@cobrat I’ve read a few books regarding a similar topic. It actually kind of addresses the counter. They surveyed several freshman-level college students-I believe most of them were ivy league universities, and found that women especially are more concerned with how a family will play into their career than ever. It also talks about how women are less likely to pursue high achieving careers because they are not sure it will be conducive to having a husband and children. Basically, young women are more likely to prioritize a marriage and family over their careers. I found the statistics to be rather shocking considering these are women at the ivy leagues. It seems like the traditional ways of the older generations is still kind of inherently instilled upon women these days.
You seem to be spending way too much time trying to sound convincing. Enjoy your youth, it will soon enough be gone. Don’t act based on fear, are you afraid of being alone? You talk about your boyfriend like he is your child.
Somehow, seems we’re confusing OP.
It’s not about questioning whether a marriage ‘will or won’t work’ or waiting for some arbitrary age. It’s about developing the base of maturity and your own individual sense of self (which is more than chrono age or today’s responsibilities) to make it though the new challenges that the older folks here know will come.
Right now, you’re managing finaid, classes, your campus job, the meals together, deciding whether you want to see a movie on Sat night, deciding who does what in summer. We’d like to think you get a bit more real life living under your belt. You aren’t living together, you’re not solely supporting yourselves, fully responsible for either yourselves or your partner. You haven’t told us you’ve worked in the outside world, dealt with that. You’re sharing fun, happiness, dreams, and a sense of security together. You are looking forward and assuming you both get great jobs, the house, etc. That’s only part of the picture.
You don’t hold off “for the sole reason of waiting to see what changes we undergo as people.” Rather, to strengthen your own (and his) position so in the next phase, you are prepared. That’s actually a good thing to do for each other, for the relationship.
OP, based on your posts on this thread, I certainly don’t think you talk about your boyfriend like he is your child. Your posts reflect your love for him, and the striving for maturity and independence that you both share.
One comment on @intparent’s post above: the period of change and transition that she is referring to is also backed up by fairly recent neuroscience research which show that the teenaged brain does not fully mature until one’s early 20s. I think this science was referenced earlier in the thread, but I just wanted to mention it again as some evidence to back up @intparent’s comment.
Overall, it sounds like you have received plenty of feedback in response to your original question! 
best of luck to you and your fiancé.
I was married young and still going strong. Got engaged but didn’t marry for 4 years (waited til after graduation).
I do think that some sort of pre marriage counseling is great because it brings up topics you may not have considered before–how will you handle finances, kids (want them?) , family dynamics, your idea of husband/wife roles, where do you want to live, whose job opportunities would you follow etc. It helps to hammer out a lot of those topics BEFORE you get married.
And your fiance is keeping a tight budget–now because of tight finances? Will he expect YOU to follow his lead? Fine if that is good with you. It is something to consider. (I just happen to know more than one couple divorced over well-off but penny-pinching (read CHEAP) husbands) Finances are a source of control so needs to be discussed.
^^^Agree. If the fiance keeps records of every penny he spends, will he monitor your expenditures in the same way? And would that be acceptable to you?
I have a very close friend who married at 22, right after her 21 yo fiance graduated. They were married “until death did them part” 27 years later. She said to me recently it was really important for her to get married at 22 so that she could live openly with the man that she loved. (Things were different in the 70s)
(And now that I have read the rest of the thread … maybe not so different.)
I remember meeting a grad school friend’s parents and spending time with them. They had married the weekend after they graduated from high school, when she was 17. In many ways, they were solid role models for all of us, had worked hard to make things last. But that’s an example of a positive relationship.
“It’s not necessarily that I need a man to be happy, it’s more that if I have a man, I need one that is willing to commit to me long term to be happy. The spiritual part of me believes that part of the reason this man is for me is because he has saved me and that we were meant to find each other early in life.”
I think we all want that sort of mutual ownership. We want to think someone loves us enough to marry and legally, socially, and emotionally braid their lives with ours. But wanting just isn’t enough. It’s like all the kids on CC who want the best college and don’t realize the admit is only the first part. You still have to have the goods to actually succeed. They think their hs successes predict, but forget that embarking isn’t the same as the journey itself.
And the “saved me” comment-? Maybe that’s harder for us, at or adult ages, to translate.
“Both you and the person you are marrying will likely be very different human beings in 10 years than you are today.” (Post #95)
This is so true. And one of the most challenging things about marriage is managing the right balance between your “alone selves” and your “together selves,” which also changes over time depending on the amount of space each person feels they need at any given point. It is true that some couples can manage this pretty well from a very young age. But it is also true that many couples grow apart, for a wide variety of reasons. And as in anything, there is really no substitute for experience.
You’ve gotten a lot of good feedback. Especially the “go through premarital counseling.” Even if you are both well-intentioned and dedicated and in love, there will be trials. Potentially relationship ending trials.
Counseling can bring those friction points to light so you can start talking about it. Sometimes it’s daily trials on things like money (we should spend less/save more, not use credit, or my husband bought a new computer without talking to me about it, or do we have to give money to her family, or I should be able to buy new shoes without “asking.”). Sometimes decades long trials on things having to do with contrary expectations, dealing with illness or injury or depression, etc.
Based on my experiences, even marrying at 30, the two career plus kids thing is difficult. Of the other female lawyers I know almost none of them remain married to their original husbands. It wasn’t hard for most any of us to be married without kids. Kids make life so much more complicated. Add in money, career, other family members, etc…
Someone has to be the one to take off when they are sick…even if it is 4 days every month. That means someone has to have a job where that will fly. Usually those jobs pay less. Have less status and less upward mobility. If you want kids to do sports/hobbies someone has to be available to drive them after school several times a week and on weekends, usually someone has to be ok with being the primary caretaker and another the primary breadwinner. Even assuming healthy kids, I guarantee that you and your husband will have disagreements on more issues than you can count —heck we could start a thread today over the marital disagreements just on how Christmas “should” go. Those “should” come as a reaction to our upbringing…for good or bad.
It’s not just about being young. It’s about adding youth to the Rubiks cube of marriage.
@Alfonsia May I ask how it seems like I talk about my boyfriend like he is my child?
@lookingforward The “save me” comment was in response to some else’s post in particular. They suggested I may be rushing into things because I want someone to “save me” from my chaotic background. And by that, I believe they meant I want someone to provide me with the stability that lacked throughout most of my childhood.
I am not sure if it is necessary to assume one partner will need to take a back seat when it comes to career. It’s a personal choice on how to raise kids. There are good good nannies and drivers for hire if both parents are working full time. I had a very demanding job, but I was always available for parent/teacher conferences and recitals. I just wasn’t available to do pick up and drop off at school or ECs. I knew a lot of parents hired a driver (housekeeper) to take their kids to various activities when kids were older.
@lookingforward I’m not confused in anyway by the idea of becoming independent first before joining your life with another. I’m more confused by the inherent assumptions that I simply haven’t been subject to “real life” living experiences. As I mentioned before, my parents struggled just to keep a roof over our heads. I often had to work (Yes, outside of a campus job) to help my parents put food on the table. My sisters and I were always sure to have money in the bank in case my mom needed to borrow money for the lot rent or the insurance payments before her check came in. We always made sure to have a $20 on us in case they needed gas money to get to work. Now, I’m not claiming that because of my upbringing I know what it is like to be completely independent. After all, I have never been primarily responsible for providing for our family as a minor, but I’ve certainly done much more than washing the dishes and sweeping the kitchen floors. I’ve also mentioned that while my fiance and I don’t live with each other, I share several household responsibilities with him, as I stay at his apartment frequently. Aside from his tuition and health insurance (which, by law his parents are obligated to pay until he is 26 or married), he supports himself. He pays for housing, food, phone bill, car insurance. I’m not sure why you assume my life is purely happiness and dreams. Frankly, I don’t think any couple of any age shares purely those things, not anyone in a real relationship at least. You’re making assumptions that my only obligations consist of my meal plan and college classes, when in reality, I am working both to support myself and give my parents whatever is left. Maybe it is not quite the same as me being responsible in full, but when people you love and care about very much are in such a situation, you naturally attain a certain level of responsibility in order to help with whatever you can.
@gouf78 As of now he doesn’t care what I do with my money. He’s always respectful when it comes to something I worked for, and he’s never judgmental if I do make a poor purchase. It’s not necessarily that he has a “tight” budget. He is rather conservative when it comes to spending, but he always leaves wiggle room. What I meant by he “logs his purchases” is that he keeps track of every dime he spends so that he is careful not to spend too much.
There was the year I had chicken pox for two weeks and my oldest was sick with it for the next two weeks. My family daycare arrangement did not want a kid with chickenpox. I tried nannies, but had a run of bad luck. One actually died over the weekend! In the end self-employment was my solution.
We had a lovely older woman who babysat for us when we occasionally went out for dinner, and she helped us during the chicken pox. I was able to go into work early in the am and got home around 1 pm. DH needed to leave for work by 11:30 and would stay til 9 pm. Dear Mrs. W. came over from 11-1 to help tide us over.
It was one of those times where I missed not having extended family anywhere nearby.
I was the oldest of five kids; I was the one who brought home all the lovely childhood diseases when I was in 2nd & 3rd grades. Never got mumps, though – but all my sibs did.
I don’t think there is anything inherently ill-advised about marriage in the 20s. We got married at 24 and 25 and it worked out fine. We were self-supporting and out of undergraduate school at the time. I believe in the value of independence before yoking your fate to someone else; it teaches you about yourself. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that many people tend to get rigid when they live alone, and sometimes it’s hard to adjust to the compromises of marriage or family life when one has been “doing it my way” for many years. I also like the fact that my H and I sort of “grew up” together. It makes us closer. We were not, however, each other’s first relationship.
The other advantage of earlier marriage is that you don’t have to rush to have children while your marriage is still new. You can relax and have some fun together without Time’s winged chariot reminding you of your diminishing fertility.
Marriage is always a leap of faith no matter how old you are when you do it.
@cnp55: “I have a very close friend who…said to me recently it was really important for her to get married at 22 so that she could live openly with the man that she loved. (Things were different in the 70s)”
That’s pretty similar to my situation. Dh & I got married the summer after graduation. While in some places, and in some families, living together wasn’t a big deal back then, for us it was still a huge issue. Neither of us took marriage very seriously at first; we later agreed that had we not been married we would not still be together and would never have had our children.
We went to premarital counseling through our church, but it was a waste of time in part because we weren’t really open to it. We just had to get that ticket punched to have the church wedding. We had so much growing up to do, and are now glad we managed to grow together.
When it came to careers, children, homes, and nearly everything in our lives, we realized that we should never get too hung up on any sort of plan. Between unexpected major health problems, employers’ mergers (& one’s bankruptcy), transfers, and criminal behavior (not ours but others), very little in our lives has turned out as hoped for or expected. It’s still been good, for the most part, just different from anything we envisioned.We enjoy our lengthy shared history, now more than ever. I’m not advising marriage at a young age for everyone, just saying it worked out well for us.
candy–just make sure you are on the same page with finances. Just saying that it’s great to keep out of debt (more power to you) but differences in opinion on how money should be spent can be brutal in a marriage.