I got married right out of college, straight from my parents’ home to living with my then H. I didn’t have a chance to live by myself and to take care of myself. I didn’t have an opportunity to find out who I was and do things just for myself. After 32 years of marriage, I am finally living by myself. It was scary initially. I wondered how I was going to cook, fix faucets, hang up pictures, go out to eat or movies by myself. I have never put up a xmas tree by myself until today. I really surprised myself. Aside from doing those things, I am also having an opportunity to get to know who I am, not a daughter, wife or mother. I really wish I had an opportunity to do all of those things when I was younger.
D1 has been with someone for 5+ years, but she lived by herself for the first 5 years out of college. I tell her to know who she is and her SO well before making the big commitment. I do think people grow a lot between 22-30.
@oldfort Post #40 Said exactly what I was feeling, but couldn’t express into intelligent words. When you have dated through high school and college, it is even more important to allow yourself to evolve and change. And when you are already connected to another person, sometimes that maturing and changing is harder. And sometimes those changes can shift the balance in a relationship, or sometimes you choose to ignore the possibility of change to better suit your partner and how they relate to the “old” you.
Bottom line…don’t lose yourself in the process. Try to stay true to who you are, and to allow space for you to become the best possible version of you as you mature.
In my opinion, it is less about your age and more about your experiences. For example, graduating from college and living alone in your own apartment - that’s valuable. Being a single adult - meeting and dating a range of people - more value. Being beholden to no one - the ability to pick up and move cross country for an opportunity if it suits you - you cannot do this easily as part of a committed couple.
My son’s freshman year roommate just got engaged to his gf that he met freshman year. They are all college seniors now. My reaction was a strong “don’t do this” to my son. Life post-college is very different from being at college. Give yourself the chance to experience it and any maturation that comes with it prior to marriage.
When couples divorce, a common theme is that they grew apart or realized they had different and incompatible goals. My concern is that the earlier you marry, the more likely this is to happen.
My mother advised waiting because it gives you time have adventures, to build memories, experience your own challenges and a seal a sense of your own identity, which can help tremendously when partnership times get rough. She pointed out that the marriages in our neighborhood that were resilient had more of this sort of perspective. The women who suffered hardest hadn’t had this interval.
The challenges one faces while in college are nothing compared with those that come later, financially, emotionally, and sometimes, in terms of breathing. As OP said, eg, she has financial aid now, probably some sort of inexpensive roof over her head, maybe even college meals. Her job is college supplied and may even be flexible around her personal or academic needs. That- and the high school time, when parents managed all the big details- isn’t quite “real life.” Or at least, she hasn’t described any of life’s tougher hurdles she and her fiance have been through together. (It’s more than figuring out who goes where in summer.)
In marriage, imo, 1 + 1 now equals 1. At best, you lose a bit of yourself, but gain the “team.” But it really helps to have a strong sense of your own identity, a record of what you did and can manage on your own, much as oldfort says.
All that said, I thought my college roommate’s answer to my mother’s pronouncement was perfect: people can wait, they can marry at 28 and it can be super- or it can crash. Or they can marry at 18 and it can crash- or work out beautifully.
So in a rare moment, I agree with cobrat: this is a YMMV depending on one’s maturity… But do try to go into this with eyes wide open.
My DH is the only man I’ve ever seriously dated because I just “knew” after the first date whether or not they were the “one.” I don’t believe there’s really just one right person for everyone, of course, but I knew my spouse wasn’t going to be someone I was friends with first. I had many first dates, one lucky friend who made it to a 2nd, and one college boyfriend who shared a semester of my life more than he deserved before I met my husband. Neither of us is strongly religious. Spiritual, yes, but not religious. DH was raised Catholic; I wasn’t and I didn’t convert. We’ve been married for over 20 years and expect to squeeze out at least another 40. We were quite a bit past 20 when we met, but I don’t think that made a difference to our success. Our individual maturity and willingness to compromise did.
I know several couples who married just out of college. Some are still together and some aren’t, but the same can be said for the couples I know who were older when they got married. Do what works for you and don’t worry about what other people think. Just make your status doesn’t affect your financial aid and your ability to afford school.
People that marry young will defend the position that marrying young is great. People that marry closer to thirty defend their thinking. Personally, we don’t have any, not any, friends still married to each other that married at college graduation +/- a year or two. All of our friends who married in their late twenties and early thirties are still married. My observation is that people that marry young don’t have as much money so having babies is a tad more stressful financially but the positive is that the kids are out of the house and gone when you’re still relatively young. I also remember seeing significant changes in my friends during their twenties, sometimes you can survive personal change with a partner, sometimes it doesn’t work out. But, the same things can happen in midlife. There’s plenty of 50-60 year olds that don’t know each other anymore once the house is empty and they really have to live with their partner. You take your pick. I’m of the opinion that 28-29-30 is perfect, but that’s because that is what H and I did
Your plan sounds solid.
My DH and I met in high school at 16. We dated continously through high school and then college. We married after being together for about 6 years. We recently celebrated 30 years of marriage. I hope you two find the same happiness that we have found.
H and I married young (23) and have been married for 35 years. We did wait 10 years to become pregnant, though
I can’t make any generalizations as I have seen marriages work out when the couple married young or not. Have seen it work out when people had kids right away or not.
I there are many things at work here - shared values, maturity, and even luck…
@FallGirl’s post suggests something that’s worth discussing with your fiance – whether you two want to have children and when.
Unless there are religious reasons why you can’t do it, you might want to consider waiting a few years after your wedding before trying to start a family. It’s parenthood, not marriage, that REALLY requires maturity.
I think there are lots of people who are grown up enough to make a commitment to each other as a couple but not ready to take on the challenges of parenthood.
I got married when I was 21 – right after graduating from college – and my husband was 23. And then we waited 9 years before trying to have a baby. I think we made the right decision about parenthood; we weren’t grown-up enough to tackle that challenge earlier.
I think the advice to have other experiences, such as sexual, unless religious, is a tad problematic if you meet the person you know you want to marry when you’re young. H and I met at 17 and 18, eventually went to college together, and have been a couple for almost 40 years. And are very happy. Maybe some people can weather a separation to go have experiences, sexual and otherwise, but that seems artificially imposed, and I can’t imagine us having done that. Somehow, we have soldiered on in life successfully, and happily, despite meeting so young, getting married at 23, and having a kid six months later, and another three years after that.
I actually have very few friends from college or grad school that are divorced. I can’t think of any in fact, though I feel like there must be some. Some got married straight out of college, some were together a long time before they got married (including one couple that’s been together since freshman year and finally got married a few years ago!). No one had kids before their late 20s or early 30s.
I think from a biological point of view there is a lot to be said for having kids a bit sooner than most of my friends did. Some had fertility problems and I think the combination of still dealing with kids while dealing with parents with dementia has been tough.
Are you able to live together? That would be my take, suck it and see. You have no reason to get married, it is just a legal arrangement that is expensive to undo. There is no upside to making it legal in the early stages that I can see.
I always heard most churches do not want their church members to live in before marriage. (I do not know about this for sure: Is it considered as some kind of “sin” if they do this?)
I mentioned Catholics because it seems they may even do not like people to have birth control, I think. The size of family who are Catholics tends to be larger than the average.
There are fundamentalist Protestant Christian denominations/sects which also strongly dislike people who cohabit and/or have birth control.
The latter’s pretty obvious when they adamantly insist on abstinence and insisting that sex should be for those who have already been married.
Granted. those “rules” aren’t always honored in practice and some teens/young adults have been known to use extreme terminological and mental contortions to “prove” to themselves and sometimes others that what some sexual acts they’ve done doesn’t constitute sex.
In short, it’s not necessarily only Catholics. Also, FYI…some nominal Catholics(a.k.a. “Cafeteria Catholics”) may not make as big of a deal about this in practice compared to their more strict co-religionists or the equivalent fundamentalist Protestant counterparts.
It’s not MARRYING late that enables one to accumulate wealth more easily; it’s HAVING CHILDREN late. Two childless married professionals can accumulate wealth much more quickly than a single professional living alone-- I know this from personal experience.
@OP
I have two HS classmates who married their HS sweethearts. One pair married right out of HS; the other pair waited until after college. At my 30th HS reunion, both couples were there and they looked great!
I agree with GMT. H and I were married for 10 years before we started a family. In that time we both worked, H got his MBA, I returned to school and got my CPA and we both established careers. The advantage was that when we did have kids, we were very financially stable, able to afford good child care, had lots of leave available, had a good amount of savings,etc.
My brother and sister in law married at 18. That was in 1980. They’re still happily together.
Their daughter married at 19. But life threw her a curveball-- her first born child was born 2 months premature, with a huge host of birth defects. Her husband, who pictured a white picket fence and happily ever after, wasn’t mature enough to deal with the baby’s medical issues-- not to mention the bills-- and left. (And, yes, it drove me insane when, at the baby’s funeral just before her 3rd birthday the ex was praised for “sticking around.” A- he didn’t. and B- that’s what parents DO, whether or not their baby is sick. But I digress.)
My point is that, for some people, marrying young is the right thing to do. For others, the maturity they’ll need to deal with life’s surprises isn’t there yet. And you can’t tell who is who until calamity hits.
