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Joe 'n' Carlin Sittin' in a Tree?


sophrosyne

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I only know one person who married so young but that was because of an unplanned pregnancy and 10 years later they are on number 4. I do, however, know heaps of unwed teenage mothers. I went to a government run All-Girls school and many of the girls were desperate for male attention. By my last year half had dropped out due to pregnancy. This may be because I also don't know many religious people, although I come from a city known for the sheer number of churches we have only 60% of the population identify as anything. This may explain my horrified interest in the Duggars because this type of religious fanaticism is not something I've come across in my everyday life.

 

 

ETA- Woo hoo Jellybeans!

 

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6 hours ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

On the other side of 18 (I'm 45) everyone I know that married just so they could have sex is divorced. Dumbest reason EVER to get married. 

Agreed, at 31, everyone i know who married before 20 (cough cough christians cough cough) are divorced or "married" but residing in completely different bedrooms with little or no interaction

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On January 5, 2016 at 11:52 AM, tumblr said:

Region has something to do with it. I am 18 in NC and a huge amount of people I went to High school with got engaged at 17/18 and are marrying less than a year after graduation, most are religious but some are not. 

What's odd is 30mi north in VA where I have friends none of them would even think of getting married so young. 

I'm in the south and my 17 year old niece just got engaged (ugh....). Apparently she has a couple other friends that are talking about getting engaged in a year or so too.  They are all Christian and "saving themselves". 

I am completely horrified. I offer my unwanted advice, but it falls on deaf ears!

Edit: I remembered my cousin also got married at 17, but she was pregnant. The parents had to sign their permission.... 

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My parents married young (21/22) and advised my sister against it (she was 26).  In my neck of the woods, it's unheard of to marry very young.  Most of the newspaper wedding announcements, they're around 30.

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My 19 year old fundi light cousin is getting married in September.  It can be hard to watch but at least she may finish her paralegal degree . . . 

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I had an old childhood friend who dropped out of high school, got engaged, and got pregnant at 18. Her daughter is a few months old now. She and her fiancé are doing quite well now. Living conditions are quaint, but they can put food on the table. She's getting her GED, I think.

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I've witnessed almost all of those scenarios play out in one form or another. My parents married relatively young at 21/22, but that was 1971. They did not go to college, so there was a huge emphasis on my brother and I pursuing higher education. I'm sure if either of us had come home with a fiance at 17/18, we wouldn't be here now. Where I grew up, the only girls who married that young had boyfriends that were in the military. Otherwise, the earliest marriages among my peer group were around 22-24. When I lived in the South after law school, most of the women I knew and worked with were married right after college. In the metropolitan Northeast, where I live now, most people (myself included) aren't married until after they finish grad school/professional school/Peace Corps/establish a career. I'm 35 and tying the knot with Mr. Maple in May.

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On January 6, 2016 at 1:11 PM, 19 cats and counting said:

My parents married young (21/22) and advised my sister against it (she was 26).  In my neck of the woods, it's unheard of to marry very young.  Most of the newspaper wedding announcements, they're around 30.

That sounds great! I live in Georgia and if a girl is not married by 29 she is called a crazy cat lady! (I'm not married. I like cats. I have a cat. I don't like to be called a crazy cat lady.) At 30 an unmarried woman is looked down on unless she has lots of money. (For some reason money makes it okay?) 

Within a year or two of getting married you are expected to have a baby or something is wrong with you.

This isn't in the country areas either, closer to the main city of Atlanta. Sad really.  

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 I go to school in Virgnia and a part of a sorority, and I can't tell you how many sorority sisters/ friends of sorority sisters have gotten engaged since winter break started, only a few were already graduated and have had a job for about a year or two. The majority got engaged during their sophomore year with some getting married within the next week or during the upcoming summer break. My mind has defintely been blown seeing that back home near Philadelphia the only couples I've known to get married are my sisters friends who are late 20s and have lived on their own for a while.

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I come from a family where my Oma made me promise not to get married before 26. We don't do engagements or any of that. We just assume that if you're living together, you're in a committed adult relationship and any wedding is just a nice excuse to get the family together for a party. I was sort of engaged to my former boyfriend (we seriously intended to marry after getting our bachelors degrees). This was as a teen and I am mortified just thinking about it. Oh well, at least nobody knew and we didn't throw a party or buy rings.

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On 1/6/2016 at 5:59 PM, VaSportsMom said:

My first cousin's daughter just got married for exactly that reason. She turned 20 a few weeks ago and this was her 3rd engagement. I asked her why she went with a courthouse wedding when she had asked me to make her a wedding dress the 2 previous times and was told they wanted to live together to save money but couldn't live together without having sex and couldn't have sex without being married so quickie wedding and now she floods FB with posts about TTC and dreaming of her first baby.

You so can live together without having sex. Even sleep in the same bed! I did it for two years. And my husband had had sex and was NOT saving himself for marriage. Just respected me. It's possible!

On 1/6/2016 at 6:08 PM, tumblr said:

While sex is definitely the biggest reason, number two is one spouse joining the military and the other wanting\needing to be legal family. 

Both seem like a risky choice imo. 

And my now husband was (still is) in the military.

I see a lot of terrible marriages in the military. Up to a certain point, getting married will literally double your income. And as the military member, you get to live off base. That was enough for many people to get married. And then with every kid you have you get more money to help take care of them.

We were definitely the odd couple out. We started seeing each other before he went into the military and then dating seriously as he was in the military and only just got married after he had been in for over 3 years. People constantly asked why we didn't just go to the courthouse on a weekday after he got off work. I had a lot of reasons, but the number one reason was that I didn't want to blindly jump into something like that-- not only marriage, but marriage in the military. I had to decide if I wanted to be married to someone in the military. In the first 6 months of my marriage, I spent 6 weeks of it with my husband and that's it. He was gone for 140 days straight during a time where most couples are settling down together and are in their honeymoon phase. There were lots of times where I just wanted to pack up and go home because I was so lonely. Now imagine if I had just gotten married for the money. Or to have sex. I'd be living with my parents right now and not waiting for my husband to get out of work. We always joke that if he had never gone into the military we would have been married years ago.

I think no matter what, people will get married for bad reasons. Getting married is an automatic Adult Point. You got married? You're no longer immature, you're now an adult. I think a lot of people see it as something you're supposed to do once you get to a certain age to make your life look meaningful to outsiders.

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I remember one of my coworkers at my last job always ordering dresses and train/plane tickets for weddings like every weekend, and when I commented on how many weddings she was going to, she said to me, "yeah, 27 is when you start embarking on the wedding circuit, enjoy three more years of free weekends and not agonizing over whether or not you can re-wear one of your formal dresses."

I know four girls from my high school class who are married: two were Mormons and that's just their thing, one is from a pretty traditional Italian family but I don't know how much bearing her background had on her decision to marry/have kids in her late teens/early 20s, and one is the WASPiest girl alive who had a wedding that looked like Portlandia vomited on a tastefully wild meadow. I have no idea about how she's doing other than her very hipstery wedding pictures. I also know a couple from my graduating class from college who got married right after graduation, and a whole lot of people stand to lose money this June when they celebrate their third anniversary. We all thought they'd crash and burn because they hadn't been dating long and both were people known for drama, but happily, they seem to have a very happy, stable, loving marriage and both have very good, fulfilling careers.

When I look at those people's Facebook pages, I feel kinda down on myself because I'm 24 and single as fuck, but then I remember that I'm 24 and I've accomplished a lot without being attached to someone who regularly has sex with me and stuff, and I have all the time in the world to choose to get married. They chose to do it a bit earlier because that's just how their life plans worked out. And they're the exception to the rule about marrying age if my coworker is anything to go by.

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I'm actually friends with a couple who are living together but not having sex. They're waiting for marriage. The wedding is in the summer and at that point they'll have been living together probably for close to two years. I personally couldn't do it, but apparently it works for them, so hey. More power to them.

 

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3 hours ago, GreenTea said:

That sounds great! I live in Georgia and if a girl is not married by 29 she is called a crazy cat lady! (I'm not married. I like cats. I have a cat. I don't like to be called a crazy cat lady.) At 30 an unmarried woman is looked down on unless she has lots of money. (For some reason money makes it okay?) 

Within a year or two of getting married you are expected to have a baby or something is wrong with you.

This isn't in the country areas either, closer to the main city of Atlanta. Sad really.  

I'm 35 and a few years ago there was a meme floating around FB about it.  I call myself a crazy cat lady and own up to it

crazy cat lady 40.jpg

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1 hour ago, singsingsing said:

I'm actually friends with a couple who are living together but not having sex. They're waiting for marriage. The wedding is in the summer and at that point they'll have been living together probably for close to two years. I personally couldn't do it, but apparently it works for them, so hey. More power to them.

 

I find it so, so odd that you know this about 2 people and one of them is not you.

TMI- waayyyyyyy too much I.

 

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3 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

I find it so, so odd that you know this about 2 people and one of them is not you.

TMI- waayyyyyyy too much I.

 

Do you want me to fetch you your smelling salts, or are you going to be okay?

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6 hours ago, singsingsing said:

I'm actually friends with a couple who are living together but not having sex. They're waiting for marriage. The wedding is in the summer and at that point they'll have been living together probably for close to two years. I personally couldn't do it, but apparently it works for them, so hey. More power to them.

 

They must have amazing self control. 

The only reason I had premarital sex is because of being in a situation in which I was alone with my now husband for an extended amount of time after not seeing each other for 4 months.

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5 hours ago, 19 cats and counting said:

 

crazy cat lady 40.jpg

I laughed so hard I knocked one cat off my shoulder and the other off my left knee! This is great!

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Four of my friends got married the year we turned 21 and 22. (I would have, too, but fortunately my fiance demostrated our incompatibility in plenty of time.) One friend got divorced before her 1st anniversary (not really a surprise in her case) and the other 3 are still married. One of the 3 friends met her husband at university and they went on to graduate schools in Georgia after their wedding. Different graduate schools in different cities. So, they picked a small town that was about halfway between the two cities in which to live. 

11 hours ago, GreenTea said:

That sounds great! I live in Georgia and if a girl is not married by 29 she is called a crazy cat lady! (I'm not married. I like cats. I have a cat. I don't like to be called a crazy cat lady.) At 30 an unmarried woman is looked down on unless she has lots of money. (For some reason money makes it okay?) 

Within a year or two of getting married you are expected to have a baby or something is wrong with you.

This isn't in the country areas either, closer to the main city of Atlanta. Sad really.  

My friend and her husband reported that the nice people at their Baptist church in the small town in Georgia were completely mystified about a young married couple who were continuing college and had no immediate plans to have children. "And how soon are y'all startin' your family?" 

P.S. I would have enjoyed being a crazy cat lady (but probably not that label) if I hadn't met my DH.

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14 hours ago, GreenTea said:

That sounds great! I live in Georgia and if a girl is not married by 29 she is called a crazy cat lady! (I'm not married. I like cats. I have a cat. I don't like to be called a crazy cat lady.) At 30 an unmarried woman is looked down on unless she has lots of money. (For some reason money makes it okay?) 

Within a year or two of getting married you are expected to have a baby or something is wrong with you.

This isn't in the country areas either, closer to the main city of Atlanta. Sad really.  

I'm 28 and I've never really been in a relationship and have no plans to (if I meet someone then, yay, if I don't I'm not fussed). Friends' reaction when I tell them I don't care is, 'What about sex?' As if I can't take care of that myself!

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I grew up in a region where people marry very young (my grandparents got married at 19, my parents were 20, my aunt and uncle 17) Still today there is pressure on people to get married before you turn 30, or at least have children before you are 30 (yes: having children young is even more important than getting married young, the region is not very religious...)

Now I moved to the big city and I know lot's of couples in their 30's that say that they do not need a marriage because they are already living together. My wife and I get weird looks now that we got married at 31. People think we wanted to proof ourselves because we are two women but we just wanted to get married and that is that.

My cousin is turning 30 this year and is expecting her second child, but not married. People praise her for being done having children before 30 (because that's very importnant, obviously...) and she is constantly picking at me because I got married... Now I feel everyone is just: What? Gay people can get married? That means it's worth nothing anymore, so we don't need to get married.

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From my school friends, or even class mates that I didn't know so well, I only heard of one getting married young. She got pregnant in her first year of uni (only a few months into the relationship with a much older guy who refused to wear protection cos he didn't like it). Anyway, she got married soon after finding out. She was a bit of princess and I don't think a small registry wedding would have been what she was planning on either. I never really liked the guy and didn't seem like the type to tied down. It's well over 10 years later now and they are still married and she seems happy etc. She finished uni and got her career like planned, and about a year ago had a second baby. 

When I was 27, I decided on a change of career and went back to uni. It was quite a change being at uni and studying again, and also in a different country. At that point in my life, I didn't feel very mature or grown up, until I was surrounded by 18 year old kids fresh out of school and away from family for first time. Suddenly, I felt very old! Anyway, my point of this, in the first few weeks there, a very religious girl said to me ' but don't you  want to get married and have kids' when I told her my age (I look much younger than I am). I felt a bit like an old maid in an Austen novel.  I wasn't taken aback by the comment but I had no clue how to answer it, I didn't see how it was relevant that being 27/28 in uni was stopping me having that. There were plenty of mature students there who were both married and kids and studying, doing placecment and part time work. This happened a good few years ago now, and while that girl is not yet 27, she is only a year or two off it, and not married yet either.

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1 hour ago, Imaginary_Wonderland said:

. She got pregnant in her first year of uni (only a few months into the relationship with a much older guy who refused to wear protection cos he didn't like it).  

This made so so so sad reading this. I hope to instill in both my kids (opposite sexes) that this is not ok. They need to be able to have enough self respect to not have sex if this is being essentially forced on them.  Ugh. 

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Yeah I know, another friend brought her out safe sex shopping basically and have a chat after her baby was born and the same thing was going on again. Obviously, their lil talk and getting her set up with protection worked as her second baby wasn't for another 11/12/13 years. Even back then, I thought a mid-30's guy with an 18 year old in her first proper relationship calling all the shots was a bit skeevy. 

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