Reply to Married in your 20s? How's that worked out?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's nice to read about all these happy marriages especially on this board!  :-)[/quote]

I agree! This actually makes sense though...I actually think people who get married later in life tend to have a harder time. They are more set in their ways and have a harder time compromising and adapting (which is required for marriage)...people who got together younger often figured it out together.[/quote]

I agree, too.  I think there are some explanations for some of these blissful marriages that started very early.  I think that the young marriages that work out are much more happy and secure than your run-of-the-mill marriage that works out.  A lot of people get married in their early 30s, when dating starts to look like one, big frantic game of musical chairs, and I don't see how that is any better of a start than getting married very young.  These marriages often stay together, but I'm not sure that it is because they are happier.  When people have kids in their mid to late 30s, the financial stakes can be much higher when it comes time to divorce (these people have to plan for kid expenses, college, and retirement all at once).

Conventional wisdom says that you should delay marriage because when people marry early, they often change, and can more easily end up as different people down the road.  Indeed, statistics show that many young marriages implode.  However, I think that the ones that young marriages that work out very well arrive at something that often much more awesome than your average marriage.  I attribute the blissful mid-life happiness that we see in some of the respondents here to a few things:

- People who get together very young (say, college age) often had their choice of many partners.  These are people who chose each other when there were TONS of people around them who were single.  Therefore, I think there is a good chance that these people are highly, highly compatible. That's a very different landscape than late 20s and early 30s, when people start to pair off, and options for both sexes start to dwindle.  Oftentimes, if you talk to someone about "the one that got away", they will tell you about a love that they found around college age.  I think, in many of these successful marriages, people married someone who would have been "the one that got away" if they weren't brave enough to take a leap of faith.

- [b]I think men who go so far as to buy a ring and propose in their very early 20s (not just keep their partner as a girlfriend during that time) are generally more commitment-oriented than men who are reluctant to settle down.  Many of the most husband-y guys I know were married or engaged fairly young.  These are often men who thrive within the framework of a committed relationship.  They are committing to marriage when there is a pressure NOT to do so, versus early-30s marriages where there is a pressure for both sexes to settle down.[/b]

- Way less individual baggage, and the couple has the opportunity to grow together

- Infertility is almost never an issue.  And you don't have to cram marriage, career and kids into a few years.

[/quote]

I agree with your post but the bolded especially.  The type of guy who is willing to settle down while he still can be a happy wandering bachelor for years longer tends to have a loyal, decisive personality because it just isn't the social norm for men to want to settle down in his early to mid twenties.[/quote]

+1. This is really interesting. [/quote]

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