Sort of L&R: Why's everyone getting married so early now?

[Q]

Is it just me, or is everyone getting married a year or so out of college? There's so many people I know that are engaged or married already right around my age. I know it's not just my 'network', but other coworkers at my age confirm the same thing with their friends.

I have nothing against it, it just confuses me why everyone is getting married so young and settling down before 25.
I feel that people are afraid of the unknown, and always want to know the next step in life. Once college is over, it's the first time in our lives where we don't know what's to come.

Elementary school -> middle school -> high school -> college -> search for job --> Get job -> Now what?

Has it always been like this, and I'm just hitting the age where I notice this, or do you all feel the same way?

I'd like to keep this in OT if possible to get more input.

 

[SKORPI0]

Depends on level of maturity, how much they are in love with each other, and "I wanna spend the rest of my life with you thing". Perhaps they met while they were young (teens/high school), so they've known each other for awhile.

Or the guy is forced to marry the girl because she became pregnant. Most of the young couple I meet is from the later. ^_^

 

[IronWing]

Has it always been like this, and I'm just hitting the age where I notice this, or do you all feel the same way?

No, traditionally folks have gotten married at age 14-16. With the industrial revolution, folks tended to wait until 16-18. Waiting until the mid-20s to get married is mostly a post-WWII phenomenon.

 

[Tsaico]

I haven't noticed any particularly young ages of people getting married. I was one of the last of my college group, at 34, with most of them married by 30.

The only thing that annoys me about people who are engaged, is when they do not pick a date. They are just open ended engagement. Quite a few people I hear, oh we're engaged, but we are saving up for blah blah," or "we just waiting for our schedules to clear up". These just mean to mean you were not ready to settle down, so the question should not have been asked, or the answer should not have been "yes".

 

[UglyCasanova]

Why not? I found the right person and getting married and spending my life with her is the best decision I ever made. We've been married I *think* 6 years now and I certainly don't regret it.

I had my fun time in college and I don't recommend getting married right out of high school like I see some people do, but settling down with someone and having that person that you can depend on and share your life with is one of the most rewarding things that you can do (assuming that you find the right person).

 

[Svnla]

Not true, more and more folks are waiting longer to get marry.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-11-09-delayed-marriage_N.htm

And as young people wait longer to marry, there is growing debate over whether waiting is a good idea, and if so, how long is best.

Marriage rate is at a all time low.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57342962-10391704/u.s-marriage-rates-at-all-time-low-why/

 

[Bateluer]

Getting married young seems foolish, you haven't had a chance to experience life yet.

 

[BoomerD]

I got married at 21. I was the oldest of the group I ran with to do so.

MOST of them made it from a few months to about 10-12 years.

We've been married 37 years this June.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

I've noticed a decent number of people I know doing this and it seems odd to me. The odds of them having a successful marriage are incredibly low. Not to mentions the fact that they don't have established careers, assuming they have jobs at all, which only makes the odds of divorce even higher.

 

[Balt]

People are actually waiting much, much longer to get married and have kids these days. A lot of it has to do with economics.

'Course... some people start shooting out babies before they are even 20 years old also...

 

[RossMAN]

Quintox, did you knock someone up?

 

[shortylickens]

I just read an article that teen pregnancy is at an all time low.

 

[Jumpem]

That's not young in my opinion. That's a good five or six years after someone could. Young is right after high school graduation. People getting married in their early thirties is a bit late.

 

[chin311]

Didn't really 'plan' or try to get married at any certain age, just happened when I found the right person. I was 25.

 

[Q]

Quintox, did you knock someone up?

:whiste:

 

[RavenSEAL]

Correction to the title:

Sort of L&R: Why's everyone getting divorced so often now?

 

[Rage187]

22 for me. And no, she was not pregnant.

Been married coming up on 13 years.

 

[tfinch2]

Getting married young seems foolish, you haven't had a chance to experience life yet.

I know right. Imagine all the Android articles they miss out on posting.

 

[Jumpem]

Getting married young seems foolish, you haven't had a chance to experience life yet.

Why experience life alone?

 

[SlitheryDee]

People used to get married in their mid-teens. Several of the oldster I know married their wives when they were ~15-17 years old. People wait much longer than that now.

You just feel like it's early because you see all your peers doing it when you don't feel ready to do it yourself. I felt it too when I noticed it going on around my groups of friends, There's a certain feeling of "everyone else is doing this thing, maybe I should be too...but I don't want to do that" that is mildly disturbing when it occurs to you. It's your instinct to conform to the rest of society or something.

 

[Bignate603]

Why not? I found the right person and getting married and spending my life with her is the best decision I ever made. We've been married I *think* 6 years now and I certainly don't regret it.

I'm coming up on 5 years, got married when I was still in college. It was the best thing I've ever done.

There's two things that really govern when you should get married:
1. Maturity and figuring out who you are
2. Finding the right person.

Some people will be mature and lucky to find the right person early, others it won't happen until later. You don't want to get married before those two things occur, but after they do why would you bother waiting?

A couple of my friends thought I was stupid for getting married in college but it worked out extremely well. Sharing finances helped pay to live and the financial aid you get for college when you're married is so much better. When you're married they no longer look at your parent's income when determining need for financial aid. Neither of us qualified for aid before we were married, after we were married we got tons of grants and things. People get married for greencards, I'm surprised nobody does it for financial aid.

 

[HendrixFan]

Why experience life alone?

I'm 31 and unmarried, and I can answer that. I have never been alone. Anytime I want to do things I have a list of people I can call up. I vacation twice a year and have never had to do so alone. Whenever I need someone to talk to about life, and its happenings, I have many options to turn to.

Google "urban tribes", there is, and has been, a growing number of youths who form their own versions of families with close friends. They are so tight knit that it staves off the human social need to start a family. Plenty of factors feed into it, but the high divorce rates in the 70s and 80s pushed that generation of children to be skeptical about marriage. Why marry if it will just lead to divorce?

The friends I have that have "left the tribe" to get married did so with someone who was completely worthwhile. They were at the maturity level, and had attained the financial responsibility needed to have a nice stability so neither factor would erode what would otherwise be a successful marriage.

One of the best pieces of advice I got growing up from one of my mentors was to wait until my 30s to get married. He had done so, and was at the time in his late 40s with three youngish kids. He was/is happily married and spends plenty of time with his family, all while making good money. He would tell me about his co-workers (he is a director in the company I work for) who are his age and near his level at work, and plenty of them married really young and now are cheating on their wives or getting divorced to get a young piece of tail. They spend their money foolishly and lavishly on toys to try and wrestle free from their mid life crisis.

Of course everyone is different, and there are plenty of people who have the maturity and stability at a young age and are fortunate enough to have found the perfect person at that time. But generally speaking, you learn alot about yourself in your 20s and it can be very beneficial to figure all that out before settling down.

Far too often I see people who fall into that trap of "I just graduated college so now I need to get married, hmmm, well I'm dating this person now and they seem okay I guess this is who I'll marry". How is it that so many people all find their soulmate at the same age? Coincidence or social pressure? I'd vote social pressure. I have had a few girlfriends who would talk to me about marriage, despite some instability and warning signs we had in our relationship. Of course saying "no", even in the most gentle way possible sinks that relationship. In every single one of those instances (three times total) they married the very next guy that came along.

It wasn't me they wanted, it was marriage.

 

[silverpig]

The longer you wait, the more likely it is you'll be picking from the "scraps".

I was 25 and my wife was 22 when we got married. It'll be 5 years this summer. Our 30-34 year old friends (particularly the women) have hit that point in their lives when they are actively LOOKING for a partner. I say they date institutionally. They use online dating because all of their acquaintances (friends' friends, coworkers' friends, people at their normal hangouts etc) are either married or, well, not suitable. And the online dating pool is a crapshoot too.

When we hear these dating stories our 30+ year old friends tell us, we give each other a "thank god we got married when we did" look.

That's not to say waiting is always bad. The point I'm trying to make is that there are a lot of very eligible people who are off the market by the time they hit their early 30s because they got married.

 

[CurseTheSky]

My wife and I just got married this past Tuesday. April 10th was our 6th year anniversary since we started dating, and we've been living together in the same house for the past year and a half or so. We've also known each other since 9th grade, though we didn't really start talking until we met up again in college. I'm 26, and she's 25.

At some point, when you've been with someone for several years (it probably sunk in for me around the 3-4 year mark), it becomes really difficult to imagine what life would be like without the other person. The thought of breaking up and seeing other people just seemed strange - I was fairly sure life wouldn't feel right for a LONG time. And then who knows what the new person will bring to the table, for better or for worse?

For me, it's not the age of the people getting married that matters, it's the maturity and how long they've been together. I see far too many people, regardless of age, that are with someone for 3-6 months and are already talking about marriage. I strongly feel that you don't REALLY know someone if you haven't been with them through the thick and the thin, and 3-6 months really doesn't leave much time to feel out the situation. When you make it to the two year mark, that's a bit more like it.

 

[HendrixFan]

The longer you wait, the more likely it is you'll be picking from the "scraps".

I would agree that there is some truth to that.

At my age I can realistically date someone between the ages of 21-45. I have seen that as women get older and they attach things like divorce and/or children to their resume their confidence tanks. It isn't that they lose value, they perceive their own loss of value. As their confidence shrinks their desperation really starts to take off.

So it isn't so much that the best ones are all taken, just that life damages them along the way. There are plenty of amazing women who get freed from a bad marriage by their late 20s/early 30s who are good catches and not willing to make the same rush to judgement they made the first time.