Why Getting Married Early Might Not Be The Best Idea

You meet someone young, you fall in love, and you think that’s it, that’s my life partner.

Everything’s rosy. You grow up together and share years of memories.

Then you hit a point in your life, you start changing, morphing into the next phase of who you’re meant to be. What are the problems with getting married early?

Marrying early seems to increase the chances of poverty, and dropping out of school, and makes it challenging to reconcile differences when married life changes.

• A woman who marries young is 31 percentage points more likely to live in poverty when she is older. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
• Teenage marriage is also associated with much lower education levels; women who marry before the age of 19 are 50% more likely to drop out of high school and four times less likely to graduate from college based on U.S. census data tabulations
• Another possible scenario is where little arguments might gradually turn into huge arguments before it takes a while (sometimes years) for both of you to realize, you’ve grown into very different people. 

The challenge then remains to put in the hard work to now communicate more perhaps for some time, and allow falling in love with your partner to take place all over again. It can be an incredibly beautiful process, one that allows two parties to grow closer together than ever.

In unfortunate cases, you might face irreconcilable differences during married life – Differences where if you both were to attempt to bridge the gap, the so-called compromise feels more like you’re giving up everything, and risk losing yourself in the process.

A wedding photographer once told me, that he had shot over thousands of weddings, and can count on one hand the ones who truly are happy together, the ones who still look into each other’s eyes and they completely belong. There was one thing all of the happy couples had in common, according to the photographer – They were all past 30. 

They decided to get married not because of society’s ideal age of marriage, peer pressure, or that their biological clock is ticking and they wish to have kids (none are wrong either), but because they are truly in love, and want to be together to make each other’s lives so much better.

We’re not saying the ones who get married prior will not be successful, no. 

There could however be reasons as to why the statistics revealed that finding. 

Less Time to Grow Up

Some people mature earlier, some later. Typically, by our 30s, we tend to have a better idea of who we are and what we want in marriage and family as compared to in our 20s. 

We would have more likely than not dated a few people by then and experienced the beautiful journey of falling in love, questioned what love is, deciphered whether what we felt was indeed true love, and then learned how painful heartbreaks can be. It is by no means easy all the time, but it helps in our personal growth. It helps us understand ourselves better, understand what our deal breakers are, and understand how we can better protect our energy in the future. 

Less Time to Question Society’s Timeline 

We’ve grown up being told that the normal trajectory of our lives is meant to look like this:

• You get your university degree,
• You work,
• You find someone,
• You have a healthy marriage, and
• You have kids.

It’s almost a decree. 

A lot of people plan and walk this route. There’s nothing wrong with it either if you’ve found someone you can trust to have your back because that kind of support is extremely precious.

But let’s not rush into marriage because that is viewed purely as an end goal. 

Or at least, do not get married a marital status because of an idea of a timeline imposed on you. (There’re still decades after marriage to turn your life into a living hell if that isn’t the right person!)

Less Time to Advance Your Career

We get to know ourselves better through various experiences in life. Carving your career path is one of them, and this will always be your journey alone to take. 

You get to have fun with job-hopping at the beginning to discover what you enjoy doing better, learn to navigate office politics and gain people skills, and hone your emotional intelligence. How far you wish to take your dreams is entirely up to you!

Not to mention, this is a great time to be building your pot of finances before sharing a life with someone else. 

The level of self-awareness, emotional maturity, and financial stability will all benefit you when you meet the love of your life someday. That will be the person for which all your life lessons till then have prepared you, and properly equipped you with the necessary skill set of knowing how to remain in a space of love through difficult conversations.

If you’ve never dated anyone other than your husband/wife, some part of you might wonder what it’s like experiencing someone else. 

Some people let it remain something they’d wonder about for the rest of their lives. Others, attempt to find out, in a move that will inevitably destroy the marriage. The truth always comes out eventually.

There may be a few surprises along the way, as life has shown us to be true, but such are the perks of marrying later in life – You move through them now with ease; The issues that might have fumbled you in your 20s barely make a dent now. And that, my friends, makes a great recipe for success.