The Cume: And What I Wish I Would Say...

The Cume:  An awkward silence caused by a social faux pas

For the past year and then some since Sean and I have been married, I’ll occasionally get a comment that I can never seem to figure out a response for.  Most of the time, the comment comes from someone that I just met, or hardly know, and oftentimes from someone whose own marriage, which was often done later in life, failed, making it all the more confusing to respond to.  The comment is always some variation of “you’re too young to be married”.  Sometimes it comes in the form of a question: “Why did you get married so young?” or sometimes in the form of a reprimand: “gah, you had your whole life ahead of you” or “you just change SO much in your twenties.  I just can’t imagine getting MARRIED” or my personal favorite “you’re MARRIED? (disgusted face)”.  I’ll go ahead and say, that there are certainly other social decisions more damning than being married in your twenties that seem to catch no slack, but for the sake of concentrating on this particular social faux pas, I’ll stick to the aforementioned social decision to marry young.

There are a few questions that I have for people who make these comments, but I think that the one that resonates with me the most, is “what response, exactly, are you looking to get out of me?”  Are you looking to just put in your 2 cents casually and go on? Are you looking for me to get defensive?  Do you think that I’m going to say something along the lines of ‘ya know, I never thought about that.  I’m going to go home RIGHT NOW and tell my husband that we’re actually too young to be married’.  Do you think that that makes me like you?  Do you want me to list off my credentials and why I think that I’m NOT too young to be married?  Do you want me to go through a process of elimination showing marriage as the best option? If I looked straight at someone and ASKED what response they were looking for, it’d of course, look defensive, like this blog post, but honestly, I’m curious.  In addition to that, I’d like to offer up my response, which would of course colloquially be quite extensive.  So I’m going to write it instead, and start referring people to thisgreatnewlife.blogspot.com for answers.  In reality, it’s probably more of a venting.  As a disclaimer- I do not believe that there is a magic age at which people should get married.  But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding the right person at the ripe old age of 22…

What’s interesting about the mindset of “you’re too young to get married” is that they are actually wrong, on all 3 accounts that I, and probably most people, consider.  The reasoning used by people who make this comment sounds ridiculous and wrong.  Statistically, these people are wrong.  And Bibically, they are wrong.

First, I’d like to address reasoning that I’ve been given for the “you’re too young” mindset, and why they sound silly when actually examined:

• You’re giving up your freedom:  So marriage is a lament of my freedom.  Ideally, I should romp around doing whatever I feel like doing because my twenties are about ME.  I should have spent a LOT of time practicing being really selfish before getting married.  By doing that, I will mature into a selfless person who will be willing to lay down my life to serve another person in a happy marriage.  Sounds logical…
• You should “date around”:  Ideally, I should have broken up with someone that I had happily dated for 4 years, and instead “date around” until people start making comments about why I’m NOT married, all the while trying to find someone TO marry.  And when I’m 29, I can cry to my friends about being always a bridesmaid and never a bride.  The people that I would be “dating around” will probably turn out to be amazing husbands and fathers once they eventually propose to me, because they too, will be living out their “freedom in their 20’s”.  They will, of course, need to sleep around with many women during their “freedom” and there’s tons of evidence to support that the more women you sleep with before you’re married, the more likely you are to stay faithful to your wife.  Really…
• You could just live together:  So we could PRACTICE being married without the commitment of actually BEING married.  And THAT’S how I can get more practice with the commitment that I’ll need in marriage.  And then I have the freedom to break up and PRACTICE divorce.  I’m not going to bother saying much about that only because any study you look at shows cohabitation as a “categorically unstable arrangement”.  Nice…
• You should have some financial stability: Being broke and single makes MUCH more sense than being broke and married.  Paying TWO rents, for TWO sets of apartment stuff, for TWO sets of stuff at the grocery store, not to mention having NO marital tax breaks actually sounds logical.  When you look at it logically, and not in a “popular opinion” light, marriage is actually the most efficient “wealth creating institution” that there is.  I’d like to hear a good argument as to why it’s not because while that’s disputed, I have yet to hear a valid reason, or actually, a reason at all why.  In our case, both of us managed to land good jobs.  Plenty of people in their late 20’s, in addition to having spent the last 10 years barely making ends meet, also racked up thousands in credit card and student debt.  And then everyone assumes they’re ready for marriage because they ARE in their late 20’s.  How financially secure…

Secondly, I’d like to address the fact that people who tell me that I married too young are statistically wrong.

• A study entitled “Later First Marriage and Marital Success” found that people who marry later in life DO fare well in survival, but poorly in quality.  According to these particular data sets though, the longest, highest quality marriages were among people who married between the ages of 22 and 25.  Sounds like I should be pretty miserable mourning my “freedom”. 
• The paper also stated that most people have little or nothing to gain in the way of marital success by postponing it until the later 20’s.  Just more time spent doing the aforementioned “dating around looking for someone to marry”.  Ironic.
• This research was confronted by a man named Norvel Glenn, who in that confrontation found that self-reported marital happiness is the GREATEST for women who married between the ages of 22-23.  Again, happiest?  What about all of those eventual regrets…
• Statistically, even the argument that young marriages are more likely to end in divorce is also pretty faulty.  That IS true for people who marry in their teens, but according to an article in the Washington Post, it’s not true after around 20.  Considering other variables, among young people who waited until they were married to have sex, the divorce rate is a statistical zero, in every single study that I could find.  That’s a lot lower than the 50% rate that society boasts.   
• Somewhat addressing the finance reasoning, statistically, married adults at ANY income level, report being happier than the wealthiest single adults.  This still holds true when the study is limited to only 18-29 year olds.
• Addressing freedom statistically, 64% of married people report satisfaction with their personal life.  That’s compared with 43% of single people.  Wish I had more time to work on personal satisfaction before I got married…
• Married people live longer, and have less health issues.  You’re never too young to do something good for your health J 

Thirdly, I’d like to address why Bibically, “you’re too young to be married” is wrong.  Briefly, only because just a cursory glance at the Bible would lead someone to believe that God actually likes marriage. 

• Ecclesiastes 4:9: Two are better than one.  For a number of reasons.  I thought “two” meant a lament of your freedom and financial disaster, certainly not a better return for work…
• Jesus performed his first miracle on this earth, at a wedding of all places.  Probably because he just hates weddings…
• Genesis 2:18:  It is not good for man to be alone.   But God, He’s in his TWENTIES!  He needs at least 10 years to drink and sleep around. 
• And lastly, I will call attention to God’s purpose for marriage which is obvious in Ephesians 5:23.  This is the verse encouraging wives to submit to their husbands (often taken out of context) and goes on to say that men should love their wives as Christ loves the church.  He gave up His life for the church.  Which tells me that the purpose of marriage is to be a show of sacrifice to mimic to the world the relationship between Christ and the church.  To make you Holy, NOT, despite ALL of these statistics that show that it does, to make you happy.  In that context, as a Christian, there is not an age at which you are all of the sudden allowed to show someone the love that Christ showed the church.  God chose MARRIAGE as the way in which His love would be displayed.  Call me crazy, but sounds to me that God Himself is a proponent of the decision to marry young. 

Ultimately, I think that marital happiness is the responsibility of the parties involved, not the age at which you get married.  I am by no means a proponent of getting married just because you’re young, or of getting married if you don’t feel like that’s the best course of action, but I did, and I felt like I should address at length my response to this tacky social comment.  So I’ll probably continue to just look at people with a “what exactly do you want me to say?” look on my face when they make the comment upon meeting me that “you got married too young”.  Because I don’t have the time in one conversation to explain a) just how inaccurate that comment actually is, and b) how much I LOVE being married.  So now you know, if you’ve read this blog, not to comment on how grievous of an indiscretion a young marriage is.  It just sounds dumb, it’s wrong, and it makes a terrible first impression.