How long should it take to decide to marry?

[SemperJase]

katybird:

I agree that age has a lot to do with it. If you meet in HS, then you may be dating steadily for six years or so if you wait until you’ve graduated college.

HS is a bit of a different issue. It does raise a larger question, should you date for “fun” which is essentially what high schoolers do.

I would say no, dating should be for finding a spouse. I’m not sure how I would enforce that with a high schooler though.

The one year rule could still apply to high schoolers. After all deciding to get married by one year doesn’t mean you must get married by one year. There are (few) valid reasons to delay marriage.

 

[Flopfoot]

SemperJase:

For people who are seroius about marriage, it can work. Our society teaches people not to be seriouis about marriage. We date for “fun” until we find the right person. In reality, single people are wasting their time on fun instead of looking for the right person.

That’s why I’m an advocate of the one year rule. If you don’t know by a year, that person is either not the right one or you haven’t seriously considered the issue - which is an indication that person isn’t the right one.

That assumption doesn’t sound right to me - the idea that if people are dating for longer than a year then it is just for fun. Normally, from what I know, if people are dating for fun then they just have short relationships (till they lose interest, and want to find someone new and exciting) whereas people who are dating seriously have longer relationships, to get to know someone, to demonstrate and practice loyalty in good and bad times.

Is it just an American culture thing that relationships should be short? Because I don’t know anyone who has dated for less than a year and then proposed. I know plenty of cases (including my aunties and uncles) who have dated / courted / whatever for over 5 years, and are now happily married with several children.

In your whole lifetime you will never even fully understand yourself. Let alone understanding your neighbour. So what’s the rush? You can always spend more time getting to know someone better before rushign into a proposal.

 

[Viki59]

SemperJase:

HS is a bit of a different issue. It does raise a larger question, should you date for “fun” which is essentially what high schoolers do.

I would say no, dating should be for finding a spouse. I’m not sure how I would enforce that with a high schooler though.

The one year rule could still apply to high schoolers. After all deciding to get married by one year doesn’t mean you must get married by one year. There are (few) valid reasons to delay marriage.

’
But before you can discern who to marry, you have to know something about people: what kind of people you get along with, what kind of behavior to watch out for, etc. Hopefully you’ve learned a lot of that from your parents, but it’s still useful to get to know a range of people.
That entails casually dating several people at least.

 

[deb1]

Flopfoot:

Is it just an American culture thing that relationships should be short? Because I don’t know anyone who has dated for less than a year and then proposed. I know plenty of cases (including my aunties and uncles) who have dated / courted / whatever for over 5 years, and are now happily married with several children.

.

YOu must not have read all the post on this thread. Several posters, myself included, have writtent that they dated less then a year and proposed and were proposed to. My hubby asked me on the first date(which I already wrote about)

 

[Rob_s_Wife]

Long enough to know they aren’t ever going to get divorced.

I’m curious about some who are “engaged” for extended times like several years are actually just living together and saying they are “engaged”???

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To me, when you’re ready - you’re ready. You don’t need a “trial” time to live together or to wait until a, b, c and x, y, z, fall perfectly into place.

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It’s really not that complicated a thing. Either your committed to each other and love each other and want to make babies and spend the rest of your lives together or not.

 

[SemperJase]

****To me, when you’re ready - you’re ready. You don’t need a “trial” time to live together or to wait until a, b, c and x, y, z, fall perfectly into place.

Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that people should live together while engaged. That goes back to the issue of cohabitating before marriage being a top indicator of a future divorce. Even if engaged couples shouldn’t live together if they want a better chance at a lasting marriage.

That’s why if I had to do it over again, I would not have lived with my wife for 3 years before getting married. By the grace of God we are celebrating our 8th anniversary on Tuesday. We beat the odds, but it wasn’t because our “trial” worked out. Especially since we started living together with the understanding that it wasn’t long term.

When I look back, I shake my head over that mistake. I really do think it is a miracle we are still together and more in love (i.e. committed) than ever. It sure didn’t start that way.

 

[Princess_Abby]

Flopfoot:

Is it just an American culture thing that relationships should be short? Because I don’t know anyone who has dated for less than a year and then proposed. I know plenty of cases (including my aunties and uncles) who have dated / courted / whatever for over 5 years, and are now happily married with several children.

I don’t think it’s an American thing. I think it’s an individual thing. As many have said, when it’s right it is definitely right. We dated for six months, got engaged and were married six months later. We started speaking about marriage after only a couple months or so, but we both privately knew even before then. I remember telling my best friend I’d met the man I was going to marry very shortly after beginning to see him. We’ve been married 2.5 years now and both talk about how we never thought it was possible to love each other more than the day we were married–but love just grows more and more deeply.

 

[cathologos]

You need to be careful about seeking a hard and fast “rule” – because no rule is going to work all the time. Sometimes you need more time, sometimes you need less. It depends.

In my case…my wife and I met as college freshmen. She was just 18; I was 25. We knew pretty directly (days or weeks) that something special and different was going on, and fairly soon after that that began to discuss a joint, married future.

But we were college students – undergraduates – with all the complications that implies. We lived in on-campus dormitories (different dormitories!). My wife was the eldest child of a fairly traditional family – and I was 7 years her senior, and balding.

We spent four years “dating” – meaning we took meals together (college dining halls), we studied together, we “went out” together – but we didn’t live together. We got to know each other very, very well, without cohabiting. We spent three summers largely apart – and ran up long-distance phone bills!

We didn’t formally announce our engagement until Christmas of our senior year – by which time the general reaction in our families was “Well, dohhh…we knew that!”

We married the December after we graduated (a year after the engagement was formalized).

That was in 1983.

We’ve occasionally talked about “what if” we’d married sooner. We certainly knew that we were going to marry. But…if we had married sooner, we probably would have had children sooner (it took us about two months after the wedding to get pregnant!), which would have been…interesting…as undergraduates getting by on scholarships and student loans. We would have had at least one family (hers) up in arms (She’s too young! He’s so old!).

Waiting was not an easy thing, for either of us. But it made sense then, and it still seems to have been the right choice. And was it worth the wait? Oh, yes!

It gets better every day.

 

[SemperJase]

cathologos:

We didn’t formally announce our engagement until Christmas of our senior year – by which time the general reaction in our families was “Well, dohhh…we knew that!”

It sounds as if “formalize” is the key here. From what you descirbe, the decision was made long before that.

 

[nucatholic]

4 years at least…ok maybe not that long but I think it would lower the rate of divorce!

 

[SemperJase]

4 years at least…ok maybe not that long but I think it would lower the rate of divorce!

Actually it doesn’t seem to be. Delayed marriage only means people are cohabitating - which leads to more divorce. Better to just marry upfront.

 

[Fashina86]

SemperJase:

Actually it doesn’t seem to be. Delayed marriage only means people are cohabitating - which leads to more divorce. Better to just marry upfront.

that’s my opinion… but I am not yet married so I don’t completely know for sure… but I think that it differs based on the person… and the relationship… my parents dated for about 4-6 mo (I think) while others were together for 6ish years before marrying (it started in high school…so hence it was longer) Good luck!

Laura

 

[nucatholic]

I meant chaste relationships…Long engagements don’t mean that the couple will be cohabitating as a matter of fact. Sure most non-religious couples do, but we’re talking Catholic relationships here are we not? Whats the point in rushing into a life-long relationship with someone you hardly know? Doesn’t sound smart to me.

 

[Flopfoot]

Hooray finally someone agrees with me!!!

 

[deb1]

My hubby and I knew fairly quickly and have had a very successful marriage. But, aren’t there statistics that show that a longer engagement period is better for marriage? That is what I always heard, but I don’t know if it is true.

 

[Agricola]

’
But before you can discern who to marry, you have to know something about people: what kind of people you get along with, what kind of behavior to watch out for, etc. Hopefully you’ve learned a lot of that from your parents, but it’s still useful to get to know a range of people.
That entails casually dating several people at least.

I’d have to disagree with you about this. My parents were nineteen when they met. Neither of them had dated. They got married two years later. Since then they have had 46 happy years of marriage, ten children (over thirty grandchildren), and are more in love with each other now than ever before.

The ability to discern is not dependant upon one’s age, nore one’s experience, though both may help. Dating multiple people before considering marriage will do nothing to help a teenager with discernment, but may in fact lead the young person to, consciously or not, think of the individuals he/she is dating as experiments. In fact, if you listen to someone who takes this approach talk about their “experiences”, you may find that the people involved are experiments.

Growing up I heard many people describe their experiences and was not impressed. I decided to get to know the people I would consider dating outside a romantic situation first, learning what personality traits I liked and disliked, what I could tolerate and what really attracted me. I have known my girlfriend for seven years. The first six years of which was spend in friendship, getting to know eachother. Now that we are “dating” (I prefer “courting” since it doesn’t cause one to think “temporary romantic relationship”, which strikes me as a counterproductive and non-Catholic concept) we have no delusions about each other’s personalities, we know what we like and dislike about each other, and we know that our love is an imitation of Christ’s love for His Church.

In short I think that it is wiser to find out if a person is suitable marriage material before you consider “dating” them.

In my humble opinion, young people are given far too little credit when it comes to decision making ability. If everyone expects them to make the mistakes of the last generation, they may just do that. However, if they have God’s will and the good of the other in mind when they are discerning, the mistakes will be few, and will be learned from more readily.

I think the last word on whether a marriage is a good idea or not should be the product of prayer. God is the one who knows a good match when he sees one, and even a teenager is capable of a deep, trusting, healthy relationship… with God, and with others.

God bless,

Agricola

 

[Fashina86]

nucatholic:

I meant chaste relationships…Long engagements don’t mean that the couple will be cohabitating as a matter of fact. Sure most non-religious couples do, but we’re talking Catholic relationships here are we not? Whats the point in rushing into a life-long relationship with someone you hardly know? Doesn’t sound smart to me.

i know… but was just making the point while I was at it
Laura

 

[Youngcatholic]

I dated my husband for 5 years before we were married. I don’t recommend a dating relationship for that length of time (it is a long time to hold off on the sexual relations).

However, I also met my husband in my freshman year of college, then I decided to pursue graduate school after that. He was also getting his feet on the ground with school and finances. We probably could have married right after our senior year in college, but we didn’t have the means to support one another financially!

Ideally, I would think a year of courtship would be best, followed by an engagement. However, these days, it takes so long to become “established” that engagements and courtships tend to be longer, and the average marriage age is now mid-20s than early 20s.
I certainly would have married my husband much sooner had the timing been right! I am certainly very happy now that we are finally married, but it certainly is difficult if you truly love someone to be struggling with the tempatations of a long romantic relationship.

 

[Fashina86]

WOW! Those of you who managed to have such a logn relationshp before marraige are really inspiring and give me hope to keep going!

Laura

 

[Prometheum_x]

’
But before you can discern who to marry, you have to know something about people: what kind of people you get along with, what kind of behavior to watch out for, etc. Hopefully you’ve learned a lot of that from your parents, but it’s still useful to get to know a range of people.
That entails casually dating several people at least.

No, that just means getting to know several people at least – perhaps by being friends with them. Dating is never required in order to get to know someone.