Should you get married while you’re young and have “peak nubility,” or wait until you’re older and have not-as-great boobs but a more emotionally mature attitude toward compromise? Careful, I think it’s a trick question. But if you’re the sort of person who needs an article or someone else’s experience to answer that question (assuming you’re among the “lucky” portion of the population who is actually allowed to marry), then rest assured the advice is out there, chomping at the bit for you to put a ring on it either now or never. Hint: Do it now!
That’s right: As if it isn’t obviously ludicrous to tell people what to do or when to do it when it comes to crazy, madcap, culturally condoned unions such as marriage, people are out there still telling you when to do it. Mostly, they want you to do it now. Because now is better than later, when you might not be able to do it anymore. I think if you would just do it now, the argument goes, you would see what all the rest of us who already did it have, and you could get in on this, too, like a hotly tipped stock destined for greatness that only other rich people know about.
Why? Are we all just a grandmotherly stereotype of worried fretting over whether all the young ladies are settled yet? Why do we want to tell (mostly) women to get married so soon? Does it just make us feel better? Is this a hookup culture backlash? Are we afraid that women are reaching peak fulfillment in their lives and careers and finally holding out for the most equitable, manageable arrangement in the history of forever, and it’s making us nervous? Do we not know how to deal with new generations of women who might never have kids or find “Mr. Right?”
Newsflash: We know when or if or how we want to get married. We do. And even if we haven’t decided, we still know that advice is great and all, but that we will ultimately make this decision for ourselves relative to our situations and lives and desires. Stories about what other women do or did are perfectly interesting but ultimately not really applicable to us and our lives. Please stop pretending that they are.
Take this “marry young” lady who is making the Internet rounds. Message: She married young! And so should you. More specifically, Julia Shaw married at 23, an age when I believe I was literally doing bong hits before original-run Melrose Place came on. Shaw met husband David in college and angels burst through the clouds, so they entered post-haste into the Maturity-Commitment Generator. (Princeton Mom would be so proud!) And since it worked out so well for Julia Shaw, she wonders why everyone isn’t busting down the doors at City Hall to shack up with the quickness:
I’m a married millennial. I walked down the aisle at 23. My husband, David, was 25. We hadn’t arrived. I had a job; he, a job offer and a year left in law school. But we couldn’t buy a house or even replace the car when it died a few months into our marriage. We lived in a small basement apartment, furnished with secondhand Ikea. We did not have Internet (checking email required a trip to the local coffee shop) or reliable heat.
Marriage wasn’t something we did after we’d grown up — it was how we have grown up and grown together. We’ve endured the hardships of typical millennials: job searches, job losses, family deaths, family conflict, financial fears, and career concerns. The stability, companionship, and intimacy of marriage enabled us to overcome our challenges and develop as individuals and a couple. We learned how to be strong for one another, to comfort, to counsel, and to share our joys and not just our problems.
Great, that’s great. I don’t mean to diminish in any way the success of her arrangement — applause for everyone who does a thing they like and is happy with the thing. But this argument is deeply flawed as a case for marriage for anyone other than Julia and David Shaw, and it’s almost too easy to refute.
One: All kinds of relationships, with lovers and friends, with pets you care for, with yourself, in all varieties, can offer something toward our growth and/or stunting as people. Two: marriage, in and of itself, isn’t stable. Or intimate. Nor does it offer companionship. It’s a legal/religious agreement. The people inside of it can foster and nurture those things. Or not. A lot of ’em do. A lot of ’em don’t. That’s what the whole divorce rate is about.
I don’t see why people attribute what’s good about marriage to marriage as a concept, as opposed to the people in it and the work they are doing. Marriage is just a framework. Everything about the way it goes comes down to the two people in it and how they face the challenges that befall them.
There are things, to be sure, about making it harder to leave a relationship that will influence the way you work on the relationship. Committing for life provides a framework for doing the heavy lifting over the long-term in a way that a casual relationship wouldn’t. But in either situation, people can be for the notion of working it out no matter what or not. It’s not marriage that creates (or more importantly, keeps) this promise. It’s people.