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.
It goes up. Now I think people that get married before 40 are weird.
On serious note.... It's any age. You can tell when a couple is just trying to reproduce an image of "family" because they were told it's the next thing to do in life. Working in retail id often see families you could tell just went through the motions and that everyone was disconnected from one another. It's sad.
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."
Wife an I met and got married when I was 25 and she was 19. We had some life experience and knew what we wanted. 15 years later, it's still amazing, we're still best friends and inseparable. When I met her I got this weird feeling, like I met someone I had somehow known all my life. It felt like I met my wife in a past life, and was immediately like "oh there you are!" When I met her in this one.
I'm in my mid-50s. The generation older than me - my aunts and uncles - generally were in school until grade 8 and were out of the house and working by 16. My mother had her older sister as her teacher.
24 is not a child. You can vote drive, drive, drink, marry sign legal documents etc. And at least for women fertility begins to decline at 32. If you mean you will continue to grow as a person and develop new interests that hopefully never goes away. I went to grad school and was in academia for over a decade after my PhD. I have made two major shifts in my career since then. Old people still feel like they are in their twenties or early thirties mentally, we joke about it all the time. So congratulations, this is it.
At what age are you supposed to know what you want for the rest of your life? You will never have an answer to that in any capacity, and not just in marriage. You evolve as a person, you'll never have a fixed desire for your whole life. And that's the great thing about marriage and relationships, they also evolve. And it's about who you want to try doing that with
The age at which you meet has nothing to do with it. Healthy relationships are about evolving together. If you can't do that or if you do it separately, that's when it falls apart. Sometimes you're lucky and you find a compatible person early, sometimes you don't. That's all there is to it.
Maturity plays a much more important role than age. Some people are never fit to marry, some have what it takes by the time they are 16/17. It's not often that it plays out well for the youngest ones, and since each year brings new experiences and understandings each year moves along the bell curve of "marriage readiness". So is it more likely that a 24 year old is more ready for marriage than a 18 year old. Yes. Is it guaranteed? No. I know some 50/60 year olds that still aren't ready for marriage. They just never learned the skills it takes to have a healthy marriage. Giving an age as a hard cutoff is too arbitrary a measure. Age doesn't guarantee shit.
Can we stop extending "just a kid" into ever older years? Society already years anybody under 18 like they're the same as a goddamn fetus. Human life expectancy being what it is, we shouldn't be treating people... not even like they don't know anything but like they couldn't even conceivably know anything for fully a third of it.
I see a pretty stark difference between people who married young and had kids right away, vs people who married young and enjoyed their time for a while before having kids. The ones who had kids seem weird to me, never got a chance to goof off in their 20s and figure out who they are. The ones who waited feel more normal. But that's just my experience.
I met my wife at 37 and married at 39. Best decision I ever didn't intentionally make :)
But looking back, I had a TON of growing up to do before I was ready to seriously commit to marriage the way I personally view it. Pair bonding for life. Sure, people, things and desired change, but I've watched far too many god awful divorces to ever want to go through that, so I wanted to be really sure and I totally was. It's been an awesome 16 years.
If you don't know what you want before you're 24, should you be allowed to make any decisions?
Worst mistake of my life. I love my kids, though.
As a rule of thumb I'd agree
That said, few people I can immediately see are extremely compatible and uniquely similar would be fine marrying that young. I could see how having a kid even at 20 could be appealing. Imagine being 40, your kid is 20 and finally cool to hang around with while you're still healthy
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.
Say that to the ppl in countries/places where people start working from the age they are old enough to hold tools, or after high school, they or their parents are not gonna bother delaying their marriage well past puberty, it varies wildly depending on the place(and culture), not everyone is living in a rich country and want to complete masters before doing anything else.
I am guessing this is mostly informed by your own experience, personally I feel the same, but I was a fucking moron at 24, certainly not ready for something like marriage or kids, hell I am 31 and I still don't feel that way.
Others might feel otherwise or grow up faster, to better parents and that's okay, no need to label people who do things different than you as weird imo.
Kinda had an affair with a woman who married at 24 and regretted not 'playing the field'. She ended up getting pregnant with her husband shortly after and I really hope they make it last, but I have a horrible feeling it was a doomed attempt to fix their relationship with a child.
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.
At that age I was only interested in gaming. Don't know how people have the facility to form long term relationships
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.
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 don't trust anybody that isn't a wizard.
Yeah! Just be with them for 15 years dragging your feet like a normal person!
Lol for me all people who marry are weird why draw the line at a certain age
People who may before they turn
2430 are weirdFTFY
Married at 23. Met my husband at 18 on a dating app, was supposed to be a quickie. He's just that charming, and I love him lol.
I was just a kid... why would you think I'd know better?
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'm 35 and I'm still not sure that I'm old enough to get married yet.
@Custoslibera@lemmy.world Could you share the meme template, please? =)
I was recently trying to talk a person online out of marrying someone once the two of them are both 18. It's partly because they're head-over-heels in love with their partner and partly to move out of the US to Canada to escape their trans hostile state. They are trans and their partner helped them through some rough patches. The couple is only now meeting in person for the first time after three years. It was a little frustrating talking to them because I'm a naturally cautious person. My husband and I took about five years from first date to cohabiting to wedding. They honestly sounded like your stereotypical love sick teenager.
I would agree with the general judgement of this cartoon. There's going to be some survivor bias for marriages that worked young. I know a woman who married a man who was in his 50's when she was 18, right out of high school. When he died, she never remarried. But you never hear much about the marriages where an 18-year-old deemed themselves "more mature than those other girls/boys" and it turned into a disaster. They typically don't last that long and no one wants to talk about them much.
I also think that when I see people of that age married or with kids. But I think it's just because of our different life experiences.
I opted to enroll in a PhD right after graduating and so, at 30, I still feel like my life isn't at a point when I can start thinking about kids or marriage. But I know a lot of people enter relatively stable jobs as soon as they graduate university (or high school, although in my circles everyone went to university - it's not as expensive as in the US here). I can understand people in that position starting to think about family earlier than me.
No one knows what they want for the rest of their lives when they're 34 anymore than 24. Same for 44, 54, etc. we're all figuring this shit out together.
But I'll pose another hot take:
Marriage is stupid in general. Pledging to commit your life to another person is stupid, and you don't need a church or government to recognize your commitment. If you end up hating each other somewhere down the road (which is likely) there's no sense in continuing to torture each other. It's not good for anyone. Get divorced? Well then what was the point of getting married in the first place? It's supposed to be a lifelong commitment.
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.
Kids make bad decisions sometimes. It’s not weird.
Marriage is about my happiness and according to AITA and TwoXChromosome my husband is a toxic spouse and I need to leave him, force my kids into poverty and go out there and just be happy without those lead balloons. Marriage over do it now
There are some arguments in this thread that are getting dangerously similar to pedo arguments.
Edit:
Who is downvoting me? How am I wrong? Look at all these "age is just a number" comments. All the "some people are mature for their age" comments. I'm not making an accusation, but if you think this is a winning argument with your full chest then my level of concern is rising.
24? Fuck that, 26 at least. Gotta give your brain as much time to develop before committing to something like that
No. Not just "no", hard no. Part of our society's problems stem from how people spend half (if not all) of their 20s partying. This is particularly an issue for us traditional men who want to marry earlier in adulthood but can't find any high value women who aren't feminists who have, let's just say, "been around". Furthermore, when you marry and have kids at an earlier place in your adult life, you get to spend more of your life with your children, see their successes, you get to witness your legacy unfold in real time.
That is what we need more of and I will not be convinced otherwise.
