MarriagE: Different Views Between Parents and Teens

Thirty years ago people were marrying when they turned twenty. My aunt and uncle grew up as next door neighbors and married very young. My parents married around the ages of twenty-five, twenty-six years old. Now I know people who are getting married at twenty-one again.

Does age really matter? My uncle got married in his thirties and is just as happy as his brother who got married fifteen years before him. My family are conservative Catholics and almost disowned my cousin for moving in with his fiancee six months before the wedding when he was twenty one. Now a days though, moving in before marriage may be the way to go.

Hanging out with someone a few times a week is completely different than living with them. The tiniest things your partner may do might just throw you over the edge. Leaving the toothpaste unscrewed on the counter, not washing the dishes right away, or even leaving a light on when no one is in the room. Every little detail matters when you live with someone. Cooperating at dinner at a restaurant is the opposite of compromising over every detail of your life. What color paint should go in the dining room? Which tile should go in the bathroom? Can you handle the finances of paying for rent, food, and entertainment together? The slightest things that are so simple to decide on your own could turn a lovebird relationship into fights that could destroy a future marriage. The only real way to know if he is the one for you, is to live with him and see him in every shape, form, temper, and unattractive manner that he may possess.