<p>I do have a lot of friends my age ( 50’s) who had brief marriages in their 20’s ( less than 3 years).
H & I lived together for 4 years before we got married- we had talked about it for a long time, but it didn’t seem to be important until we decided we wanted to start a family.</p>
<p>It was fourteen months from the day we met until the day we married. Been married 22 years now.</p>
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<p>I was nineteen when I married and PMKjr is 19 now. Since he is not dating anyone, my first reaction would be shock if he declared he was taking a husband. But my overall reaction would depend on a lot of factors. In my heart, I hope he finishes college before marriage but he’s an adult and I would be supportive.</p>
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<p>People have been living together without the benefit of marriage since, well, marriage was invented.</p>
<p>My parents met on August 1st 1951. My dad wanted to marry my mom the next day. It took him 30 days to talk her into it…plus her mom was pushing for the marriage… apparently she liked her soon to be son in law because they both played cards and told dirty jokes (after sending mom out of the room).</p>
<p>They married on August 31st 1951 and were married until 1985 when my dad died from cancer. I think they would still be married today if he was still alive. Mom is still unmarried and said once was enough.</p>
<p>Don’t know if that’s good or bad. ;)</p>
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<p>As I mentioned earlier that was our experience although most of those friends are now into decades long second marriages. I went to a small LAC and there was one guy and gal that all the administration called “the little couple” and they did marry and are still married according to the alumni notes. Of my best-est girlfriends I got married first at alittle over 30, one at 34, one at 35 and one has never married – simply had a slew of boyfriends and a glorious career. I have to admit I hope the boys wait until they are close to thirty…although I would support whatever decision they make. My 22 has not had a serious girlfriend that I know of yet just lots of galpals that come and go so he’s well on his way to an older marriage.</p>
<p>I think I might be one of the few who married my “high school sweetheart”. Met in 10th grade geometry class, and dated the rest of h.s. Broke up when we went off to college, back together summer before sophomore year. 6 years long distance relationship, married at 26, recently celebrated 30 yrs. Fun to hear everyone’s stories!</p>
<p>i was 21, she was 18.
dated 5 years with a 6 month break up in the middle.
celebrated 28 years a month ago.</p>
<p>I got engaged at 19 (!!) and married at 21 (!!). 21! A mere babe in the woods! It’s amazing that my parents allowed it! What were they thinking? My kids are 19 and I cannot even imagine having them at that stage. Nonetheless, we just celebrated our 25th, so there you have it.</p>
<p>DH and I met the day I started work at his company; we started dating a few weeks later; we bought a house 8 months after that; we got married 18 months after we met; we had our daughter 18 months after that (and our son another 14 months later). (He was 24 and I was 27 when we met; we’d both been married at 20 and both of us divorced at 22.)</p>
<p>It’s been 29 years since we met and I still feel a flutter of desire when I see him in bike shorts (he has great legs). I think there’s a lot to be said for lust as one basis for a relationship; it’s certainly gotten us through some terrible times.</p>
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Maybe they were thinking that you were an adult and entitled to make your own decisions. Or maybe they disagreed but didn’t want to start your marriage with you thinking they were against it. Or maybe they just give you the benefit of the doubt that they had raised you to be smart enough to know what you’re doing. I don’t remember asking my parents for permission to get married.</p>
<p>I was engaged as a sophomore in college, though, after having dated now-H for just a year. How many of you would be all hunky-dory if your kids got engaged as sophomores in college?</p>
<p>I agree they didn’t have to give “permission.” They were happy (or if they weren’t, they hid it well, LOL) and I had the whole big fancy wedding with all the trimmings two months after graduating college.</p>
<p>H was in medical school at the time, and his parents continued to pay for it-- they could have easily said “we’re not paying until you wait til you’re done med school,” which practically speaking would be the equivalent of forbidding.</p>
<p>What would have been the point? To start off on the wrong foot? To make it known that they disapproved? And for what? It obviously wasn’t too young and you made the right decision for you. Would it have been better to wait a few years? What would that have changed? Or break up and move on and maybe not find the right person.</p>
<p>Oh, there would have been no point – we would have done what we were going to do, regardless - it’s just funny (and scary!) to think that I was engaged at 19, which is the age my kids are now … Neither of my kids has even had a long-standing relationship at this point, much less a relationship headed towards engagement. I also think I was “older” at 19 than my kids are, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>I think that back when we were 19 and 20, the world of career possibilities for young women was still opening up. For many, families still spoke of finding a nice man and getting married. Now, many of us talk to our girls about finding the right career path, prepping for it wisely, paying their dues in the early jobs- and marriage talk comes after the education and career talks.</p>
<p>Btw, my in-laws met at a USO dance. When DH’s dad came to pick up my MIL for the first date, he asked her mom for permission to marry her. They married soon after. Great match that lasted until his death. She also never remarried.</p>
<p>It’s funny, because I was extremely career-oriented and wasn’t at all attending college to snag a man - but just thought I had found the one, too. But some girls are always the type to have boyfriends, and I was that type. In hindsight, even though I’m happy with where I landed, I would have been better suited to have had some more fun playing the field!</p>
<p>H and I met in an ER. He was a med student, me a resident. We dated 5 years, and one reason I moved across the country was to be clear that I was not making choices because of a boyfriend. Boyfriend followed, but still not engaged, and I was not going to live together. We had a baby, but I was NOT going to live together. Smile. Also wasn’t getting married in a maternity gown. We finally got married after about 5 years, and that was 21 years ago. Seems better every year. </p>
<p>Older sister married at 22, and she is still married.</p>
<p>I read somewhere recently – and the unscientific sampling in this thread seems consistent – that for college graduates the divorce rate has been going down steadily since around 1980. In our generation – again, among the college educated – far fewer people have divorced than with the cohort that came of age in the 60s. The 50% figure you hear all the time does not reflect that demographic group’s experience at all.</p>
<p>Both my kids are older than I was when I got involved in the relationship that defined my life. Neither is anywhere close to that. I often muse about how our parents viewed our relationship. My wife’s parents were distracted, first by their jobs and then by a bitter divorce. My wife was their fourth child, and the most sober. I think initially they were somewhat bemused that she had a boyfriend at all, since she wasn’t exactly boy-friendly, but based on her history and her sisters’ history there was no reason for them to think they were even going to have to remember my name. My parents certainly thought that this was yet another in a series of crushes / short-term relationships; they were stunned when she didn’t vanish after a few months. There are several things they would have done differently if they had known this girl was going to be part of their family for the rest of their lives, and control to some extent their access to their grandchildren. As parents, I’m not sure you ever know until long after the fact when the music has stopped. (Well, for those of you who got engaged a couple weeks after meeting, maybe not so long after the fact.)</p>
<p>“I read somewhere recently – and the unscientific sampling in this thread seems consistent – that for college graduates the divorce rate has been going down steadily since around 1980. In our generation – again, among the college educated – far fewer people have divorced than with the cohort that came of age in the 60s. The 50% figure you hear all the time does not reflect that demographic group’s experience at all.”</p>
<p>I was wondering this myself when I was reading through this thread. I wonder if the thread title was “Divorce” …would there be tons of people posting?</p>
<p>My 25 year old daughter just broke up with her boyfriend of over 3 years. I support her decision because I think in the end …the personalities clash. There is nothing really too wrong with him.</p>
<p>I wonder, if in a couple of years, if they get back together, should I have kept my mouth shut? 
. I told a very good friend that I was very proud of myself, because I keep my mouth shut when it comes to my daughter, and this flies against my inclinations. 
And then…she talks about breaking up, and I can’t keep my mouth shut.</p>
<p>The divorce rate has never been 50%. Some journalist noted that the # of divorces in a given year was half the # of marriages in a given year and concluded the divorce rate was 50%, but it’s simply not true, as the proper denominator is all the marriages “alive” in that year that could have ended, not the marriages that took place in that year. </p>
<p>It’s rather like looking at a hospital in smallville where 100 babies are born and 50 old people die and concluding the death rate in smallville is 50%. No, the denominator would be all the people who were alive in smallville, not the 100 newly-created ones.</p>
<p>Carry on.</p>
<p>Met when we were 19 (in organic chemistry lab, go figure), lived together after graduation, got married after 3 years of that arrangement, and just passed our 23rd wedding anniversary (and coming up on the 29th anniversary of our first date). Been through a lot together, hasn’t always been easy, and all I can say is do as much exploration up front as you can as a couple, to figure out what you both want out of marriage, and that later on, if issues crop up, don’t be embarrassed or ashamed to seek help in working through things</p>
<p>The divorce rate is dropping and has been for a while. With younger generations, those who grew up when divorce became a lot more common (people who grew up in the 60s-70s roughly) the attitude appears to be having experienced divorce themselves, they are bound and determined not to, and I was reading an article recently that said that among the same generation, that divorce actually has started to carry a stigma with it. </p>
<p>I also wonder about the 50% divorce rate study, I realize that my experiences are only based upon growing up and in my working life, but in my experience it just wasn’t that common. Few kids when I went to school in suburban NJ had parents few who divorced, and in my working life there haven’t been a lot of people. Also depends where you work, if you are talking people like financial traders and investment bankers, the rate of divorce IME is a lot higher then in other professional areas…and this covered in part the ‘prime time’ for divorce, the 60’s-80’s…and among the younger people I work with, kids in their 20’s and early 30’s, it seems like they wait to get married longer, but when they do, they tend to stick with it.</p>