Calling all you married 20SB-ers!

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Permalink Reply by KFun on March 5, 2010 at 12:46pm

I got married at age of 23, which in my opinion is REALLY young, and am now almost 27 and happily married. One thing I've noticed immediately after I got married, is that people seemed to take me more seriously than they did prior to marriage. I thought that was interesting. And a lot of females my age now think they are SO OLD to not be married, which I also think is interesting. It's like there's a window between 22-27 that you are "expected" to get married.

I don't feel any "pressures" though compared to older couples.
The Diary of KFun

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Permalink Reply by Mrs. K on March 5, 2010 at 1:24pm

I'm twenty four and have only been married for a couple months, but I think we tied the knot at the right time for us. My husband is twenty six. Both of us knew we preferred to wait on marriage until our mid twenties. I've never had the thought that we should have waited, but I remember thinking when we were dating, "I wish he'd hurry up and pop the question; I'm ready to marry this man tomorrow!"
Being married in my twenties has been nothing short of perfectly fulfilling. I was one of those individuals who planned on focusing on my career first and hoped a meaningful relationship would follow in my early 30's. After my first date with my now husband, I knew I was going to marry him eventually. Even though I was completely against fairytale romances and love at first sight, I knocked down all the walls I'd built up to protect myself.
Of course I want my marriage to succeed and I have no doubt that it will last, but I do sometimes feel that we have expectations to live up to. I think mediocre marriages have become common place in our society. The sanctity of marriage is depleting by ways of infedility, lies, abuse, and mistrust. Obviously, I'd like to steer away from this sort of relationship. It's probably me who develops the expectations. I want to be a loving wife to him.

(Hope this helps. I'm in Fairbanks, AK though.)

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Permalink Reply by RAY J on March 5, 2010 at 5:06pm

I remember thinking when we were dating, "I wish he'd hurry up and pop the question; I'm ready to marry this man tomorrow!"

Oh I was the same way! We had known each other for years and when we finally started dating things just seemed too right and meant to be. We both felt that way and after a few months of dating started talking about marriage. it was a little after our 1 year anniversary when he finally asked, but it was funny cuz every holiday I was expecting him to ask, lol...

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Permalink Reply by Oats on March 5, 2010 at 1:41pm

I think the biggest challenge we face is that we no longer live the "single lifestyle", so some most of our friends now overlook us when doing something because they know that getting and crashing on someone's couch is not in our to-do list.

From what I've been told, we're supposed to befriend other married couples. Okay - problem. Other married couples my age are all popping out babies left and right. Again, big difference between a married couple and married with children. Once children come into play, it's all about playdates and befriending other parents. It seems to me that there are a lot more married people, even in their 20s, that have kids or are having kids. This means no going out anywhere without getting a costly babysitter if you're hanging out with a couple without kids.

And then there's the third wheel problem of hanging out with a single friend. Things always tend to be awkward because they're not dating someone and would like to be and most of the stuff we'd go out and do would be ideal for 4 people, not 3. So single friends that have calmed down to the level of what us boring married couples do even shy away from meeting up because of this awkwardness.

I don't really feel any pressures or expectations from older couples other than to have children (which isn't going to happen). And by older couples I mean anyone in my parents' generation. They are obsessed with making another baby boom.

I definitely think I got married at the right time (26, wife 23). We had enough money saved up to have a destination wedding in Banff. It was awesome.

Being married in my 20s. I always thought that was so old and planned on getting married when I was 27. Then I hit 25 and realized I was still young, but wanted to get married anyways. Plus it would help out with the insurance situation when one of us is out of a job. Yes, that was a consideration before I got married. But with a mental health issue and no insurance, the bills add up astronomically.

Being married is a good time. You're basically spending most of your time with your best friend and you throw in some sex every now and then. You have someone to come home to. Someone who cares about you. Someone willing to help you through anything. There are good times and some bad. But we manage our way through the bad and learn something from it. The key is that we do it together. (Queue up Nine Inch Nails "We're In This Together Now")

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Permalink Reply by RAY J on March 5, 2010 at 5:13pm

Yeah we have that problem finding other couples to do things with. Hubby has a few younger brothers that aren't that much younger than us, and we did occasionally do the double date thing with one when he had a girlfriend, but now that he doesn't they don't seem to bother to include us in anything anymore or think to invite us at least. (I may be female, but at my previous job, I was referred to as "the dude with long hair" as I hung out with the guys more). And like I said in my post, we just can't really relate to the rest of our single friends much cuz a lot of them want to go out to the bars and hook up with people there.

I have a few married friends, but like you said, they all either have kids or are having kids. The one I can get together with maybe once a month if I'm lucky and grandma doesn't mind taking em for a few hours, but the other, well she has 5 kids (1 is hers, the other 4 are from her husband's previous marriage) and so it's near impossible to do anything with her cuz that's a lot for a babysitter.

There was one couple, a co-worker of hubby's and her husband that we would meet up with at their house on Friday nights, after their kids were in bed, and they'd have a Halo LAN-party in their basement, but then for a month or 2 straight someone at their house was always sick and we got out of the habit of going. Not to mention I sucked at Halo, lol...

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Permalink Reply by Baby Mama on March 5, 2010 at 2:28pm

I'm currently 29, but we got married at 24. At the time everyone told us how young we were. I certainly didn't feel young; we'd been together for 4 years. But none of our friends were married (not one.) So I was a bit freaked out that everything would be different once we got married. In reality, nothing changed for us. We still hung out with all the same friends, we still partied all the time. I think the myth of married people staying at home is ridiculous. I've found that people tend to do the same thing after marriage that they did before marriage. However, if you stay at home before marriage and stay at home after marriage, you can just start to blame it on marriage rather than on your lame social life.

In retrospect, though, I feel like we did get married really young. The fact that I've already been married 5 years is astounding to me. But I feel like he was and is perfect for me, so I wouldn't have changed a thing. And I love that we have now spent most of our adult life together. We've moved a lot, and I can refer to some old friend or old experience and he knows exactly what I'm talking about. That's what marriages are built on.

I don't feel any pressures or expectations because we're married. However, we recently had a kid, and now I do start to feel pressures and expectations. I'm so glad we were married for such a long time before having a child. I knew exactly what I was getting in to. I knew exactly what kind of father he'd be. I know so many couples with (very) young children who are just now splitting up, and it's so sad. They had children shortly after getting married, because they didn't get married until they were older, and I don't think they fully understood what they were getting into. That's just my outsider's take.

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Permalink Reply by jay. on March 5, 2010 at 2:36pm

My husband and I got both got married at the age of 20. We'd been dating since we were 16, so it really didn't feel "too young" to us, though I know a lot of people had something to say about it behind our backs. It didn't really bother us at all, because it was what we wanted, and had talked about it long before it ever happened.

After the "newlywed" stage wore off, I remember a few months where I thought maybe we should have waited. I was having a hard time finding a job, the money was tight, and we spent more time being stressed about paying the bills and buying groceries than we spent being happy together. We eventually figured everything out through trial and error, and have learned how to handle income stress gracefully. And I regretted every single day that I spent questioning our decision.

I've found that because we're so young(we're 22 now), it seems hard for some people to take our marriage seriously. We've had the same employer for the last year, and people still slip up and call me his girlfriend. We're not treated like the other married couples(older married couples) that work there, and it's really frustrating. The girls that work there still hit on him, and I really think that's the biggest hurdle we've had to overcome. Getting people to accept that we're happily married, and learning how to ignore the people who don't.

We've only been asked a few times when we would have little ones running around, but we've never felt pressured to have children. We don't have a time limit as to when I want to start popping them out, we more or less have goals that we want to achieve before we start that process. That's what we tell people, and they usually drop it.

I love being married. I wouldn't change a thing. Yes, we were really young, but we've made it work. We have a very harmonious relationship, and every one of my days is beautiful because of him.

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Permalink Reply by Ashley D. on March 5, 2010 at 2:45pm

I'm getting married in a couple weeks, so I'm not sure if you want my insight, but I'll give it to you anyways.

Not many of our friends are married, so it's kind of weird getting married before everyone else. It made it hard while planning the wedding because our friends didn't know how much money and planning goes into a wedding. A lot of them RSVP because they don't realize that we need exact numbers.

When we first got engaged, my mom and my grandmother freaked out because they thought we were getting married way too young and that we should enjoy being young and single. We are both out of college and have careers, so we already enjoyed being young and single. We're now ready to start our lives together and start a family.

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Permalink Reply by Angie on March 5, 2010 at 2:49pm

First of all: Good luck with your article!

Second... I've been married since I was 18. I am now almost 21. I never ever feel that I should have waited, hell... I DID wait, seven years! I knew at 13/14 that I would marry the beautiful girl I was best friends with and dating. We were long distance, we got engaged when I was 16 and at 18 I flew out here, we moved in together and we got married one month later.

She's my soul mate, my best friend, my wife... She's everything to me.

We're together 24/7. We work together, we live together, we go out and eat and shop together, we have the same friends, etc. We're very, very close and we always have been. We've been this way for years.

As for pressures and expectations, well, not many. Luckily. We have been pressured AND harassed for enjoying working together, by managers and co-workers. However, on the other hand, we have had some managers and co-workers who truly love that we are so close. Especially one's that run businesses with THEIR husband or wife. But that's the only pressure.

For some people, knowing who you want to marry at 14 sounds silly. For some, getting married at 18 sounds far too young. For some people, like me, knowing who I wanted to marry and waiting and marrying her and loving her every day since I met her? Well, it's just perfect. There's no one else I can imagine being with, no one who treats me as amazing as she does or who gets me, for better or worse. As I said in the beginning, she is my soul mate and I am hers.

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Permalink Reply by emvandee on March 5, 2010 at 2:59pm

We got married when we were 25 and 27, and I never thought we were too young - we're unusual though, because most of our friends aren't married, and we're not having kids and we live in the city, so it's kind of like we're really responsible teenagers who live together and share bank accounts. We have a lot of fun, and I think because it just felt like the right thing for us to do, we haven't doubted our decision.

One thing that is annoying is that there seems to be an expectation that we'll "grow up" and move to the suburbs, and buy a house, and have kids. The pressure comes mostly from our families; they know we don't want that, but they assume it's because we're immature. It's frustrating trying to explain to them that this is simply not going to happen, because we'd rather travel and enjoy a lifestyle that doesn't make room for any of those suburban things. And if we did have kids someday, we would not assume that doing so required us to move to the boonies.

So, being married is good. Our friends are fun, but our families are waiting for us to grow up and get some sense, with a lot of pressure along the way.

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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Carroll on March 5, 2010 at 3:17pm

Hi Jeney,

I am 26 and have been married (he is 24) for almost one year. It is so different. Your life just changes so much. When I was single I would pick up whenever I wanted and travel or something and now it's like everything I do, I have to check in. But, my life has changed in every way that it needed to be changed since I got married. My husband has worked so hard to make me believe I can do things, and I have accomplished more in one year than I ever did in my whole life. When you find that missing piece, you can't look back and say I wish I had waited because you would know how much you were missing

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Permalink Reply by RAY J on March 5, 2010 at 5:19pm

Yeah good point there - you can't just up and make plans at the drop of the hat like you could when you were single.

When it comes to making plans, I have to check with hubby, make sure he doesn't have anything going on that could conflict and then make sure he wasn't making plans for us to do something.

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