I don’t think ppl getting married is wierd before 24 risky sure. Having kids before 24 is crazy. Like 2 years in workforce at minimum. Barely time to be able an adult before a parent.
I much prefer being a young parent, than the idea of raising teenagers in my 50s or 60s. I much rather have all my fun, travel and adventures with my kids or will do with my wife when we’re older and the kids moved out
That’s fair. My mom was a teenager when she had me so it’s interesting watching her going from rebel teen staying up watching horror movies to ultra Christian as she got older. I feel like my siblings which are all 5 years apart benefited from less beatings and more income. I will say my mom had sooo many marriages (she’s on #7). It would’ve been nice if she found the one before they got baby trapped into our lives. 1-6 were dumb as f. Personally I loved the huged age gaps between us. Never felt the siblings issues we saw in Malcom in the middle but that wasn’t in the cards for me to have as a parent. So there are plus and minus to it overall.
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.
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
Not going to try to change your mind about this opinion, but I’ll take a stab at shaming you for being so vocal about a thought that is very much “othering”. Maybe turn down the judgement a bit, you don’t know people.
What’s truly insane is people who marry under 20. And if you think it’s possible to know who you are and what you want at that age, you have a very simplistic view of the world. Or you’re brainwashed by those who reared you, ie you have a very simplistic view of the world.
On one hand, it kinda is. On the other hand, ppl tend to turn out to be complete jerks, and marriage somewhat protects from the consequences of such a revelation. On the third hand, what Bolex said
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.
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.
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’m sorry you have to deal with that. I have lived with a persistent background anxiety for my whole life, and only in the last year have I started treating it (in my 40’s). It hasn’t solved all my problems, but it does mean I’m not constantly jittery. If you’re already treating your anxiety, then I can only wish you luck and success.
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.”
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
This is the main point here, IMO. A child is a huge responsibility and the early 20s is a period of life you’re still figuring things out. Culture also plays a role here; where I’m from, people are deciding to live together (without having kids) for a couple of years before formally marrying.
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.
I definitely needed to goof off in my 20s and figure out who I was. But not everybody is like that, and the meme in question suggests it’s “weird” to know who you are and not need to goof off.
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 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.
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 least for women fertility begins to decline at 32.
That’s a little bit of a yikes there, buddy.
Edit: and additional “yikes” for all of the people that don’t see the problem with assigning a value to women based on how fertile they may or may not be.
Edit 2: tHe QuAnTiTy Of EgGs! Because women only exist to get pregnant.
The question was about marriage. There are two reasons that I see people get married. For young people it’s about starting a family. However you and I feel about it personally, legal structures that are in place just make it easier when you’re married. The other reason is for older people. Pensions and estate planning is easier for married couples. Again, I have opinions about it but it remains a plain fact.
They said nothing about the value of a woman being tied to fertility, that came out of mind…
As for the decline in fertility statement, that has been scientifically proven for decades and assumed for centuries. Women are born with a set amount of eggs, they typically go through at least one per ovulation cycle, they start reaching the end in their 30s and risks of birth defects start increasing in their 30s
Yeah. There was a point when I was thinking I’d keep this account professional and share it with my students. Unlike my other social media accounts. lol
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