Anyone get married at 23? Or around that age?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To OP:

While I appreciate your questions...I just was wondering...

Are you writing a paper on relationships and marriage??

Hi, OP here. No, this is my first post on here. I'm not the one who posted before. And I'm also not doing a research paper! I am 23, boyfriend is 25 and we have a 3 year old child. We are thinking about making the next step toward marriage and I was curious as to how many others got married at our age Thanks for the responses, all.

I am a very young mother myself. However, I sincerely don't think you can really compare your circumstance to most of the other posters -people who got married at your age and didn't already have kids.

I think what makes it different is that you're kind of already together for life (once you have a kid). You're not going into the marriage and choosing each other, without any outside influence pushing you to do it. The decision to build a life together likely wasn't deliberate and/or mutual. There's no comparison between that and two people who chose to accelerate getting married because they desperately wanted to be together.

It doesn't mean that your boyfriend isn't the perfect person for you, but I think you might get more helpful responses if you were to ask women who have had a child out of wedlock about their experiences in marrying the child's father afterwards.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh honey.

The child is a greater commitment than the marriage! Totally different ballgame...

OP here. So what are your thoughts now that you know we have a child?

NP, but my thoughts are that marriage is completely irrelevant in your situation. You are already bound to your child's father for the rest of your life (assuming he stays involved) and you are already responsible for another human being, which is life-altering. Who cares if you get married or not.

I know this won't go over well with the - I'm a 50-year old grandma and it's awesome - theme of this thread but to me getting married young is a separate issue from having kids young. Lots of people meet the person they want to be with very young. Having kids is a whole other thing. Your life changes forever and there is no going back. You will never ever again be young and carefree with no responsibilities in the world and nothing to do but explore the world, yourself, friendships, relationships, life, etc. And no, I personally don't think living the empty nest lifestyle in your 50s is the same thing in the least. But I am ready for everyone to tell me how wrong I am. Rock on 50-something Grandmas.

Honestly my early 20s was full of partying and wasted time. Time wasted sleeping all weekend and taking shitty trips because I only made 50k/yr.

I think it sounds pretty spectacular to be 45, well off and have the time and money to travel, drink nice wine, and have the luxury of a body that was not ravaged by kids in my middle age.

I have a good friend who had her first her freshman year in college. She went on to quickly have 3 more. Same dad. Still married. She managed to finish college though at George Mason over 6 years as she SAH. She's 44 and her and her husband have done really well. They take amazing trips and looking at her body you would never even think she had a baby. She has her whole life ahead of her. she is always somewhere warm and luxurious. Time and money are way better at 45 than 25.

Totally disagree. Things I did in my 20s that were not a waste of time:

Traveled internationally alone, which on some level scared the shit out of me but I did it and it was truly life changing
Moved to an entirely new city for a dream job
Formed friendships that have lasted me decades - I still am close with many of the people from that period of my life

Sure, everything is less luxurious because you're not rich. But that's the beauty of it too. You're young and up for anything. Now I'm old and I want to stay in nice hotels. I really enjoyed having a lifestyle where I had a large group of amazing friends and we all had about the same amount of money and everyone was really just up for any adventure at any time. I wouldn't trade any of that time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

Honestly, I didn't want to be a mom for the first time in my late 30's

PP you are responding to. I was a first time mom at 34. Didn't even meet my husband until I was 27. How young were you when you met your husband?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How old were you when you got married? I was 25
How old was your spouse? 26
How old are you now? 30
Are you still married? If not, how long were you married? Still married. Plan to be in it for the long haul.
Do you feel you were mature enough for marriage at that age? Absolutely. We'd already lived together for 6 years and had shared finances entirely for about 5 years. We had been dating for 10 years.
Do you regret marrying at that age? No, why would we?
What did your family think about it? They were happy for us. Why wouldn't they be?

What kind of finances did you have to share at age 19? Were you all in college together?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

Honestly, I didn't want to be a mom for the first time in my late 30's

DH again. We definitely loved each other, and we wanted to be married and start a family in a few years. What's the point of waiting?

The point of waiting? Travel all over the world, work long hours when starting my career, dating more people to determine true compatibility while I matured.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

The purpose is the same as the purpose of any marriage: you fall in love and decide you want to spend the rest of your life together.

My spouse and I were 25. We are now almost 40. I never planned to get married so young, but that's when I met him and that's when it made sense for us. Thank goodness I didn't miss out on my husband because I wanted to wait for an arbitrary age limit!

I fell in love several times: 19, 22, 25. Didn't marry any of those guys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did you get married in your lower 20s? If so:

How old were you when you got married?
How old was your spouse?
How old are you now?
Are you still married? If not, how long were you married?
Do you feel you were mature enough for marriage at that age?
Do you regret marrying at that age?
What did your family think about it?

23
27
Yes, 10 years.
Yes
No
Fine with it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

When it's the right person it's the right person. Your taste can change at any point, so maybe they're not the right person if that's a concern. I didn't want to solely focus on my career, and then end up being 40 and possibly needing expensive IVF. I knew my DH was the one after knowing him for 3 months. We got married 3 years later at 24. Still married, and still able to focus on my career and family.

What's with all you people marrying young to avoid worrying about fertility? I was much more concerned about marrying too young and thus the wrong person, than having children biologically.

[Anonymous]

Why marry at a young age? Some people are fortunate enough to find a person they click extremely well with at a young age. When you know, you know. At that point, it's more a question of: why wait? It's just luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How old were you when you got married? 22
How old was your spouse? 23
How old are you now? 29
Are you still married? If not, how long were you married? Still married
Do you feel you were mature enough for marriage at that age? Yep. Had been out of school for a year, working full time, gone through pre-marital counseling, discussed things of importance...
Do you regret marrying at that age? No, not at all
What did your family think about it? They didn't really know my now-husband (they live in california, I met him in college here in DC. I think they'd met him once), so it was a bit frustrating to them, I think.

I love having been married so young. We got to do all the "firsts" together. First interviews, first jobs, first car purchases, first house, etc. We grew up together, learned from each other. We didn't have established habits to break like we would have if we were living apart for years before hand. I'm not really sure what I missed out on by marrying early...other than maybe having more money for our wedding!

You're only 29. You have decades to wonder what your life would be like if you lived a little on your own before you committed to your husband. How many men did you date before you started dating him?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

Honestly, I didn't want to be a mom for the first time in my late 30's

PP you are responding to. I was a first time mom at 34. Didn't even meet my husband until I was 27. How young were you when you met your husband?

I met him when I was 21. I'm not saying that it's a great reason but I have a chronic condition which limits mobility with age so it was important to me at the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

A number of reasons:

-Why wait? I found the person I wanted to be with. The pool only gets worse and worse as time goes on
-We did not want to be having babies in our 30s, for financial reasons and for the sake of vanity. Babies hardly phased my body.

In hindsight, we never felt that we needed to keep up with the Joneses. We were 25 and had our first kid. We bought a small shit shack in Arlington (before prices were crazy) and we did not even notice that it was small and out of date, we were so happy to have a home together.

I SAH until I was the old age of 30 when I returned to work. My career never took a hit. Plus we hit the jackpot when it comes to real estate by being so serious when we were young. We are now 45 & 46, one in college, one graduating HS this June. We have friends our age with toddlers and struggling with the cost of housing and living here. We're established in our careers, have a house paid off, and our boys got scolarships which has been an enormous windfall. I feel like we have a whole life in front of us, I'd do it this way a million times over. I have ZERO and I mean ZERO desire to be running after toddlers at my age. The only thing I'm running in are in triathlons.

You're only mid 40s and you've been sleeping with the same guy for more than 20 years? Gee.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

You are either into monogamy or not. It has nothing to do with how young you married. Nobody who enjoys varied sex "gets it out of their system" and then gets married. If you like variety, then you like it and if you can't get it because you've forced yourself into a traditional role, then you are going to be pretty miserable. I'm in an open relationship and I can tell you that MOST people who are married, but not monogamous are in their late 30s/early 40s. This is when sex drive for women especially started to fire up and when you got married has no bearing on if you do or don't practice monogamy.

So everyone who marries, young or old, is cool with monogamy? Has that been your experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

How old were you when you got married? 24
How old was your spouse? 25
How old are you now? 49
Are you still married? If not, how long were you married? Still married
Do you feel you were mature enough for marriage at that age? Yes
Do you regret marrying at that age? Not really
What did your family think about it? No concerns

I do think it would have been fun to live longer as a single person. OTOH, I have no regrets about who I married, so it's hard to really wish things had gone differently.

A same-aged cousin (still married) and a close family friend (now divorced) both married the same year I did, so marrying at 24 hardly seemed unusual to my family.

but your mother and her generation had so many fewer opportunities than your generation - that's why it wasn't unusual for women to marry at 24 in the 1950s and 1960s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the purpose of marrying so young? I'm not a fan of monogamy and I waited until my early 30s to get married. No way could I have married the guy I was dating at 23. Most people mature a lot in their tastes and preferences in their 20s.

A number of reasons:

-Why wait? I found the person I wanted to be with. The pool only gets worse and worse as time goes on
-We did not want to be having babies in our 30s, for financial reasons and for the sake of vanity. Babies hardly phased my body.

In hindsight, we never felt that we needed to keep up with the Joneses. We were 25 and had our first kid. We bought a small shit shack in Arlington (before prices were crazy) and we did not even notice that it was small and out of date, we were so happy to have a home together.

I SAH until I was the old age of 30 when I returned to work. My career never took a hit. Plus we hit the jackpot when it comes to real estate by being so serious when we were young. We are now 45 & 46, one in college, one graduating HS this June. We have friends our age with toddlers and struggling with the cost of housing and living here. We're established in our careers, have a house paid off, and our boys got scolarships which has been an enormous windfall. I feel like we have a whole life in front of us, I'd do it this way a million times over. I have ZERO and I mean ZERO desire to be running after toddlers at my age. The only thing I'm running in are in triathlons.

+1. I totally agree. I love having grown kids in my mid 40's. Would not have it any other way.

+2 and will love to have grandkids in my late 50s if it turns out that way.

I cannot even fathom what it would be like right now to have small children or even toddlers and then sending my kids to college when I'm rounding 60.

There's a happy medium, you know. I'll be 55 when my youngest graduates from high school. I don't care if I ever have grandchildren. Having kids in my mid 30s was great all around.