Married Life
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Getting married young...
Like I said, I was married at 23 and we've now been together almost 13 years and are very happy. But that's a lot of luck. Neither of us got horribly sick. We haven't lost a child. As of yet neither of us has had a mid life crisis causing us to rethink major decisions we made as teenagers. I have faith we'll be together until one of us dies. But I'm realistic. At 31 I've barely started living my life and I have zero idea what's going to get thrown at us or how we'll react. I love my H and we never even joke about divorce. But you can bet your ass if we're both miserable some day and therapy and trying to force feelings that aren't there isn't going to fix it, i will get my ass out the door before I waste my life being unhappy.
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This pretty much says it all. You've lost any shred of credibility to anyone with true maturity or intelligence.
Most of my wardrobe is older than your relationship. You were in middle school at the time I was getting married. I'm glad that your first year of marriage has been good and that at 22/23 you feel like you have a lifetime of experience. I hope that the next few years don't knock you around too much.
"A women who can kneel before the Lord can stand up to anything"
We have experienced the "real world". I am currently in college and our wedding plans will not interfere with my education whatsoever. We also don't plan on having kids, ever, so that's not an issue.
And anyone who uses the "people got married at 14 and stayed married for 50 years" argument is missing the point. I don't consider no divorce = successful marriage. I'd much rather have a successful divorce than stay in an unhappy marriage. My parents divorced after 20 some years. They didn't consider their relationship a failure. They were happy for a long time and raised a family together. They stayed friends after the divorce. They just realized they were happier with other people than with each other. I consider that more of a success than staying with someone you don't love for 50 years just because you said you would.
Here's the thing. Divorces happen not because of your age, but because 1) people who marry don't realize the commitment 2) people marry the wrong person 3) People who marry for the wrong reason 4) people give up
The point you're missing is that all those reasons you have listed are far more likely to happen to you if you make that major decision at 20 when you are just starting to figure out who you are than if you do it at 40. Again, I say this as someone who married young and has been very happy in my 13 year relationship. But I recognize that I'm the exception, not the rule. I am not the same person at 32 that I was at 22. Neither is my husband. We've been lucky in that we've managed to grow up together without much conflict but that is not always (or normally) the case.
And anyone who uses the "people got married at 14 and stayed married for 50 years" argument is missing the point. I don't consider no divorce = successful marriage. I'd much rather have a successful divorce than stay in an unhappy marriage. My parents divorced after 20 some years. They didn't consider their relationship a failure. They were happy for a long time and raised a family together. They stayed friends after the divorce. They just realized they were happier with other people than with each other. I consider that more of a success than staying with someone you don't love for 50 years just because you said you would.
An excellent point. Fewer people got divorced in previous decades more because of the stigma attached to it. Or, I should say, the stigma attached specifically to being a divorced woman because double standards. Women sucked it up and were miserable. No thank you. I certainly don't plan on divorcing, but I would if H suddenly morphed into a different person (cheater, druggie, what have you).
I just want to say that I hate the above "argument." There are people today who are forced to marry at 8. And you know what? Most of them don't get divorced. Do you honestly think that's a good argument for marrying young? No. Their marriages "last" because they don't have any other option.
And it wasn't just the stigma attached to divorce - 70 years ago (heck, 30 years ago) women were expected to marry young and to be housewives. Women weren't generally expected to or encouraged to go to college and have a career. The fact that they didn't divorce wasn't because they were happy - it was because they had no option but to stay married. They had no way to support themselves or their kids and no support from society. Of course our culture has changed, and I'm pretty glad that it did.
But make no mistake - things weren't "perfect" just because the divorce rate was lower. People had affairs, people turned to alcohol and drugs, people were unhappy in their marriages. Yes, it's certainly an admirable accomplishment to stay married to the same person until death do you part, I'm sure it's the goal of most everyone who takes those vows. But there's hardly anything admirable about staying in a marriage in which neither spouse wants to be in anymore. God doesn't award you extra brownie points for living a miserable life upholding that vow. I feel sorry thinking of all those women who lived most of their lives miserable, trapped in their own homes, with husbands who they didn't love or who didn't love them.
Most people didn't get married at age 14 even 100 years ago. But they did marry early because life expectancy was so much lower than it is now. At age 20 your life was already almost half over then. Not so much now.
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I think people today want a lot more from marriage and some of it is ill-defined and some of it is unrealistic. People marry expecting undying fairytale love and find that it doesn't hold up well when you still need to divide up housekeeping and providing.
Coming back on topic, I think young people are *more likely* (not guaranteed) to have unrealistic expectations and less idea of what they really want from life, so are more likely to be dissatisfied with what they end up with if they rush into a commitment.
2. I certainly hope you're not the same person in 10 years that you are now. The goal of life is to grow and change, not decide who you are as at 20 years old and be determined to stay that way. If you haven't changed in 10 years of living, you're missing the point of what life has to offer.