Thoughts on: [Getting Married Young]
Red River Gorge, Aug. 12, 2015—Two years later, we got engaged in the same spot!
In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to pick a topic for today's post based on love. In particular, I wanted to address a question about love that comes up in my own life a lot: How do you know you're ready to be married when you're so young? (Usually preceded by, "You have a fiancé??? How old are you??? And followed by, "But you've got so much of your life ahead of you." [I always like how this comment equates marriage with a premature death. It's particularly encouraging when it is then followed by a congratulations on my engagement.]) So today, I'm going to talk about the ways I knew I had found my future husband at 21 years old and why I feel only joy and excitement at the prospect of marrying him at 24 years old.*
*Disclaimer: I am not an expert on love; otherwise, my life probably would have gone very differently. I'm someone who got lucky in finding the right person early, so take this advice with a grain of salt if applying it to your own relationships!
1. To get it out of the way: yes, I went to a Christian college. But no, it didn't influence me to get married young in the ways you'd think.
We've all heard the mantra "Ring by Spring" being thrown around about Christian colleges. And it is a huge and very real part of the Christian college culture: many young Christian students are pressured to get married young, before graduation, by often misguided ideas that married couples are better for ministry or two Christians who love each other are just automatically ready for marriage. The most destructive mindset that the "Ring by Spring" culture reinforces in these Christian communities, in my opinion, is the pressure to get married young so that you can finally have sex. Because sex is such a shame-filled and taboo topic in Christian conversations, combined with the pressure to date and remain with that one person with whom you've had any physical relationship for the rest of your life, I think many young Christians do get married merely to enjoy physical intimacy and experience arousal without shame.
However, I never felt those pressures on my relationships, personally. I didn't get my ring by spring, and I didn't get engaged to that first guy I dated at my Christian college, not even the guy I sat beside freshman year in chapel (my favorite couple stories). The aspect of Christian-college-dating culture that influenced me most was the concept of dating intentionally.
I am a relationship person; despite my frosty exterior and need for long hours spent alone reading, I crave having that one person in my life with whom I share everything. I love having someone to watch movies with and cuddle up to, and a shared history with someone (inside jokes, memories of traveling together, the fact that they know all your favorite fast food orders) is a comforting, grounding element of my life. The concept of dating intentionally, meaning only seriously dating people whom I could see myself marrying, put pressure on me because I am someone who has a penchant for getting stuck in long-term relationships with people I don't really even like romantically anymore just for the sake of having that comforting presence. This happened with my first two relationships, which both ended after months of me telling my friends that I really should end it and never getting around to it (Pro-tip: if you have to make a pros and cons list about continuing to date someone, you probably shouldn't date them anymore).
This led to me dating Ryan, my fiancé, and a pledge to stop dating for the sake of dating, thanks to my Christian college's influences. Luckily, I didn't have to test that pledge, as I've never questioned whether I was in this for Ryan or the just the idea of a long-term relationship, which leads me to my second point. . .
2. Long distance can prove a lot about your relationship.
Five months after we started dating, I studied abroad in England for a semester. Let me tell you, if you are a commitment-junkie who gets stuck in relationships just for the sake of being in relationships, try long-distance dating. It, before anything else, proved to me that I didn't just want to be with Ryan because it was "comfortable." Long-distance is like dating someone without any of those perks of dating (hand-holding, cuddling, tv watching, experiencing things together) that I kept getting stuck in relationships for. But it turns out, I cared more about Ryan himself than the perks of a long-term relationship (nope, there were never any pros and cons lists for Ryan).
Long distance can also test your insecurities about the relationship and how deeply you really feel for that person. I wouldn't wish five months (or three years!) of long-distance on anyone, but I would say that it's important to spend time apart, even a week, to see how you react. In my first relationship, time apart, even a couple of days, was plagued by insecurities about him hanging out with other girls, despite him (to my knowledge) never cheating on me. And, often, he would forget to invite me on trips, which would reinforce those insecurities. In my second, I relished time apart because it meant I didn't have to face the fact that I wasn't invested in the relationship. Those were both huge red flags that I recognize now, but didn't at the time.
With Ryan, long distance was/is easier. In that first round of long distance, I would constantly think, "This would be more fun if Ryan were here," or "I can't wait to bring Ryan back here to show him this someday." A desire to share experiences is all-important in a relationship. I was also immensely surprised, considering the weight of my insecurities in my previous relationships, that I didn't ever feel the impulse to check up on Ryan or who he was hanging out with. I never doubted that he was being faithful; my trust in him was implicit and earned by our mutual respect and love for one another. That alone spoke volumes to me about how different my relationship with Ryan was from my previous relationships.
3. A "shared history" built on friendship or similar backgrounds can speed up the relationship-clock.
I met Ryan in July 2014, the summer after my freshman year of college. We worked at the same movie theater and became quick friends. I was in another relationship at the time, so that's all we were: friends, plain and simple. We played dumb jokes on each other and made the time at work pass more quickly by inventing games or drawing stupid pictures or telling stories. We developed inside jokes and learned about each other's likes and dislikes in the context of that friendship, where the same pressures as a relationship don't exist. When we started dating in August 2015, I felt like I'd already known Ryan forever—we already knew things like how to make each other laugh, what kind of movies the other liked, and the rhythms of each other's lives—so we transitioned into a relationship seamlessly. That year of friendship was extremely important in my decision to get married young, as I believe friendship deepens a romantic relationship into something less transient.
Ryan and I also have a shared history of experiences and worldview. We both attended the same middle school and high school, our development influenced by many of the same people and experiences. We can compare teachers and 8th grade Washington D.C. trips and danced to the same dumb songs at Homecoming. Look at the above pictures: how weird is it that we took almost the exact same pictures on the same high-school-sponsored Philadelphia trip two years apart without having known each other?? There were other statues in that museum, and there were other interactive exhibits to pose with, but we were somehow drawn to the same ones (!).We shared in the experience of working at Amstar Cinemas. We are both Christians who share a similar worldview of hope and grace. All of these elements of shared history contributed to my feeling like I'd known Ryan much longer than I actually had when we started seriously discussing marriage.
4. Family struggles with divorce helped (?!).
There aren't fairytale romances in my family. No high school sweethearts who stayed together 80 years until they died side by side. My parents have both been divorced multiple times. My grandparents on both sides got divorced. I, in fact, until meeting Ryan, didn't think I would ever have a loving, committed relationship where I felt the mutual trust required to get married without fear of divorce.
When people hear that I'm 22 years old and engaged, I think they often have this idea that I am in this honeymoon-stage-whirlwind romance and in love with the idea of marrying the first guy I ever dated. In fact, I don't think you should marry the first guy you ever dated. I think marriage is hard, constructed of ever-shifting and complicated parts, and even relationships that are built on love don't always last. I made a point to listen and analyze my parents' stories about their failed marriages, looking for those warning signs in my own relationships (and often finding them). I became a cynical realist, convinced that divorce was inevitable for me, statistically speaking. So when I did begin to think that Ryan and I had a chance at such a young age, I was as shocked as everyone else. Knowing myself as a realist who has no problem disproving the statement that love conquers all, the fact that there is not even one doubt in my mind that Ryan and I are going to have a long and happy marriage is essential to my getting married at all, not to mention at 24 years old.
5. Being reflective is key.
I think this goes for all aspects of life, but don't just make mistakes and experience successes and never reflect on how/why they happened. After my first college relationship, I jumped straight into another one without thinking about why the previous one had ended. I often think about how my life would have been different (the pain that I could have prevented for both myself and my ex) if I had stopped to reflect on who I was and what I wanted. Luckily, I did that self-analyzation before dating Ryan, stopping to think about who he was/is as a person (was he the type of person who would make me better?—iron sharpening iron, and all that jazz), why I wanted to date him (was it for self-indulgent or problematic reasons?), and whether or not I was really, truly ready for another relationship.
Knowing yourself is an ongoing process, and taking stock of who you are and how you've changed over the course of your relationship is also important. As a writer, reflection comes pretty naturally to me, so I was lucky in that respect. Ryan and I also ensured that we had discussed and reflected on important desires/opinions/hopes before we got engaged. You don't have to agree on everything, obviously, but you do want to make sure that first, you understand yourself enough to answer those questions and identify which ones are most vital to you (if you can't, it might be a clue that your identity has become too tied to that other person), and second, that the other person at least respects your differing opinions and shows interest in helping you achieve those desires/hopes.
If you know, you know.
I have a love-hate relationship with this saying, but at the end of the day, that's a lot of what knowing you're ready to get married young boils down to. Even if you are self-aware enough to identify flaws in yourself and vital desires for your future, feel you have a deep understanding of who your partner is, and feel an abiding love for them, if you don't know with every fiber of your being that you are ready for that commitment of marriage, I don't think you should take the leap. Don't feel pressured to do something you aren't ready to do. On the other hand, if you do feel ready, don't be discouraged by judgements about your age. Getting married young isn't right for everyone, but that's one of the beautiful things about the human race: everybody's different!
By 2020, when we get married, Ryan and I will have been together for five years, a nice consolation for a lot of people who see us as too young, but the truth is, I'd marry Ryan tomorrow. I am incredibly blessed to feel ready—to feel so certain about anything at my age—and I am indescribably happy with my decision, even if I have to answer the question, "Why did you get married so young???" for the rest of my life. And with that thought, Happy (Belated) Valentine's Day!