Is getting married at a young age so bad?

Based on stats, yes. But if you really think this is the guy for you then go for it. I would still recommend living with him for at least a year before you get married. You never really know a person until you live with them.

Drop the kids stuff. Live together for a few years. Finish school before you make babies.

It’s not so bad, if you both have solid and mature expectations of marriage and you both are committed to the same concept of how a marriage should work.
I should warn you however, that for me at least, I did more changing between the ages of 18 and 25 than in any other time of my life since birth to 5.
In an ideal world, you grow and change together. In the worst case scenario, one of you figures out that what you thought you wanted at 18 becomes completely different at 25.

Mary got pregnant at age ~15…so consider this: no!
it went pretty well for her…..marriage with Joseph…

@cyndihugs Who… huh?

Elaboration, please?

Jesus?

Shh, I wanna hear where she’s going with this.

Not bad, just risky.

Just think of what you ‘could’ be missing. The freedom of going out when you want with whoever you want! If you’re not worried about that then go for it!

If you feel he’s the one, then go for it. You can go to school and be married. I’d hold off on the children for a while, especially until you are done school. Having a child at 25 is still young, but you can finish a bachelors before then.

This is coming from a young mother, and I’m married. We did ours backwards, and I can admit I wish it was done differently but I love my son more than anything in the world. It would have been nice if he came a little later, like I could have kept him baking in me for another year or two lol.

mary?

Jeez, Virgin Mary and Joseph, the parents of Jesus!

Just a generation ago (OK 2 generations ago, I’m old,) a girl who wasn’t married by 18 was being whispered about and being called an old maid. I know times have changed, but it is something to consider.

I just kinda feel…why rush? If the relationship is right and you both work at it, you can still get married in a few years. I also think “loving every single little thing about them” is a rather naive thing to say. Also consider this: if you marry then go to school you will file as an independent for school aid purposes. So think about what that financially means for you to be married. I’m not saying marrying young is bad, but if you are misinformed, you will quickly find out love doesn’t make tthe world go round by itself.

@hug_of_war Yeah, being married usually means more financial aid…because if she doesn’t get married, and in school full time she is considered a dependent of her parents from my understanding and then they count the parents income. A young married couple would have a much lower EFC number.

@casheroo Not necessarily, you can still file as independent if you live on your own. I’m not married and I don’t live with my parents so I’m not considered a dependent.

@casheroo of course, but one also has to factor in paying for one’s own education through you and your spouse’s income versus potentially having your parents support. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing, just to take into account all variables.

@hug_of_war; depending on the relationship she has with her parents, she can still get support from them even after marriage, without it being official and working to reduce her financial aid.

Still, I would recommend waiting. I am 18 years old, and I know I will change a lot in the years to come, just as I have changed a lot over the previous few years. And of course I have no idea what I will change into, and I definitely have no idea what other people will change into. So you should not try to place such a hefty wager on the odds that you will remain compatible for the rest of your lives. This is not in any way a reflection on you or your boyfriend. I have no doubt that you truly love and cherish one another and share a wonderful relationship. But you are both going through a transformative period of your lives, entering college and the adult world, and there is no guarantee that either of you will be the same person coming out as going in; at least once you have settled comfortably into your new lives, and if you still possess the same bond, you will know from experience that whatever it is in yourself and in your boyfriend that creates that bond, is stable and is not tied to the environment and lifestyle you have known up until now. Waiting at least until the end of your undergraduate education to marry will give you that certainty, at the cost of but a little patience, while marrying now and finding that you have outgrown the relationship will cost you formidable strife to say the least.

I would suggest waiting until you finish college or get a job to the point where you can support yourself first. Then make sure he has a job to the point where he can support himself as well. I would also suggest moving in with each other because living together really tests a relationship. Then if everything works out for you up to that point, I say go for it!

Dont rush it. I know you both love each other. Life is going to change so drastically in the next five years.

I got married at 21, and I think I was too young. Now that I’m 30, I just feel differently, I have different standards and I think differently too. And why jump in so quick. I had an ex boyfriend that I was with for five years before I met my husband, and even after that long, I was learning things about him. I wanted to marry him when I was 18, and I’m so glad that I didn’t.

It depends on the person. A 35 year old can have the maturity of an 18 year old and vice versa. Don’t rush it.

If I could get married right now I would

I have a cousin who was 18 and his gf 16 when they got married. It was a nightmare and they somehow managed to squeeze in 3 kids before they got divorced less than 5 years later. Enormous problems.

I also had a classmate who got married at 18, his gf was 19. They’ve been happily together for most of their lives. He’s now 37 and has been with her for more than 20 years. They have two wonderful children and adore each other.

So there are no rules. Of course getting married young (and by definition immature) means you run a higher risk of making the wrong choice, or not seeing the problems you could be facing in the future. But I got married at 32 with all the maturity and wisdom I could gather…and it didn’t last more than a couple of years either.

I think the biggest problems you will be facing are practical, and especially financial. Does either of you have a good job or rich parents? Where will you be staying? Can you cook? etc

But if you’re going ahead with it, then good luck and may you be of the fortunate ones :)

I married at 19, and my ex-husband was 21. We were married for 17 years, together for 20, and had three wonderful children. That said, he is my ex-husband. We were too young, and changed drastically. We still loved one another when we split, but we were miserable together. I highly recommend you wait a while before legally binding yourselves together and bringing children into the situation.

Just as a side note have you lived together yet? You say your BF is in the air force… how much time have you truly spent together, or has it been brief encounters whilst he’s on leave and your not at school?
I met my hubby when I was 18 (he was 28) in October of 1996 we moved in together by the following July and I was pregnant by the following Christmas we didn’t get married until 5 years ago, We lived together first. Yes I may have rushed things but we are still happy 13 years later.

Yet my cousin who had a BF at 16 when they were 19 lived together at her parents with him for 12months then got married and moved into their own house and just couldn’t live with each other and divorced less than a year later!!

So everyone is different, take your time enjoy being young, try living together first and see if you can be with each other for longer periods of time. I would hold off on the kids front, I love my daughter to bits and wouldn’t swap her for the world, but not everyone can give up their freedom as easily as I did!

Good Luck and I am sure you will come to the right decision for you, take your time and maybe make a list of pros and cons, a bit brutal but it can help clear your mind and face any doubts you are having, it only works though if you are completly honest about the bad as well as the good.xx

My parents got married the week after my mom graduated high school, she was 17 and my dad was 18. I was born when they were 19 and 20. They’ve been married now for 35 years. So it is possible that it could work out very spectacularly. My sister got married at 20, moving from home to being married. It’s worked for her also. I personally didn’t get married until I was 23, I lived on my own and did what I wanted for a few years before I settled down. It’s all what you think is a good idea.

I think wait. Stories of people getting married young and being happy together for 50 years are great, but I would ask…what if you had lived together for 3 of those years and were only on your 47th anniversary? Statsitics are against you if you marry so young, not that it can’t work, but I think it is better to experience life a little more, Marriage is not only about spending your life together with someone you love, itis about what realities come with it…money, he is in the airforce so will you be happy with him gone quite a bt or possible moving a lot? And, if you do wind up divorced will you have any regret about not finishing school if being married will make school harder?

I personally know several people who have been dating since high school who are happily married (been married around 15–18 years) but all of them got married after college. Except for one, one couple was married very young and they are together 20 years later, but neither of them went to college. I know many many more people who are on second marriages, who got married at 18 or 19 the first time.

Getting married at a young age is not ‘bad’. People do it all the time. It’s just that people who marry young hardly ever stay married. There are a few annecdotes about people who do, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Those who marry young will miss out on all the perks that single people have, but they won’t find out about it until they get older. When young people are in love, they generally don’t care about the things other people tell them, they are just too happy – in the moment – to care.

The bad part only comes later, when they have both changed and go their separate ways.

The odds are stacked against you. You might need to understand that the people you are right now, are not going to be the same people in say, 5 years. You both might want very different things, the question will be – are you or is he, flexible enough to deal with those changes? Will you (or he) be mature enough to accept those changes?

Some people start to feel that they lost out on their early adulthood – they feel cheated. They fall into a different lifestyle that is not conducive to marriage and that is when things start to unravel.

If you do get married early, my advice, don’t rush on having kids. Allow yourselves time to “grow” together. Mature more and really live together as a couple.

Whatever you do, best of luck to both of you.

sounds like it could work out, go for it. I see nothing wrong or bad about getting married at a young age

Risky. Live together in an apartment for several years and if it works out get married then.

Percent of women who were age 35–39 in June 1990 whose first marriage had ended in divorce by that date and:

Who had been first married by age 20: 47.4%.
Who had been first married between ages 20 and 24: 29.3%.
Who had been first married between ages 25 and 29: 24.0%.
Who had been first married at age 30 and over: 10.4%.

Your tastes will change over time and you will have a better understanding of what you want and need.

You love every little thing he does now but you don;t know every little thing he does now. Believe me when you are picking up yesterday’s clothes, smelly socks and damp towels and putting them through the laundry while he sits in front of the TV for 2 games, maybe he won;t seem as adorable.

Maybe he can afford to keep you in a cheap 1 bedroom apt in Utah while you work minimum wage at a crap job, but huw is he going to cover your $14,000/yr tuition on his $28,000 take home pay?

If you love him at 17, how much more that love will grow when you come together without those money pressures and he has learned to clean up after himself and cook.

You get your degree and he can get training and/or a degree in the military and save up a nestegg. Then you will have twice the chance at a happy marriage

It’s not bad getting married at a young age but there’s no need to rush in it either. Try living together a few years first – see how it goes. By that time you would have established yourselves emotionally and financially.

I live in Utah, and I have seen a TON of people get married when they were your age, and let me tell you, it rarely works out.

Here are the facts: your brain, as a woman, is growing, and constantly changing, and it will be until you are about 22 years old. So you still have 4 years of growth and change. Now, I’m not trying to tell you that you’re not in love with your boyfriend, because I am 18 years old, and I myself and insanely in love with mine, but as in love as I am, I know that I might not be in 4 years.

I know that for people here in Utah, primarily because of the strong LDS influence, there’s a lot of pressure to get married as soon as possible. I’m not even LDS and I have felt it. My friends and family have felt it too, and it’s hard. So I’m not going to try to tell you what to do, but I’ll tell you what me and my boyfriend have decided.

We’re going to keep dating, and as long as everything goes smoothly, we’re planning on getting married. But we talked about it, and decided we’re not getting married before a certain age, and I feel like it’s been a really good way to sort of make a time table, but not put pressure on ourselves or each other. Your goal should be to be happy together, whether that means being married or not. I hope my advice helps, and I wish you the best of luck!

im 18 and im getting married in a month. You cant change my mind whether i will regret it in the future or not. :)

@imachillmama Pretty defensive aren’t you? No one is trying to change your mind. People here have shared their experience and the statistical evidence. Go ahead but instead of giving you the traditional “Best Wishes” I’ll just say “Good Luck”