulous if we only saw each other on weekends. If we had never had the opportunity to progress further than that, any one of those relationships might have lasted forever. There really is a huge difference between the idealized, falling in love feeling and real life. IMHO, you haven’t had time to get past the first stage. If I were you, I’d wiat unitl he’s out of the Navy to get married.
OK, I’ll shut up now.
Oh, I’m more pissed than that. Be happy I have to leave to go to class.
Lucky, we knew each other for three years before that!
Forget it…
Screw the naysayers.
Just for the record, I never made a dig on your intelligence. There is no doubt in my mind that you are a very smart woman, and that you have set out to accomplish a lot in your life. I think you have made that evident in your posts to this thread. My point was that I’ve seen this kind of shit before. I know a dozen people just like you, and I’ve seen the bad shit that comes from it. I think that you are missing out on a lot by being with only one person, especially when they are so far away for such a long period of time. The coming years are the best of your life, I just don’t want you to waste them and end up resenting this guy 10 years down the road about how you missed out on everything in college pining away for him. As far as the emotional dependance thing… it really has nothing to do with gender either. It’s just that people get very caught up in relationships, especially when they are young… after a while it becomes difficult to picture yourself without that other person. It is my view that at this point you have lost part of your individual identity. After you have lost this, it becomes very difficult to get it back, and many people find it easier to just stay in the relationship instead of really trying to figure out who they are for themselves. Just my two cents, but hey, I’ve seen it happen many times.
Duh
On a side note… does anyone want to start a breakup pool for relic and her man? I think we could divide it up by monthly segments… 20 bucks a square sound good? If anyone has the balls to take the “never break up” square, I’ll give ya 1000 to 1 odds, but the square will cost ya 500 to start.
OK. I was a well adjusted 18 yr. old woman. I had one year of college under my belt and was studying psychology because my life’s mission was to work with the mentally ill. My plan was to get my PhD. I loved all animals; kids not so much. I read a lot and was involved in sports (especailly soccer). I was really into punk, but also appreciated classical, blues and other sytles of music. I wrote a lot, and had some of my poetry and a couple of essays published. I won a scholarship for one of them. My favorite artist was David.
I am now a 34 yr. old woman. I recently married (for the second time). I did get my degree (BA) in psychology, but my life’s mission now is the charity work I do in Nepal. When I’m home, I work as an Administrative Assistant. I still like music, but am far more appreciative of international music–African, Asian, Cuban. I still love animals; kids not so much. Sports have long since faded into the background. I travel as much as possible and have had the good fortune to see much of the world. I couldn’t possibly choose a favorite artist.
The point I am trying to make (and I think others as well) is that life changes people. One time of particularly dramatic change occurs form your late teens through your late 20’s/early 30’s. Your love might be a deep and true as anyone’s has ever been throught the entire history of mankind. But both you and your fiance are going to change a lot in the upcoming years. No matter how much you think you want to spend the rest of your life with him, it is impossible for you, at this point, to have any idea of what the rest of your life is going to be.
My favorite phrase about marriage is that it’s always a crap shoot. One can never be absolutely sure, so it always means taking a chance. However, when you take that chance during a time of enormous chage, you are stacking the deck against yourself.
Flame away.
BTW, are your parents in agreement with your upcoming marriage plans? Just curious.
That’s good. But as I’m sure you know, “knowing each other” and being committed to one another in a life-long romantic bond are two very different things.
I have several friends of many years who I absolutely adore. Wouldn’t marry any of them for a million bucks (well, maybe for a million). Friendship and romance require different things to work. Knowing each other and being friends, (while better than not having known someone before), is not really a good indication of how you are going to work out romantically. But this is a somewhat minor detail.
The bigger concern is that your lives are not yet set on any given path and you have no way of knowing which path your lives will take.
Duhman said:
I always think it is so sad when some one says something like this. It suggests someone who reached a pinnacle early in life and has never since done anything worthwhile. None of the people I respect say that high school or college were the “best years of thier life”; instead they say that every phase had its good and bad points. If you haven’t had a good time since college you’ve evidently fucked up your life somewhere, so you’re in no real position to be giving advice.
I said it before but I’ll repeat myself: everyone doesn’t have to takethe same path through life. There is no “right way,” or any script of what you are “supposed” to be doing at a given age. Yes, relic is probably in for a world of hurt–but she is in for a world of hurt no matter what, because that is what living is. Even if the marrige falls apart in three or four years, it dosen’t mean it was a waste, or without meaning. I know several people who had short first marriges that really helped them form themselves. Is it painful to have a marrige fall apart? Of course it is, but so are a lot of other things. Spending a couple years getting drunk and fucking against your basic nature because it is what MTV and the SDMB told you you ought to be doing with you life comes to mind.
And I think you are missing out on a lot by failing to form a strong monogamous relationship–life is full of choices, and none of us can experience everything. The set of things we each experience is different, and I think it is pretty damn arrogant for someone to say “Everyone’s life experiences should be like mine, because if they have missed out on anything I did they are selling themselves short.” It like housewives feeling sorry for childless carreer women and childless carrer women feeling sorry for housewives: just because a set of choices were right for you dosen’t mean they are the only right choices out there.
Virtually every opinion and belief relic holds dear is going to change in the next five years–this is normal. That is why having kids right now would be a Bad Idea. But there is nothing irrevocable about commiting to someone, even if relic probably dosen’t like to think about it that way right now. Early commitment can be very good for some people and very bad for others. Snce we don’t know her well enough to say, we’re best off trusting her judgement and letting her friends in RL function as naysayers. But to say she should live life a certain way becausee that is worked best for you is just silly.
FUCK YOU DUHMAN!!!
Put my fucking bet on Till Death Do Us Part!
I hope you’re fucking nuts fall off, and you’re dick shrivels to the size of a tootkpick! Fuckin’ asswipe.
Thank you, Manda JO, for realizing life does not fall into neat little categories. Thank you for seeing that even failures make you grow. Even if this marrige doesn’t work out (though I still think it will) I will never regret it because loving him is worth it. We were in love with each other during those three years, but he had a girlfriend, and we were both too scared to take a chance. We’re not scared anymore. But even if we never got together, I would never regret my love for him. Do you regret loving anyone that his been in your life? Even when they caused you pain? Think hard on that.
And my parents love him, almost as much as I do.