Getting married young..

(Honeymoon in Cancun, 2015)

I've been with this woman for the past 7 years, 3 of which we've been married. I could go on and on about the past and everything that led up to our marriage, but that would make for one long blog and I won't put you guys through that :). This blog really has a different purpose than telling you everything that we've been through and how amazing it has been. This is about how we handled the "difficult" times of being engaged as teenagers and getting married young.

It always seemed to be a hot question at the time from co workers or even strangers that I would engage into conversation with to ask me if I had a girlfriend. So obviously I say yes, "we're engaged." So here comes the next question of "how old are you?" I would come back with "I'm nineteen." Following those short words would come the much dreaded lectures from these people about the likely hood of high school sweetheart relationships and young marriages not working. I've got strangers lecturing to me about marriage more than my parents did. Do you how frustrating that can be? They're not giving me good advice or actually just having a conversation about it. They feel the need to pick my brain with the thought that I don't understand the fact that this is a big decision. Filling me in on how their marriages didn't work out or this or that. They ask how do I really know that I love her? These types of people really really got under my skin. I just wanted to fast forward time 10 years and rub it in their face that it would work out longer than they thought.

Can any of you predict the future? I know that the only thing I can do is to try to make it the best that I can. All I can do is take the best possible action right now to make my future better. The thing that I wish people understood was the fact that that is marriage for every single one of us. We are all going to put forth our best effort to make it work. No ones knows whats going to happen 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now. No ones knows for sure whether their marriage is going to be long and happy or not. The only thing can do is their best. It doesn't matter if you're 18 or 35 because you never really know what you're getting in to until you get in to it!

I've experienced a lot of my life with this girl and I don't look back and wish I'd done any of it differently. We've gone to high school together, rented our first apartment, she graduated college, we bought a house, driven to the west coast, traveled to mexico, traveled to Europe. The most important thing we've done lately is bring a beautiful baby boy in to this world. We don't have any idea what we're doing with most things that we experience, but you know what? We're doing it together and we're figuring it out. It's an amazing experience to grow up in to adulthood with someone you love by your side doing the exact same thing. It's not like there's a certain number of people I need to date before I decide on one, or a certain length of time we need to date, or a certain age I need to be before it's OK to get married.

There was a lot of negativity surrounding us both during all of the early days, as I've already addressed. During those times in the heat of the moment all I would really do is say "yeah" a lot, and just listen to what people had to say and just kind of shrug my shoulders like an idiot. Then I would go home and tell her about this long conversation I had about how this random guy told me some story about his marriage that didn't work out and he was married to his high school sweetheart and this and that. She'd come right back with some other story from work down the same path. You wouldn't believe the amount of people who had the audacity to talk down to us. --I may not of made it seem like we were being talked down to, but believe me, we were.

The statistics from the marriage of someone else will never mean anything to me. I refuse to fear the future because some one else has made mistakes. If you're the one talking down on young marriages, please stop. Let them do their thing and give some real advice, some advice that you would give to any other couple that is going to get married and don't treat them any different. If you're the one who IS getting married and no one believes in you, forget them. They aren't you're real friends anyway if you ask me. You move forward with your life and you do your best to make things work in your marriage. Of course it's going to be hard, but if you really want it then you're going to work your ass off to make it work in the difficult times. The difficult financial times, the difficult times with your children, with your jobs, with your home, with everything. It won't work if you aren't willing to work for it. I know just saying that it's going to take work is very vague, but I believe that you'll figure it out in your own way. That's the best advice I can give you.






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