Not that I’ve ever been a partier, but I used to get annoyed when I heard that marrying young is like leaving the party early. Now I just laugh. Beauty sleep (and lots of it) is a necessity for me so I’ve always left parties early, but I guess after midnight is when all the “good stuff” happens. When you get married as a teenager, you miss out on all the “good stuff” that comes with being single and under 25. That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.

Ostensibly, marriage kills fun.

When my then-boyfriend and I got engaged, I had only been out of high school a few months. I was working at a retreat center in England and planning to move to California, where he was stationed, just a few weeks before our wedding. I certainly didn’t feel at all like my 18 year old peers. Trying to avoid student debt, I decided to forgo college and start working instead. I bounced from job to job, living in three continents in six months, and I absolutely loved the sense of freedom and adventure.

My now-husband, on the other hand, is a Marine. Anybody who knows anything about the Marine Corps knows you have to be insane, masochistic, or the biggest adrenaline junkie ever to, well, even just survive. My husband is both the former and the latter. Like me, he was a fighter–I did Muay Thai and he did MMA so we constantly wrestled and (lovingly) kicked each other. He didn’t go to college either, leaving us both free to move, and he had the same third culture kid tendencies as me. As a Marine, he had a steady paycheck and a dependable career. We had been crazy for each other since we were 14 and all of our best memories included the other, but most importantly, we both loved Jesus.

We were a match made in heaven.

Nobody was surprised when we announced our engagement on January 1st of 2015. Wedding planning went into full swing and four months later we said I do.

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Fast forward a year and a half to a quiet Saturday night on the other side of the country. We’ve already been relocated by the military and now we have a baby. Life looks very different from what I expected that Saturday I said I do.

I didn’t know what I was getting into deciding to marry at 18.

I don’t think anybody can truly know what they’re getting into when they get married, no matter their age, because molding yourself into one entity with another separate human being is so phenomenally different from anything else in life. You cannot fully prepare yourself to be one with a person who is not the same as you. You can pray, you can read your Bible, you can read the marriage books, get premarital counseling, talk to other couples, and refuse a pre-nup, but you cannot wholly anticipate what you’re walking into. I thought I could and I was wrong.

Believe me, I tried. I spent so much time looking for stories from anyone who had been married at my age. First up were the “stop judging me because I’m so young” stories, and then there were the 19 and divorced stories, but I could find so very little on what life was actually like for someone married at 18. 19 and divorced was certainly a warning for me, but all I learned was that if marriage wasn’t hard enough, teen marriage stacks the odds against you even more. While this is true, it is nowhere near a complete picture of what marriage at 18 is actually like.

It’s like being married at 22, or 25, or 27. Once you’re up in your thirties you have 50% more life experience and I don’t know any fresh-out-of-high-schoolers who can contend with that, but the point is that marriage at any age is probably the greatest and longest battle you will fight. But being married at 18 is still somehow different. Ladies, if you’re considering marrying your teenage boyfriend, you must know that unless your dad is Peter Pan your boyfriend will not be anywhere near his maturity level. Your cousin who just married a 27 year old? Your boyfriend has nine less years of life experience, and it doesn’t matter how mature he is, he is not going to be the same. 

When I married my husband, he had been out of high school and working full time for over a year. He was responsible and thoughtful, he provided for me, he was ready for us to set up a home and a life together. Even as a 19 year old, people regularly thought he was long out of college, 27 years old even. That is how mature he was. But he was not 27 and in the everyday, nitty-gritty tough moments of our marriage, it showed. 

I have to remind myself all my time that there are three main aspects that shape my marriage: my expectations, my effort, and my relationship with God. 

I did not have realistic expectations of my teenage husband when we were married. I expected him to be the same as the leading men in the romantic comedies us ladies like to watch and frankly, he wasn’t. He didn’t have the same friends or the same established lifestyle or the same paycheck or the same personality and he was not 30 and living in Manhattan with a penthouse office on Wall Street, as many of the men in the movies are. Of course I already knew he wasn’t 30, and obviously I knew he wasn’t bringing in a Wall Street paycheck, but I guess I still expected…more? I expected him to realize that getting married meant he couldn’t spend every night on weekends with his friends like he used to. I expected him to pick his clothes up off the floor and when he didn’t remember and I reminded him for the quadrillionth time I expected him not to be frustrated. I expected him to settle smoothly into the domestic lifestyle of washing dishes and going to the grocery store as our big weekly outing and not spending money because we were broke newlyweds.

My husband didn’t do those things.

Many husbands don’t. It’s okay, because if there is one thing I have learned from my husband it is that men are so extremely different from women it is unbelievable. But some women will get those things from their husbands, and I would venture to say the difference is that their husbands are older and have a maturity that teenagers don’t. Many men will never ever do those things, but guys who graduated from high school less than a year before in particular need time and patience to learn how to be husbands because high school boys do not spend their time thinking about how to prepare for marriage.

There is also the matter of effort. A very wise person told me that marriage is not 50/50, it is 100/100. There are times my husband comes home from work absolutely exhausted and he cannot do half the work in our marriage so he puts in as much as he can and I put in my 100%. If I only put in 50% and expect him to match my effort to get to 100% we will both come out frustrated.

I do not match his effort, I put in my 100% all day every day no matter what. 

A few nights ago, my son kept me up until 4:30am and my 100% was closer to what is normally my 40%. If my husband had come home from work and put in his 40% to match mine he would have had no dinner and a very upset wife. We don’t match effort in this marriage, we make as much of an effort as we personally can.

Finally, I believe the cornerstone of a successful marriage is Jesus. We are flawed human beings, y’all–every single one of us. Selfish human + selfish human = miserable marriage. If I am not spending time in God’s work daily and praying that He works in my life to make me more like Him, I can pretty much guarantee the day will not go well because when my husband walks through the door and treks sand throughout the recently swept house again I will not respond with grace. You cannot put two inherently sinful people in a home (and a bed) together and expect it to go smoothly without grace which is basically impossible to muster up with our own strength. God shapes my marriage.

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All I needed when I was 18 and freshly married was for someone to tell me everything I was experiencing being a married teen was normal. Just because we both were immature and we hadn’t learned how to properly handle finances or communication did not mean our marriage was doomed. In fact, two years later, our marriage is wonderful and I firmly believe my husband is the best decision I ever made.

There were no college degrees, no settled homes, no established friendships and paychecks. That’s partially what has made our marriage so much fun. Growing together is exciting and starting our lives together is always an adventure, and while my friends are still swimming in the dating pool and partying on Friday night and acting coy with the cute supermarket guy, I’m at home cuddling my sweet baby boy and cooking enchiladas for my husband.

Getting married at 18 was like leaving the party early. I missed out on obsessing over if the guy from my college class was really going to call me or if he was just saying that. I missed out on spilling my Subway sandwich all over my lap when I was meeting the parents because I was nervous (just kidding–I did do that…just not over and over again). I missed out on getting my heart crushed when he broke up because “our friendship was too valuable” and I missed out on spending my weekends drinking with my college buddies because I had nothing better to do. Instead I replaced those with building a family and a home.

I did leave the party early–but it was to go home with the most handsome, thoughtful, funny guy I have ever met.

I would leave a party early with my husband any day.