I think length of marriage is a really poor way to evaluate the success of a marriage. There are some long marriages that are really, really awful, and the fact that they lasted so long just perpetuated a lot of misery not just for the principals, but for everyone in their orbit.
Nit the case in my family. My parents stayed together because they lived each other. Same with my brother and sister-in-law. Not all families are full of misery and dysfunctional relatives.
Sure. My parents are also happily married. I’m happily married for 20 years. But my dad will tell you that his first marriage, though brief, was good for him and his now ex-wife, even though it didn’t work out long term, and some long term marriages are not good.
Length alone doesn’t tell you much.
Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
You gotta be kidding me right?
You really don’t believe people stay together for decades despite being miserable?
I don’t deny there are some long-term marriages in which the partners are miserable. But Manda Jo said that the length of a marriage was a poor way to evaluate the quality of one. That’s what I disagree with. And with that, I’m out of this thread.
I tell and have told all my kids: Not to live together, not to marry, don’t get a pet, not to have kids, not to have joint checking accounts. So far they have ignored me.
The people I know who have the most miserable marriages married before they were out of college. Most of the time its because they never got to have fun and regret it or because they married the first person they slept with and tried to find a match that was decent. Of course i know some loners who married the first person they slept with in their thirties and they’re unhappy too but most of them realise its by choice.
I wouldn’t want a law preventing marriage beyond whatever date we set for adulting which personally I’d set at 16. I would however advise my daughters to screw around and have fun and once bars and the dating scene gets old then find someone to settle down with which should be at least a couple of years after college. I was 4 years out before I could even stop pitying my married friends and could even consider dating someone for more than a month or two.
“Do what I say, not what I do” generally doesn’t work on kids.
62 or when the last of the kids move out; then you can get married. 
Actually I would say 18 is fine as a rule of thumb; some people I’ve known were mature and versed enough younger than that and I know people in their 60s who aren’t there yet. So if we’re going by age and not some sort of qualification process (like we do with say a drivers license) I could live with that one.
My kids are following that exactly!
Of course they are only 10 and eight. We will see what happens in another however many years.
Mormons often get married early. I know a lot of young women who get married at 19 or 20.
I would agree that nobody should get married before they are 30. Especially this current generation.
'Cept I got married at 19. But it was almost 40 years ago.
Then you have people like my husband and me - we met Oct 30, first date was Nov 12, we eloped Dec 9, and this year will be 36 years. And I had a friend who eloped 3 days after meeting his wife, and they were together 30+ years last time I saw him.
On the other hand, my brother and his girlfriend dated in college, married in their mid-20s, but a couple of years into their marriage, she decided she wanted to live by herself. She was OK being married - just not living with her husband. Then she divorced him and married someone else.
So ya never know…
In that case, let’s raise the voting age to 25.
After all, if they aren’t mature enough to [drink/get married/own a gun/etc.] we sure don’t want them voting.
Historically and as a matter of policy, the way the draft lotteries have worked is that they start with 20 year olds, then 21, and so forth to 24. Then, they go to 18 and then 19 year olds, and finally back to 25 and 26 year olds.
They really don’t want 18 year olds, although probably for the same reasons of immaturity that you mention.
However I don’t doubt that in today’s volunteer military, they aim to recruit 18 year olds straight out of high school for those same reasons.
Marriages end in horrible, bitter breakups at all ages. Maturity is no cure for that.
Marriage at any age is fine, but living together for five years first should be a requirement, with no kids for the first three years. Hey, it’s a fantasy.
Eighteen should be a hard and fast and absolutely inflexible lower limit, because the current model where all it takes is a compliant judge to marry a girl as young as TEN is completely sick. If someone is judged not competent to consent to sex until they’re eighteen then they’re certainly not competent to enter into marriage either, and it just legitimizes child rape when all it takes is getting her pregnant in order to force her parents and a judge into allowing the marriage, which then means however many more years of rape for the girl in question until she finally can figure out how the hell to escape her situation. So, no exceptions, no marriage license unless BOTH partners are over eighteen.
IME maturity (as opposed to age) is the ONLY cure for that. But our society is infested with narcissistic and enabled adultchildren. Marriages can dissolve, even under offensive conditions, without having to be horrible and bitter–that’s all about the players.
As for the OP: age is just a number, a loose guideline in this circumstance. Older than maybe 11 would be a good idea though.
TEN years old???
In the USA, Europe or another developed nation?