How Old were you when you first got married? Any regrets?

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I met my husband at 22 (he was 24) and we were married after he turned 25 and I was getting closer to 23. Because we’d both finished high school and college early, at that point I had my undergraduate degree, had lived and worked abroad two years, and was nearly one year into my MA and my husband was nearly half-way into his second graduate degree. Our first baby was born four years later, about a year into my husband’s first job, so we’d had a long (albeit economically poor) honeymoon as graduate students. (I’d also previously had sole responsibility for cooking and laundry for my family of origin when I was 15 and my mom had cancer.) I’m 39 now and we’ve had three kids (when I was 27, 29 and 37).

A few issues come to mind:
  1. The couple has to be ready for an instant baby. (We didn’t have one, but a lot of people, especially CAFers, do.)
  2. Adjusting to joint housekeeping can take a while.
  3. Not having money makes everything harder, not so much for childless newlyweds, but definitely for new parents. When you have money, you can “buy” rest and leisure. You also don’t make such compromises as buying the store brand diapers that blow up much more often than name brand diapers do, which cuts down a lot on unnecessary work. Or when it all gets to be too much, you can hire cleaning help or order a pizza or send the toddler to parents’ day out. If you don’t have any money, those solutions won’t be within reach.
  4. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more and more concerned about the model of “marry college girlfriend or boyfriend upon graduation,” which continues to be popular in our area. I’m sure it works out for some people, but I wouldn’t recommend it if one hadn’t had a good chance to observe how the person copes with housekeeping in an apartment. Also, a poor work ethic, bad money management, or an inability to get anywhere before 10 AM may be invisible in the college setting. I think marrying straight out of the dorms or out of the parental home is potentially a formula for disaster, although I know a lot of people do it. I think marrying in grad school is just fine.
  5. Shared views on personal finance are really important and I often recommend doing a personal finance course together, for instance Dave Ramsey’s 9 week Financial Peace University class. It took an embarrassingly long time (8 or 9 years) for my husband and me to realize that we needed a financial plan and we needed to be more organized. Early on, we had very minimal graduate incomes, and my financial plan was, we’ll make more money later! Fast forward 8 years and two kids later to an income literally 3X as much as when we were graduate students together, and it’s starting to dawn on me that if we don’t have a monthly budget and sacrifice deeply, we will never get out of debt and we will never own a home of our own–a downpayment does not magically appear. We started doing the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps 7+ years ago and have paid off all of our revolving debt, created an emergency fund, and bought a house with a substantial downpayment.
So, I guess to summarize, age is important, but life experience is equally important.
 
I’m quoting myself. because I want to add something.
That not only was getting married later a societal norm for us both we had things to do first that we both felt strongly we had to do: finish University and our subsequent training (H especially). We wanted that under our belts, along with money and security before we even thought about marriage and kids. Also we are not the types to get married quickly - that is uncommon here
wheelie said:
27
No don’t regret it, we had been together for 6 years at that point. (He was 29)

(Getting married young (pre-25) isn’t done in either of our families - possibly down to being Irish)
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I was 22 my wife was 19. 25 years later I’d do it all over again! Really.

Best thing we ever did as we grew together through the rough times, helping each other out and learning about life. May the next 25 be as blessed as the first.
 
I was a few days before my 29th birthday and my husband was 33. The time was right for us as we got ourselves situated in life, financially speaking (I had finished college and he achieved his journeyman’s card) as well as we both did a lot of growing up by then. I had quite a bit of emotional growing up to do before I was ready to be married and my husband had to work through his temper issues as well as lack of trust issues which is why our ages were good for us to be married.

9 years later and we are chugging along and working together to keep this thing successful! 🙂
 
I was 21 and my wife was 19. We have been married 20 years and have 6 kids between 19 and 8 months. I guess you could say we were engaged for 2.5 - 3 years; we were just waiting for her to finish highschool. We have zero regrets about being young when we married.

Are there challenges to marring young? Yup, but there are advantages too (i.e. less prior relationship baggage). Will your spouse change? Yep, but I married a woman not a statue that remains static. Those changes can go both ways too (i.e. both of you might become better people because you support each other). Heck there are things she does even 24 years after we started dating that drive me nuts; I just mark it up to taking the good with the bad.

I don’t think there is a perfect age to marry so I don’t think we should go in with preconditions. The most important thing is to accept that marriage is for life and to discern if your future partner is someone you imagine will be grieving at your grave side. Our parochial vicar had a homily to that affect. If you don’t see your future spouse walking and supporting you in the depths of sorrow then finishing college, having money, etc. wil count for nothing.
 
I was 32 and he was 30. No regrets about age! It was the right age for me and he was the right person. Surprised though after getting married that he wasnt ready!!!Why surprised? He wanted to get married 5 1/2 years earlier and each year after that and I always wanted to wait. Married 23 years.
 
rotlex said:
I was 22 my wife was 19. 25 years later I’d do it all over again! Really.

Best thing we ever did as we grew together through the rough times, helping each other out and learning about life. May the next 25 be as blessed as the first.
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rotlex, my wife and I are a couple years behind you, but I’d agree 1000% with the above. My wife and I are better and stronger people precisely because we grew and matured together. Supporting each other through trials and tribulations helped us more then it damaged us (not to say we don’t both bear scars from some of the rougher patches ;))
 
I was 19 and he was 20. We both worked to complete our college education- living on $110 dollars a month with a rent of $90! He went on to become a wonderful physician. We have 3 amazing children- 2 doctors and a lawyer- and the cutest grandson ever! Now, 41 years later, I don’t regret a minute of our time together- even the struggles and early poverty. We have been very blessed.
 
  1. I do wish I had married earlier because I think I would have been able to have a bigger family. But I do not regret at all waiting for the man I eventually married.
 
Married at 27, dated for 11 years, now married for 3 and a half years, we were meant to be together, we got on each other’s nerves plenty 😃 but no regrets.
 
Married at 29. Wife and I agree it was dumb of us, errrr ME, to wait that long. 😃
 
We both married at 29. Dated for ~15 months before getting engaged. Married 6 months later.

It was the right age for us. However, that is not true for everyone. Many people do just fine getting married young.

For me, my social skills were weak prior to that age because I spent too much time in the library and not interacting. So if I had gotten married at say 20, that would have made the marriage foundation shaky.

However, I see young people now days that are way ahead of where I was then, and ahead of where I am now.

We are all good at something, so my weakness may be your strength.

So there is no right answer.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for all the replies! It seems most people here did marry in their twenties, and roughly half married pre-25 and half post-25. BTW I myself don’t think I was mature enough to marry in my early twenties. (Am in my thirties now and still wonder about my maturity at times! 😉 ) Not that I ever ruled it out, and I know people who married straight out of college and are still going strong, but looking back I think it was probably for the best that it didn’t work out for me to marry when I was younger.

However, the idea that I’ve seen touted by some that “marrying young increases your risk of divorce, so no one should ever marry below 25” (or another arbitrary age) just sees way too simplistic for me. If we based everything on statistics, then I’ve also read that anyone whose parents are divorced is at a higher risk of getting divorced themselves, and I’ve seen “advice” to avoid marrying anyone from a “broken family”. But if everyone followed that advice, then no one from such a family would ever get married.

Thanks again for the replies and I hope to hear from some other posters too.
 
ToeInTheWater said:
Thanks for all the replies! It seems most people here did marry in their twenties, and roughly half married pre-25 and half post-25. BTW I myself don’t think I was mature enough to marry in my early twenties. (Am in my thirties now and still wonder about my maturity at times! 😉 ) Not that I ever ruled it out, and I know people who married straight out of college and are still going strong, but looking back I think it was probably for the best that it didn’t work out for me to marry when I was younger.

However, the idea that I’ve seen touted by some that “marrying young increases your risk of divorce, so no one should ever marry below 25” (or another arbitrary age) just sees way too simplistic for me. If we based everything on statistics, then I’ve also read that anyone whose parents are divorced is at a higher risk of getting divorced themselves, and I’ve seen “advice” to avoid marrying anyone from a “broken family”. But if everyone followed that advice, then no one from such a family would ever get married.

Thanks again for the replies and I hope to hear from some other posters too.
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There is a difference between the two cases. The young people can just wait a little and get older, but the children of broken homes can’t go back in time and keep their parents from getting divorced.
 
Xantippe said:
There is a difference between the two cases. The young people can just wait a little and get older, but the children of broken homes can’t go back in time and keep their parents from getting divorced.
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But it’s not as if “waiting a little” is completely without risk. Certainly the risk of falling into sexual sin increases for many couples if they have to wait, say, six years instead of three to get married. Some may be tempted to cohabitate, and that raises the risk of divorce as well. Or, if they live apart, they may get so used to living independently and not having to make the little daily compromises it takes to live together in domestic harmony, that they find it more difficult to adjust to married life.

Also, for those who feel called to have a large family, even marrying at, say, age 28 instead of age 24 would cut down on the time available to do so.

I just don’t think dogmatic “always” and “never” statements regarding the appropriate age for marriage, are reasonable approaches here.
 
I was 26 , I was immature , naive , &. Stupid, she was my first real girl friend,
And I was her second real boyfriend, we married for all the wrong reasons,
But alas, 3. Fantastic sons, and 21. Years of miserable Marraige ,we both tried hard,
But we were just two people that just happened to share the same house,
Now apart for about 14 years,
 
Married at 18 and never made a better decision. In my family most have married around 20, but some have married as young as 16 (a few cousins, my grandmother, a couple aunts) and some married as old as 37 (one sister, two cousins, one uncle). Ironically the only ones that have divorced or just stayed in miserable marriages were the ones that married after 25. All of us that married young have enjoyed our family life and have no regrets about how our lives have turned out. My sister that married at age 33 has told me multiple times that she believes her mistake was becoming to accustomed to being single, having her own life and way of doing things, and then trying to learn to live with someone who was also set in his life and ways. Since my husband and I were young we had a different set of problems that required us to work together. We had to fight and struggle together and never got used to pushing through life’s problems alone. We always have had each other. There’s good and bad in marriage at any age.
 
One other thing you can do is put some time into reading about marriage / relationships.

That is one of my goals for this year.

Not because we are having any kind of problem, but because I don’t want to take our marriage for granted, and because I believe in continuous improvement.

A Christian couple I follow on social media, who I greatly admire, take a course at their local church on marriage.

That is a good idea too.

It is amazing how little study most of us do in one of the most critical areas of our life – our marriage.
 
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