Dating and youth - Page 2

My situation was similar. I met my wife when I was 16. We dated briefly and broke up, only to get back together when I was 20. We did the long distance thing for a couple years, and got married right after I turned 24 (she turned 24 a few months later). We're married now and we have a wonderful marriage. We've been married over six years, and I still think it was the best decision of my life. We've actually had friends who've been through divorce tell us there's something different about us, that we have a marriage that looks like it will last.

If I'm being completely honest I would have to say there's a little part of me that would have liked to live the single life my friends lived in their college years/early 20s. However, I wouldn't go back and change things if you let me. No one here can tell you what's best for you, but if you stick it out be prepared to wonder a bit what it would have been like to take advantage of being a free college student. In my case the benefit of being married FAR outweighs what I gave up, but I did give something up. I was really sure that I wanted to marry this girl. I just knew, and it turned out I was right (which is pretty remarkable given I was an idiot in every other conceivable way). If you're not positive she's the one you have to consider that in your calculus.

I also know a couple who had a similar scenario - he was a college freshman, she a sophomore, when they got together - and they're one of the happiest couples I know. Married almost five years with one little one and another on the way.

Long story short, it can work out really well, but you have to do it acknowledging you're giving up some experiences. For me it was absolutely worth it, but if my marriage had collapsed I'd probably be giving very different advice.

You'll be thinking "what if" regardless. It's either "what if it had worked out with her" or "what if we'd broken it off."

I couldn't even begin to find the article now, but I remember my wife once passing along an article written by someone who married relatively young. It wasn't the best article, but there was one part that she pointed out that's always stuck with me. Because we were together so young, our personalities were still developing. As a consequence, a major part of who we are has developed alongside the person we've married, and you end up with a shared similarity people who get married older don't have. We were basically kids when we got together, and we've become adults with each other, rather than becoming adults and then meeting. I just thought that was an interesting notion.