Briefcase on the Kitchen Table

When I was a younger girl I told my friends that I thought I would consider getting married when I was about 35 years old. It seemed like the perfect age to get married- I would be well on my way professionally but still young enough to have kids. Now here I am, twenty-five years old and quickly approaching my two-year wedding anniversary, happy, healthy, and fulfilled. One thing I have encountered many times over my last two years is the “married young” stereotypes and let me say, they drive me crazy.

So many people who know next to nothing about myself or my husband constantly give me the raised eyebrows when they hear we were married when I was 23 and he was 22. First off, while this is definitely younger than the average marriage age in the U.S., it is by no means on the brink of being an MTV reality special. The person standing in judgment seems to be making rapid, unsupported assumptions; a few of these people are even gutsy enough to say them out loud.

A few of my favorites:

“23! Why the rush?” It wasn’t a rush. By the time we were married my husband and I had been dating nearly seven years. We were at the this-is-going-to-happen-eventually point.

“You must be crazy religious people”.” Not quite. While we are a church-going couple (what most people would likely call a hippie church) and we took seriously making our vows in a church, our religious beliefs in no way made us rush down to the alter before we were ready. We got married because it worked for where we were in our relationship and our lives at the time. There was no way we were going to try and plan a wedding while we were both in graduate school but we did not want to wait three more years (minimum). That meant it had to be when I was 23 and he was 22.

“You aren’t mature enough to get married.” I am not saying I have it all figured out or that I won’t continue to mature every year for the rest of my life, but this line of thought is ridiculous to me. I was mature enough to travel internationally, mature enough to sign the dotted line for a large amount of student loans, mature enough to move to a big city and attend law school, but not mature enough to get married? While it is true that I may not have been able to appreciate all of the intricacies of marriage I think that is because I had never been married before and not so much because of my age. My marriage thus far has gone very smoothly especially considering that in these two years our one and only vehicle was stolen in a city where we knew no one (three days after the wedding no less), Avery travels for his degree, we have dealt with two family deaths and a parent who had a stroke, we live six hours away from our families, and we are both enrolled in rigorous graduate degree programs. All of this without so much as a hiccup in our marriage; I am happier in my relationship today than ever.

The most frustrating part of the judgement is that these people have never seen my relationship in action. It would be one thing to see a bad relationship headed towards a young marriage and think “I wish this girl knew better”. However, my husband and I had a healthy, happy, independently-fulfilling relationship before we were married and that is how it has remained. I understand the rush to categorize people; I am guilty of it too. All I ask is that, when everything else you have learned about me says that I am an ambitious, intelligent, responsible, independent young woman, please don’t suddenly think that just because I married young, I married dumb.