When I wrote to my young friends considering marrying very young, there was more I wanted to add. There are a million considerations; we had many great reasons for choosing to marry young and so many gifts have come out of it–we had countless reasons to “go for it.”
So we did. At 18, I walked down the aisle towards my 19 year old, hardly out of high school love and promised myself to him wholly and completely. However, as much as I gush about how thankful I am that I married my husband, it’s not all fun and games. Hah–it’s often not all fun and games. Marriage is hard. Living with a person who is different from me is hard. Having to give 100% even on the days when my son has sucked away all my energy is hard. Making my husband a priority when there are a million things all vying for my full attention is hard. This isn’t a surprise–everyone knows marriage isn’t easy–but I sure wasn’t fully prepared for what an under-exaggeration “not easy” is.
I am a firm supporter of marrying young when you know you’ve found the right person. There is a stark difference between loving someone and being infatuated with them, desiring to serve them for the rest of your life and lusting after them or wanting them because of what they can do for you. This post isn’t about that–it’s about considerations that come up when you have found that person. Not every young person is ready to get married, regardless of whether or not they’ve found “the one.”
While it isn’t about whether or not you’re “ready” to get married on a practical level, there are legitimate practical concerns such as how you’re going to support her financially or if your dreams and goals are taking you in the same direction or if you even have a job. Especially for the men, there’s a level of responsibility you need to take before walking into marriage. For lack of a prettier word, don’t be dumb.
Still, I believe that wisdom can overcome many of the practical challenges that come when you decide to marry. Not to be cheesy, but love can overcome staggering obstacles. One of my closest friends married her boyfriend when they were both 18. She lived in Colorado, he was still a high school student at school in Malaysia and he flew to the US over Christmas break, got married, and left from Malaysia again a few weeks later to finish the last semester of his senior year of high school. Two months later, their baby girl was born while he still lived in a different continent and his high school peers were enjoying being carefree teenagers. She was mom to a baby girl and he was in high school in a foreign country so neither could work and after he graduated, he moved back to the US and they lived in her parent’s basement while trying to get on their feet. Now, a year and a half later, he just graduated from Marine Corps boot camp and after 10 days of boot leave he’s gone again for more training but their marriage is great because they took their situation and their resources and they made it work.
That is proof you don’t have to be “stable” to get married.
But there are emotional and mental obstacles that can’t simply be “overcome by love.” Just because you love someone, marrying them will not magically teach you to communicate. I learned this one the hard way in my marriage. On the flip side, you might have found the right person and you might be sure that you are ready to get married, but are they?
For people who selflessly love each other and are asking the right questions and desiring marriage for the right reasons, there are three issues I have seen coming up in young marriages. My husband and I personally know people who are our age and divorced. I know guys who signed the divorce papers at 20 years old and girls who left their husbands and are getting back on the dating scene with their college aged peers that have never even had a serious girlfriend. How do you break that to someone?
“Hi, Phil, thanks for asking me out.”
“You look beautiful, Maria. Is that a wedding ring tan?”
“Well, funny story…”
Poor 21 year old Phil might never have even had a serious girlfriend, let alone a divorced one. Perhaps this isn’t a big problem in the normal world, but it is in the military world. I am not going to pretend like I know the ins and outs of these divorces, but I do know some of the issues leading up to them, then add the extra challenges that military life brings on top of it and many young couples can’t handle the pressure.
Of course, these three issues are problems in marriage at any age, but I have seen them to be issues particularly amongst the youngsters.
1. They are too immature to be able to disagree constructively and communicate properly. These are skills that are learned and I am thankful for parents who taught me these skills but most of what I learned about communication came after I married. Perhaps the real issue here is not so much the lack of communication skills but the lack of ability and desire to learn them. The phrase “communication is key” isn’t frequently talked about in regards to issues in marriage for no reason.
2. They don’t know how to manage finances and haven’t learned responsibility. Again, this is a learned skill, but there has to be a basic understanding of these principles before you end up in your own place with no mom to tell you what to do and no idea how to pay bills and stay out of debt. When we were single we were worth about $50 each. Now that we’re married, our combined assets are worth a lot of money–that is far more responsibility than most young people who have never been truly independent can handle. You can’t go into marriage expecting to learn as you go–you literally cannot afford to mess this up. Also, this doesn’t mean having money all worked out. When my husband and I got married, our back pockets were literally empty. We had about four suitcases of stuff between us total and nothing in savings–we absolutely didn’t have it worked out–but because of my husband’s full time job as a Marine and my commitment to spend and save properly, our situation quickly changed. We weren’t stable but we were committed to living wisely.
3. They don’t understand faithfulness. One of the biggest arguments I hear against marrying young is that young people don’t know what they want. While this is true for many, it’s a very dangerous argument because if you start believing this in your marriage, you will be tempted to look outside of your marriage to figure it out. Infidelity is a major issue in our culture at any age, but I have personally seen numerous husbands in their early 20s who have cheated on their wives (and I know it happens with both husbands and wives) because they felt like they were somehow being jilted by having to commit so early on to only one person literally for the rest of their lives. It is a lie that you need to date around to know what you want–and while it’s true some people might learn valuable things about their own desires and themselves while doing this, believing this lie destroys marriages because for young people who committed to one person “too soon” they want to know what they’re missing out on. They are jealous of the freedom their singles buddies have. Then you get older and she has a baby and is out-touched by the kid all the time, or he gets busy with work and you’re lonely, and you want just a taste of what you think you’re missing out on. It’s a slippery slope, my friends. I know people who divorced at 20 and this has been the reason more often than not–I have seen this happen in real marriages around me.
This is too important not to reiterate: You might want to absolutely marry this person, but if there is even the slightest inkling of doubt that you’re ready to settle down, proceed with extreme caution. Infidelity happens slowly, insidiously, often without you even realizing what’s going on until it happens and young people who believe that when they married they “didn’t know what they wanted” are far much susceptible to looking outside of their marriages to figure it out. Once you’re married, it doesn’t matter whether or not you really knew what you wanted because you chose them and from the day you said I do until the day that you die you have to continue to choose them.
If that is too tall an order for you, do not get married.
I thought I was ready to get married and then I got married. Was I actually ready? Well, to put it simply, not in the least. We had done premarital counseling, I had read the marriage books, talked to godly married people, prayed about it, spent hours thinking through everything I possibly could–not that it was useless because it helped prepare me invaluably, but I was still not ready.
Is anybody ever really ready to give up themselves to put somebody else first for the rest of their lives regardless of the situation or how they feel?
Young people, marriage is hard. It doesn’t matter what age you are, marriage is hard. The challenges listed above are real at any age, but they’re especially real for you. I wish I could sit down with you and share my stories and experiences and all that I’ve learned–I am by no means an expert and I haven’t even figured out my own marriage, but sometimes you just need to talk to someone who understands. I get that.
So I will leave you with this:
Don’t simply follow your heart. Jeremiah 17:9 states “the heart is deceitful above all things,” and when we are in love our judgement is all out of whack. Do not stay in the little bubble of you and the love of your life while you make choices–reach out to older, wiser people who have life experiences and knowledge that you don’t. Is their advice infallible? Definitely not! Ultimately, you and your boyfriend or girlfriend need to make the decision, but I promise that if you trust your feelings and keep to yourselves and stay isolated you will quickly find yourselves deceived.
Delve into the word of God and become as much like Jesus as possible. If you are whole heartedly seeking after Jesus and following his commandments, God will fill you with the desires of His heart. One day, your husband or wife will let you down; they are human and no human will never ever disappoint. If Jesus is the center of your life instead of your spouse being the center, you will get through it. If Jesus is the center of your life, you will get through everything.
Don’t be afraid to marry just because you’re young. Yes, it stacks odds against you, but when you are 90 in your rocking chairs on your front porch surrounded by grandkids and even great grandkids after 70+ years of marriage, you will wear it as a badge of honor because you overcome all the challenges they told you were insurmountable. I am proud of my husband and proud of my family and proud that I married him.
You will never get your youth back, and while some view that as a reason to “live it up,” I viewed it as a reason to start living my life with my bestest friend in the whole entire world as soon as I could.
And that, my friends, was the best decision I have ever made.
