Arguments Against Young Marriage That I Will Never Ever Understand

I'm 20 and I've been engaged for over a year. Yep. I got engaged when I was only 19. Before you start calling me a child bride and mentally conjuring up images of an woman in a "Little House on the Prairie" style bonnet, keep in mind that 1) I'm not actually married yet and 2) why does my age of marriage produce such a visceral, unpleasant reaction for you?


There are a lot of things regarding this topic I'll never understand.




1. "You're Too Young to Know What You Want."
No. I know what I want. I want a partner who is caring, supportive, funny, stable, and generally compatible with me. I have that. Everyone I've ever spoken to wants that, young or old.

2. "Don't You Wanna Play The Field?"
HA.

HAHAH.

You're right. Let me just opt out of my loving, supportive relationship 5 years in so I can collect a few shitty Tinder stories to swap at parties.

I really don't know what people expect me to say to this. Would it have been cool to maybe date around before meeting my future spouse? Sure. I bet I would have met some wonderful people and had maybe gotten my heart broken by some romance-novel-type bad boy. But if I've found the man I'm going to marry what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I'm not one to leave things up to chance, so taking a break, or breaking things off with my partner so I can meet a few men who are inconsequential in the grand scheme of my life seems pretty foolhardy. I guess we could take a break and get back together, but that would likely only result in hurt feelings, and could potentially damage my relationship with the man I hope to marry. A few more years playing the dating game doesn't seem like a worthy trade for the well-being of my secure and happy relationship.


3. "You're Brain Isn't Even Fully Developed Yet. You'll Change."
This one is exceptionally peculiar to me because what person just hits the end of their physiological timer, pops up and goes "I'm developed now. Marry me."

Will I change over time? Inevitably. Will he? Yeah. But I don't think there's a certain age at which your personality development just shuts off and you never learn another new thing or pick up a new behavior unless you were already a pretty close-minded, routine-bound person. Everyone continues to grow for the duration of their whole entire life and slapping an age at which suddenly that inevitable change isn't as devastating for a potential marriage is really arbitrary and strange to me. The benefit of meeting each other now is that we have the rest of our married lives to grow together. Rather than growing as two separate individuals with totally separate lives and then attempting to smash those lives together to create a new one, we're standing at the starting line together.



Being married young isn't a death sentence just like getting married when you're older isn't the key to success. Live and let live, people.