I'm Glad I Got Married At 22 — 10 Benefits Our Youth Has Over Older Couples
There are little-known perks to entering marriage and adulthood roughly at the same time.
Alina Rossoshanska | Pexels While it was customary for young women to settle down and get married before the ink dried on their high school diplomas (and in some subcultures, that's still the case), society has taken a significant shift.
Young wives are widely assumed to be old-fashioned, anti-feminist, super-religious, ignorantly inexperienced, and destined for divorce — usually all of the above. This new societal stereotype is everywhere, from whispery gossip to TV plots. A "smart and educated young lady" knows better.
Yet, entering marriage at 22 was the best choice I ever made.
Here are 10 benefits our youth has over older couples and why I'm glad I got married at 22:
1. We grew up together, supporting each other through life's milestones.
My husband is 30 years old, but I remember him as 18. I remember him living with roommates and delivering fresh pizzas from high school.
We've been together through college classes, internships, big moves, small moves, graying hair, and changing bodies. We've watched each other launch careers and tackle goals we once dreamed up on thrift-store furniture in what feels like former lives.
We grew up together, but also because of each other. I'm proud of the man he's grown into, and I know he feels the same pride and respect toward me. We've come a long way, and having someone witness the progress is nice.
2. Marriage at a young age meant less emotional baggage and a fresh start.
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We both have separate pasts. We didn't "save ourselves" for marriage or have a high school sweetheart storyline. But in a way, we did.
He's my first and only adult relationship, so I've only shared with him all that growing-up intimacy—the shared apartments, pets, and memorable traveling adventures. I didn't spend much of my life with someone else; how could I? I was off the market by 20 years old. All of our baggage is checked together.
3. Combining our lives was easy without deeply ingrained habits to change.
In many ways, it was easy to integrate our lives. We didn't have deeply established adult lives, habits, and patterns to change. Instead, we developed a system and rhythm as we went.
I started my career with a new last name. He didn't have a set-in-his-ways lifestyle to uproot. No prenups, no complications. There's something to be said for building a life on a single foundation rather than figuring out how to merge two separate structures.
4. We learned tough lessons like sacrifice, compromise, and love early.
Getting hitched at the beginning of adulthood helped me chop away the delusions of "happily ever after" or a rom-com plotline long before resentment or bitterness settled in my heart. Marriage also provides real-world lessons on sacrifice, commitment, companionship, compromise, and unconditional love.
It's hard to change and grow with another person, no matter how old we are, but the effort and struggle to teach us a lot. It can make us better versions of ourselves, giving us opportunities to understand faith, endurance, forgiveness, and patience. It tests our limits, breaks us down, and helps us develop more mature perspectives than the typical dating pool allows.
Life coach Mitzi Bockmann knows that living happily ever after takes hard work. "For couples to work through issues, they must talk about them. No storming away, hoping your person will follow you (like you see in the movies). No issuing ultimatums, hoping your person will love you enough to change (like you see in the movies). Resolutions are messy, fraught with emotions, and sometimes unattainable.
"If you can accept any issues that arise might not resolve quickly, you are two different people with two different perspectives, and you might want different things; things don’t resolve easily as they do in the movies, then you just might get your happily ever after because you won’t be let down every time an issue doesn’t get resolved right away."
Young marriage isn't easy, but the important things rarely are.
5. Our low-budget wedding meant we focused on building our future.
Our "wedding" cost less than $100, which was acceptable and understood partially because we were young, so there was less pressure to demonstrate status.
6. Marrying young kept our expectations realistic, avoiding disappointment.
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I didn't wait a decade for "The One" or a magical time when my stars aligned. If I spent years planning and dreaming up the perfect wedding and marriage and husband and life, I would have been severely disappointed, as explored by a study of the impact of perfectionism on intimate relationships in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Instead, I went along with life, choosing to be — and stay — in love.
7. We've shared every milestone, from humble beginnings to big successes.
We've gone from mouse-infested apartments and empty bank accounts to a comfortable adult life and everything in between. Everything we've accomplished — separately or together — has been met with a familiar high-five.
There is a relationship between confidence and keeping track of your accomplishments; as dating coaches Orna & Matthew Walters described, "Highlighting areas of your life where you have accomplished something helps boost your confidence. You can do this by keeping a daily success journal. At the end of each day, write down five accomplishments or successes for each day. These successes don’t have to be life-changing. They are relative to your day.
For example, if you have a fever and are suffering from the flu, making yourself toast and tea is a success that you can write down for that day. You can build your confidence even quicker by journaling lifetime successes. In this additional journal, you will write down the most significant accomplishments in your life."
8. Our youthful love created unforgettable, passionate memories.
My husband has first-person memories of me at 19 years old, and I will be quite grateful for all of the ridiculous, passion-fueled memories that come with a young romance as I hit middle age.
9. Studies show young marriages are more likely to last and bring happiness.
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A study in the Social Science Research Journal showed that couples who marry young — between 22 and 25 — are most likely to have an intact marriage.
10. Marrying young gives us time to grow, face challenges, and learn love.
Even if my marriage implodes and we change and grow in opposite directions, we'll still have plenty of time to move on to new experiences. We'll have learned important lessons from our marriage and matured in ways we needed to, and we'll take that growth with us.
On the journey of growing together, there will be mistakes and forgiveness. "Forgiveness has a powerful impact on creating healthy relationships. Grudges are like weeds in your relationship's garden, quickly overtaking its beds and choking the life out of growing plants. Holding onto past offenses and refusing to forgive allows bitterness to grow in your heart, creating a barrier between you and the other person.
Forgiving means you have chosen to let go of hard feelings, flushing away and releasing any poison in your heart. This doesn’t mean you weren’t hurt or that whatever happened was right. Forgiveness is a cleansing, a pulling of weeds, so your heart remains free to love," explained personal development coach Janelle Anderson.
On the other hand, my young marriage gave me much more time with the one person who stuck by me through every stage and evolution and loved me through them all — the one person who has been there for every milestone and moment and knows my past version.
I never imagined I'd be the type of girl getting married young. If that sounds judgmental and presumptuous, you're right. I was judgmental and presumptuous about college girls wearing engagement rings or people making life-long commitments before their 25th birthdays. I think my opinion was "Pssssshh," with a somewhat disgusted look, probably rolling my eyes.
Yet, as life happened, I willingly signed a marriage certificate in 2008, with an 8-month-pregnant belly between us. I was 22 years old.
Six years later, I've had more than just my perspective shifted. I've matured in many ways, primarily because of things in and around my marriage. Yes, marriage is challenging, and getting married young sets us up for unique obstacles, but there are also little-known perks to entering marriage and adulthood roughly at the same time.
At the end of it all, time is what matters.
Michelle Horton is a writer and advocate. Through the Nicole Addimando Community Defense Committee, she speaks out for her sister and the countless other victims of domestic violence criminalized for their acts of survival. She's the author of Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds.