In Defense of Young Marriage

For any longtime readers, it's no secret that I was a bright eyed teenage bride, married shortly after the first election I could have been eligible to vote had passed. The day I married, I was too young to drink alcohol, barely old enough to buy a lotto ticket, and several years away from being eligible for an age related discount on auto insurance.

Most of my friends graduated from college and are now in grad school or testing their toes in the waters of the working world. Until this year, I was the only one who was married and only in recent months has somebody else joined me as a fellow mother. They've dated, traveled, and opted for experiences of the youthful twentysomething culture that I never stepped foot in as I was home nursing a baby, cooking meals, and working on my fledgling marriage with my husband instead. Now the bridal magazines are coming out and the fun dates are turning into a hunt/pursuit for something more for many of the women who were my schoolmates back not too long ago. Often we can't relate to each other anymore, especially when I must say no to attending a birthday party at a restaurant or when jokes are made about how early I go to bed now. This is not the end of the world, of course, just the reality of different choices that have taken us on different paths in this world and shaped greatly what is our realities today.

It's not uncommon for a friend of mine from high school to ask if I regret getting married young, to which I can truly answer a big resounding NO. I don't believe I "missed out" on anything, for I chose the life that I was praying for and working towards and am sincerely thankful for having had the opportunity to do so. I love having somebody in my life who is a static part of my life, not a date or boyfriend who might come & go. I can invest everything I have in him, in our child, in our life together. I know how he likes his coffee and he knows how I like my tea. I understand that he is an introvert and place a high value on the hobbies and diversions he needs to do to recharge, just as he understands why I adore spending time with others and can recharge from doing so in ways he can't. Because we know each other and have invested in each other, we can be partners in life in ways we couldn't be without a serious commitment, shared goals & dreams, and the deep mutual trust, respect, and bond that only comes with the serious commitment of a marriage covenant. For me, the decision was the right one for many different reasons, a few of which I am sharing more about below.

*Growing Up Together: Through the twists and turns of life and the challenging process that is learning to live with, love, and fully accept another fallen human being, flaws & all, Sean and I have "grown up together". We began this journey, over five years ago, naive and starry eyed, with no idea what the future might hold. My husband was freshly home from a tour in Baghdad during which he saw combat and many things one would never hope to experience. I barely had an opinion formulated on the war, based off intelligent reasons and sound information anyway, when I found myself arriving on Army Base USA, right to the human toll and the harsh reality of military life. This big jump into the ocean of adulthood was an intimidating one, but one that served me well, as I learned very quickly how to handle difficult emotions and grasp effective communication skills, especially when contact with your spouse is limited and stress runs high at the same time. We faced many other difficulties that showed us, clear as day, what is most important in life and had to make numerous sacrifices to help us launch ourselves into our marriage and adulthood on the best legs we could stand on.

*Investing In Our Lives: Our young ages have afforded us the opportunity to begin "investing" in our lives several years ahead of many of our peers. Rather than expend emotional energy getting to know several different men, only to wind up wasting time when relationships ended, everything I have had to offer has been for my husband only. I've only had to learn to accept his quirks, to appreciate his likes & dislikes, to understand his needs and communication style, and to give all of my heart to him. As a result of not being too "set in my ways", I do believe it's easier to not only accept my husband's quirks & idiosyncrasies but to appreciate them for making him the unique and special man he is. Learning to love my husband, to become one with him emotionally, and to build our marriage is work that has already seen us through tough times and will continue in the years to come. This lifelong commitment is the most important human relationship in our lives and the one that will serve as an anchor for not only us, but Peapod, as the years march on.

Thanks to our young marriage and the financial lessons we have learned, we have opportunity to have begin saving the financial reserve for our old age (or emergencies and unplanned events) now, rather than later, to appreciate the importance of making sound choices to provide security for Peapod and any other children we might be blessed with and to help others through the choices we have made as well. With wise financial practices, we hope & pray that this will allow us to enrich the lives of others, as many have done for us along the way.

We also have had opportunity to begin investing in the heritage we will one day pass onto our grandchildren, through being parents to Peapod and simply living life together. We're building memories to cherish and share when we get older and we're learning lessons together that have allowed us to make better choices for our future.

*A Fresh Outlook & Clean Slate: Youthful age afforded me no opportunity to have grown too selfish, set in my ways, or used to living all alone, leaving me having a difficult time adjusting to sharing a home and life with another person. When we set up housekeeping together, this was both of our first ventures into truly living "on our own" and we grew into this new way of living together, as husband and wife, rather than what could have been the opposite: several years living "on our own" before merging households with each other. This is not to say that this is without it's own issues, of course, but unlearning has never quite come as easily to me as learning the first time has. Sharing this first allowed us to build and develop many opinions and preferences together, which has been something I've enjoyed and hold dear.

Young marriage is not for everybody and this fact I can appreciate. I fully understand that I may very well be quite the oddball for having carefully considered opinions about parenting and the life I wanted by the time I met my husband in my teens. Not everybody has these, for not everybody is planning the same future I was hoping to have myself. Sometimes, though, it seems people believe a teenage bride such as myself, went into the arrangement of marriage foolishly and this is an assertion I finds considerably unfair, just as I find the opposite assumption, that a person who marries later simply did not want to be married until then & thus "deserves" their fate. Both could possibly be true, but neither is a fair stereotype on which to judge another person. I went into my marriage eyes wide open and knew very well what I could be facing....intellectually anyway.

I knew military life would be hard and would challenge our marriage in ways the civilian world would not. I knew that melding together two people from different cultural and racial backgrounds would add even more challenges to overcome. I knew my husband was a combat veteran and knew this would also add another dimension to the life we were seeking the build together. But I also knew I loved him dearly and was ready to make a lifelong commitment to him, to God, to our families, and to our community that would last to death does us part. Sean and I were both ready to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work necessary to make our marriage work, to get through the bad times, and to shelter our budding young marriage from the storms of life. And looking back five years and one sweet little girl later, we both know we made the right choice. :o)