If you have any Facebook friends around 20-25 years old, you've no doubt seen this post 23 Things to Do Instead of Getting Engaged When You're 23 being passed around. And then, you saw a few counter-posts explaining why getting married at a young age is awesome. And then...you got sick of seeing it all.
Honestly, I'm tired of hearing how getting married young is a mistake and on the other side, how waiting to get married and settle down is stupid. Are we really that shallow that we have to ridicule others for their relationship status? Each and every relationship (and person) is very different, marriage is a huge decision, and we don't need to throw labels on each other based on that. For some, getting married young is the answer. For others, there's nothing wrong with waiting. The right thing to do is not universal.
When we got married, I was 21 and Keagan was 22. We heard our fair share of negative and positive comments, which was totally weird. I never expected my peers to flat out tell me I was "stupid" and "wasting my life." Honestly, at times I felt very self-conscious about getting married young. I had to remind myself to focus on the encouragement from friends and family and the reasons why we decided to marry when we did.
In regards to some of the comments in the article, our marriage was not a cop-out. It was a decision that we took very seriously. I met the guy that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, we sat down and talked about the future, and came up with a plan that benefited our future together, not our lives separately. That's what we wanted. We both knew that Keagan would soon move across the country for the Marines and I was not interested in spending years living across the country from each other until we reached the "Proper Age to Marry." Would we have been fine waiting to get married? Yes, probably. Am I glad we got married when we did? Absolutely! I would have missed out on an important part of my husband's life and those years apart are something I would have hated to waste. And Vanessa, I'm not hiding behind a significant other instead of dealing with life's highs and lows on my own. If I hadn't gotten married when I did, you know what I'd be doing? I'd be finishing up my second year of grad school for a career that I wasn't passionate about. I'd be living comfortably in my home state, not taking any risks. Because we got married, I had to give up a "plan" that I had originally created to keep me comfortable. Because we got married, we came up with a new plan and now I've lived in 4 states in the past two years. I've learned that things I once valued and based my worth off of were unbalanced. I'm still learning who I am and what my dreams are, and probably will continue doing that for the rest of my life. And you know what? That's okay. I've got someone who is committed to that journey with me for the rest of our lives. That's one of the best things I could ever imagine. It's what I needed and what worked for us.
That was our situation. That might not be everyone's situation. And that's okay. Get married before 23. Or don't. Make that decision and don't think that your decision is the only one.
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