Me 32, i dont have a fucking clue of what i want for the rest of my life. Maybe those couples that married in their early 20s wanted to explore together what they wanted in life. Good for them.
I understand the roots of marriage, but I want a partner who would be ok with parting ways in the future. We live once, why do we have to commit to 1 person for most of it? Things I enjoyed 5 years ago I don’t care for now. Tastes change.
Marriage isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay. As long as you aren’t stringing partners along who are looking to get married when you already know that you aren’t, then your choice doesn’t seem to be hurting anybody.
I’m 35 and married. Sure, tastes change, but my wife and I chose good partners in each other; we won’t hate each other or get irreparably sick of each other, we make a great team, and we understand each other’s limitations and are mature enough to ask for help. We let each other in. There is security and stability in marriage. I’m not great at meeting new people, so not having to go on another first date again is a huge relief for me. Making a good first impression is fucking exhausting. In contrast, I know how my wife is feeling pretty much just by glancing at her, and it’s really fulfilling to be on the same wavelength as my partner like that, especially because we’re also open communicators who can share the honest, fucked up feelings without worrying about judgment. So we’re basically each other’s therapist, but we share housework and meals and money, and we snuggle and kiss and fuck. I can understand that that’s not appealing to everybody, but it’s hard for me to imagine a version of myself who doesn’t want this. But again, it’s not for everybody, and it’s perfectly okay to not want it for yourself.
Now that’s a healthy relationship. I agree marriage isn’t for some, just like having kids isn’t for some. To each their own, perhaps my views will change in the future.
While I also feel it is weird, I strongly believe marrying kids (<18) should be illegally nationally with no exceptions. I have personally witnessed lives destroyed.
I swear some people go out of their way to judge others for the most ridiculous things. Maybe try asking yourself why you are not happy about people finding love without going through half a dozen shitty relationships.
You can be happy and find love without marrying someone.
Like i think most people would say its weird to marry someone the day after you meet them for the first time, right? Is that you hating peoples happiness and love? or is that you being a realest that that marriage probably wont last and will just be messy for both people?
Probably 75% of marriages like that don’t go well. OP is right.
That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing though. Divorce doesn’t have to be traumatic, and it should be more normalized.
Wow, really? Sure is an expensive and necessarily painful thing to opt into or to normalize. I’d rather it be normalized to not get married in the first place.
I think a divorce is like $80 where I am, but if you have to go to court obvs it’s a lot more. I spent almost nothing on my wedding, granted it was just friends and was an elopement. Marriage has big tax advantages for some, and it’s the only way my spouse was getting health insurance to survive this godforsaken wasteland. It also guarantees that they get a slice of my income if the unforeseeable happens and we split so they can survive.
I think people should not see marriage as the end goal, but be pragmatic about its costs and benefits, which I think you are getting at too
All good points.
This is just another person who doesn’t want to get married that therefore thinks nobody else should be allowed to.
It’s not that expensive, I did it for $400 amicably. We had a fun time while married and I don’t regret it. Why not just make it easier for people to do what they want and not punish young people for making decisions.
And yet it’s costed others (every day) thousands to millions of dollars
When he says normalize, he’s not saying it is something that people should seek out. In case that was somehow taken that way.
The problem is there is immense social pressure, especially against women, to never have a divorce. It is seen as a failure, whereas sometimes it is simply the result of circumstances beyond our control or is just something one person, or maybe both, need in their lives.
I am happily married. Like many people we have had our ups and downs. Every couple should do everything they can to repair their relationship and make it work. But sometimes it’s just not enough. Sometimes you weren’t supposed to be together, sometimes one person has some issue that they just will never resolve, sometimes you find out things about your partner or things emerged down the line. We are not prescient, things change. So people should feel very comfortable divorcing without all of the social baggage that comes with it. Because divorce is inevitable, it is never going to go away. And it is a viable decision for one to make.
As for marriage, you don’t have to participate and to say you just want it to go away is kind of ridiculous because we both know that is not going to happen. So we deal with reality and accept that divorce is part of the marriage landscape.
Yes and no… Yes, divorce shouldn’t be traumatic. But no, people shouldn’t rush into marriage.
Normalize taking alimony for personal gain
Or just be a couple? Save yourselves and everyone else in the families the money and mental energy.
Oh brother
There are enough readily available marriage stats that you don’t need to make one up.
They were close, it appears to be 60%.
Grazie for grabbing that
I want to normalize the use of statasstics for ass-pulled statistics.
For real. This post has big “I have regrets and/or fears that I missed out on my younger life, and the only way to not be afraid is to invalidate other people’s choices” energy. Every life and every combination of experiences produces a unique piece of art. OP, your life is valid and worthwhile - you don’t have to tear other people down for that to be the case.
Oh I have issues with commitment and a constant feeling of ‘Is this the best I can expect?’ but I don’t regret my younger life.
My ‘weird’ sentiment stems more from me looking in from the outside at relationships where 20 year olds decide they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. I can’t imagine missing out on potentially meeting someone more compatible. Can you really meet the most compatible person for you when you’re 20?
When I was 20 I was a very different person, I’m assuming that’s similar for others.
Other commenters have talked about how they grow with partners but I wonder if it’s truly possible to do that while being so ‘together’ with another person. Some things you have to learn on your own.
Just because you matured late doesn’t mean everyone else does, a lot of ppl are exceptionally emotionally mature by the age of 16 or 17 as well, you should always take a decision based on your maturity level and someone elderlys opinion who also knows you well, like your parents, they probably have a good idea
I honestly don’t know who you’re talking about. I don’t find most adults to even be mature people, especially in relationships. The main thing keeping adult relationships alive is just that they spend most of their time apart from their partner at work.
This is anecdotal but everyone I’ve ever met that made a high school relationship work didn’t make it work through “maturity”. They were just committed. Often, they were extremely immature and naive and were bonded by the hardships of their 20s.
Go ahead and ask people who were together when they were younger and made it work. I’ve never heard any of them say they were mature and knew what they were doing.
Fair point, I think it is just that you should be mature enough to work with you partner together, or atleast one person should be at that time, and if they really love each other, then good
The way I think about it is that the core idea is that you will stick together with your partner through everything and grow together. Most high schoolers don’t go in with that idea, they just have strong enough emotional connections that they stumble into that.
The maturity part of being an adult is knowing that’s what you should do and knowing how to do it without hurting the other person in the process.
It’s like dancing. If someone really wants to dance with you, they’ll be patient as you find your rhythm and you both learn to dance. Feet get stepped on but it’s the same dance. Getting older doesn’t teach you to dance. Being young doesn’t mean you aren’t light on your feet. Maturity in relationships is knowing most of the wrong moves and never dropping your partner.
I can’t imagine missing out on potentially meeting someone more compatible. Can you really meet the most compatible person for you when you’re 20?
Perfect is the enemy of good. If you hold out for “perfect” you will be alone forever.
When I was 20 I was a very different person, I’m assuming that’s similar for others.
Bad assumption. Every human life… every experience is different for everyone. Your lived experiences is not sufficient to gauge ANY other life.
Some things you have to learn on your own.
This is a choice… and not a requirement.
Statistically speaking, 60% of marriages between people aged 20-25 end in divorce. Those who wait have a 25% increased chance of not getting divorced.
So you go from about a 1/2 chance of divorce to about a 1/2 chance of divorce. Got it.
Sounds more like age doesn’t really matter and emotional maturity matters more.
The difference between 35% and 60% isn’t insignificant…
I mean you’re not wrong about emotional maturity but the less years you’ve been alive, the less time you’ve had to emotionally mature
Just on the math rq, 25% almost certainly means 25% of the risk is reduced… therefore 60%->45%
Depends/sometimes… If it’s like you said then 25% of that 60% and you get 60-15=45. If it’s some rando looking at 60% total and 35% total and they go “oh neat one of these numbers is 25 bigger/smaller!” Then maybe not?
I was just a kid… why would you think I’d know better?
Lol for me all people who marry are weird why draw the line at a certain age
Imagine the following scenario: you meet someone in college, and when you graduate at 22 you don’t want to split up. They say sure, let’s live together, but we need to get engaged; if it doesn’t work out we can just break it off. After a year you realize your lives are much better together. You decide to get married but not to have kids until you’re 30. If it doesn’t work out you can divorce, but you sign a prenup and at least no kids would be involved.
If you both have clear and compatible career goals, that scenario saves you a lot of dating drama and gives you valuable support. I wouldn’t call someone in that scenario “weird.”
What purpose does engagement and marriage serve there? “Must be this financially trapped to continue?”
Yeah I’ve noticed at least a lot from my high-school group that dating for about 4 years is a good amount of time, me personally and a lot of close friends seemed to have hit their hardships in a relationship around that 4 year mark. Also moving is a good test about how you do in stress haha
Been married for 10 years now. There’s one thing I’ve found to be the ultimate relationship tester:
Furniture Assembly.
If you can survive assembling a few pieces of IKEA puzzles together it’s probably going to last XD
Better than teaching stick shift?
If anybody still knows what that is!
My wife and I have put many IKEA pieces together over the years, and she got her license at age 24 after I taught her to drive stick. We’ve been together 24 years, this coming Friday.
Our way of surviving furniture assembly is for him to Go Away And Let Me Do It, because I can follow directions and he just tries to slap things together without looking xD
I love my husband! Knowing when to just let the other person get on with shit is a pretty good litmus test, I agree, lol.
Maybe it’s bad luck, but half the time the instructions are physically impossible to follow on certain steps.
I just don’t get this. I’ve never had any issues putting together furniture or dated anyone who had trouble with it. I can’t think of a single ex where furniture assembly was an issue.
I think furniture assembly is more about being able to work together for a common goal and communicate what you need the other person to do and listen to what they need you to do.
For some reason a lot of people struggle to assemble ikea stuff (I honestly don’t know why, I’ve assembled dozens of items and it’s not rocket science). But there’s definitely been moments when I’ve been assembling some shelf and need my wife to assist with a two person step. If the assembly has been frustrating you have a really good test of how well can the two of you communicate through frustration and work together.
So maybe you are great at ikea assembly and don’t have the frustration factor, or you are a wonderful communicator and listener. For a lot of people though it’s that “this is the 12th step, I’m annoyed because I did the 9th step backwards and had to undo some shit, I’ve stripped this fucking screw… I’m gonna slide this piece and you need to guide it past the shelves, past them, you see how it’s hitting the fucking piece of wood, I need it not to do that!!!”
You probably shouldn’t marry everyone you can build a shelf with, but if you can’t effectively communicate when frustrated doing something trivial like building a shelf with someone you should work on that before tying the knot.
^^^^ Exactly what I meant 😅
I think the main point here is people around those ages aren’t fully capable of making those kinds of decisions in the first place.
There’s a reason why most marriages end in divorce after all.
Get married before you have a clue. Get a clue after being married a couple years. Get a divorce because you realize you had no idea what you were doing.
This is 100% a data-driven fact. It can’t apply to everyone, but it’s a really great average.
Those who wait until after 25 have a 25% chance of not getting divorced.
The way you phrased it is not quite what the study says.
They’re not “25% likely of not divorcing” (which would mean there’s a 75% chance of divorce).
They’re “25% less likely of divorcing”
Throwing my anecdotal 2 cents in -
Married at 23 (wife just turned 21) straight out of college. We were both very immature, and we divorced two years later after she fooled around with her 55 year old boss. Left me devastated at 25 going on 26 thinking I was used goods. After a lot of maturing, a few more relationships, I remarried at 33.
It takes a lot of self reflection - because even though I could chalk up the previous marriage to “lol she a hoe” - I had piss poor financial skills, was very immature and lacked a lot of self confidence which manifested itself in toxic behavior all around. There are times I just cringe at who I was at that age. Not that I’m a perfect person now, I’m just more aware of what I needed to improve in myself to be a decent person and partner.
Part of it is the age old wisdom of learning to love yourself and figuring out what you like, versus just trying to mold yourself into the person you think your partner wants. And not to say that “oh I’m an asshole, They have to deal with it” but truly understanding what makes you tick and finding someone who loves and accepts that part of you.
Married at 23 (wife just turned 21) straight out of college. We were both very immature
Also totally anecdotal: Exactly the same for us, up to this point. Now I’m looking at 36 on the horizon this year, and she 34, and we’re still both quite happily married.
My only point being: it just depends on the people. It works for some, and for others it doesn’t. I wish I could tell a person which kind they’d be, but I can’t.
I will absolutely say, however, it’s gonna hurt a whole hell of a lot less to simply wait a bit longer and be sure of what you want, and that you’re both in agreement on the major things. It doesn’t mean you have to wait in order for the relationship to succeed, but it sure would improve the likelihood that it will.
Marurity matters, not years . In my parents era 18 was a common marriage age, but they were done high-school and working full time at 16, unless you went to Uni.
I don’t trust anybody that isn’t a wizard.
Met my wife in highschool and got married right out of college. We are now pushing 40 and are still happy and content. We were lucky, we grew together and in similar ways, but we also just knew when we knew. We even had twins a few years back and even the stress of that didn’t destroy us.
We (hopefully) still have many years together and maybe things will break down, but, so far, neither of us regret marrying so young.
There are some arguments in this thread that are getting dangerously similar to pedo arguments.
Met my now wife in high school. We’ve been together since high school.
We’ve been married for 5 years now.
I’m 40 next.
So kinda agree with the post, but not the sentiment that if you met your partner early you’re weird. I was lucky I met the love of my life so young. Just because you didn’t doesn’t mean I’m weird, just not as lucky as me.
My wife and I both met at the tail end of college in our early 20s, we knew pretty quickly what we had but we didn’t rush things other than moving in with each other after the first year. We didn’t get married for another 10 years.
I almost feel like weddings early on can put huge stress on a marriage. Even if you have somebody paying for it all it creates a lot of crap to deal with and you can get forced to meet and deal with a huge amount of new family members all at once instead of slowly integrating into those things over time. We had to pay for our wedding ourselves so had zero rush and invited only who we really wanted to be there, and while it was a blast it was still stressful. But holy shit that limo ride back to the hotel room when it was all over is a top 5 moment in both our lives.
I’m 35 and I’m still not sure that I’m old enough to get married yet.
I married my first wife when she was 18 and I was 20. We went through a lot of hardship. It should not have worked out: we were both poor, from broken homes, in an LDR from different worlds. She was the popular girl, I was a shy and awkward nerd. When we got married, we had only been in one another’s presence for a few weeks total. I went into the marriage not expecting a path or plan, as my parents were toxic which ended with my mother’s suicide, and my mother in law had been married 4 times before she became single for the last time. None of us had healthy marriages to draw from. At our wedding, her relatives even said, “I give it two years, tops.” We were desperately poor, and struggled most of our marriage with health and money issues.
But we made it work for 25 years. We’d still be married, but she passed away ten years ago. We became “foxhole buddies,” us against the world.
This, all marriages are supposed to be this, us vs the world, while I get the argument you don’t know who you really want when you are 20, I’ve also seen cases like yours, as long as both people figure out us vs the world, I think the marriage will last. So when people say 25 and after it makes sense, I’ve also seen cases where people never understand in their life this us vs them mentality, and are never happy and I always wonder the question how much age plays a role in people understand what marriage is supposed to be?
Anyway thanks for your take my man, my condolences, I wish you all the best.
I have neither insight nor retorts to offer, I just wanted to congratulate you on 25 years. Hell, even 5 years with someone who’d dig in with you is worthy of praise in this world. I’m glad you found your foxhole buddy, and I wish you all the best.
I’m 40ish and I’ve wanted the same thing since I was 20. Haven’t found a good match but nothing has really changed regarding my long term goals and the things I want from life.
