Nick Freitas gives his opinion on marrying early in life:
"It's not really about age as much as it is maturity. And the reality is this: there are a lot of people that shouldn't get married young, not because they're young, but because they're immature." Yeah, I think that, even at my age, I'm still too immature to get married, so it's a prospect I view with a lot of caution.
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As you know, I got married at a fairly young age: I was 23 and HJ was 22. Even back then that was pretty young--we were both the first in our respective social circles to get married. I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't get married until at least your mid-20s because your brain isn't finished developing until then (or something like that), but I think it depends on the individual. I would wholeheartedly agree that maturity is the key, not age itself... but was I really mature enough when I got married? Looking back on it now, I find it hard to believe that I was. I'm not sure I even know now what "mature enough to get married" looks like. I don't think it's something that you can fully prepare yourself for--you kind of have to just throw yourself in at the deep end and hope you don't drown. Yeah, you can take swimming lessons, build up the proper muscle groups, etc., but until you dive into that ocean, you never know where you're going to end up.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do know is that when I took my vows, I was serious. And even though we went through some rough times at the start (before you and I met), neither of us ever considered the possibility that things might not work out. We had taken vows, which meant that we were committed to pushing past the difficulties and making things work. In the beginning, we were all sharp edges and pointy corners, and clashing meant wounds. But wounds heal and sharp edges dull, and before long we learned how to live with each other.
Now, if I may be so bold as to comment on your situation, I don't think it is a matter of maturity--you are plenty mature enough by now to get married if you wanted to. Rather, I think you've lived on your own for so long that your sharp edges and corners have become rigid and calcified, and it would probably be a lot more difficult to dull them. In less metaphorical terms: You have had many years to become set in your ways, and having to adjust to sharing your life with someone else at this point is going to take a lot of effort and determination. Not that you couldn't do it if you really wanted to, but I think it's a lot easier to adjust to that when you're in your early twenties than when you're in your early fifties.
In fact (and I've only thought of this just now, as I'm writing this), that might even be an argument for getting married while your brain is still plastic, provided you have sufficient maturity: You can actually spend the last few years of brain formation actively learning how to live with someone else, making it a lot easier to form the necessary neural pathways allowing for cohabitation, etc.
The problem with talking about marriage, of course (and I suppose this goes for a lot of things, actually), is that you can only ever speak from your own experience. This is what worked for me... but it might not work for someone else. I can only extrapolate, and the farther I get from my own experience the more tenuous my conclusions become.
My takeaways from your comment are (1) the entire second paragraph: people need to be serious when they take the vows, and "serious" means not running away when conflict arises; and (2) that your third paragraph sounds a lot like my mother's warning about waiting too long and getting set in my ways. Although I consider myself a fairly agreeable person who's willing to be a team player in certain contexts, I'm pretty sure that, at this point, I have certain lines that I won't cross, and that could be trouble in a couples situation.
ReplyDeleteI started my marriage journey at 20. Not so coincidentally, that's when I became a father. She was 18, and that proved to be too young...within five years, she decided she wasn't ready to be a wife and mother and left me to raise our two kids on my own. I found a wife to help me with that in my 30s. Once the kids were grown, we had nothing in common (or so I told myself), and I wound up with wife #3 in my 40s. I got bored and moved to Korea, and she chose not to join me there. So, I wound up with wife #4 in my 50s, and with all my previous marriage experience, I was ready to do whatever it took to make things work. The words she said five years later, "I no have happy life with you, I want divorce" remain seared in my soul.
ReplyDeleteI recognize that I am the common denominator in all those marriages, so ultimately, the failures are mine.
K,
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's the long and short of the entire second paragraph. As for the third paragraph echoing your mother's warning, it wasn't necessarily meant as a warning. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could get married. But it would require sacrifice, as all marriages do. And making those sacrifices is going to be a lot harder in your fifties than it is in your twenties, especially if you've never had to do it before. But far stranger things have happened, so I wouldn't rule it out. I guess maybe it was a warning after all, but a warning of a different kind: Just be aware that if you do find a woman you want to spend the rest of your days with, it's going to be a lot of work. I can't imagine that this would come as a surprise, though.
John's situation was very different from mine, of course. I hope this is not twisting the knife in the wound or anything, but subsequent marriages after divorce are statistically more likely to end in divorce than first marriages. What I'm trying to say is that it might not necessarily have been your failures, John. It just might be that it gets harder to make second (and third, etc.) marriages work.