Best Time to get Married
Let’s face it. There is no “Best time to get married”. Situations vary. For example, my parents were 18 and 19 years old when they got married back in 1942, right before my dad got drafted into World War II. He and my mom only had about a year to establish their relationship before he left and they remained parted for four years. Even though they were among millions of other couples parted during that time, they managed to write for the first few years, but correspondence stopped, well not really stopped. My mom kept writing daily, but my dad’s unit in the Philippines traveled so quickly that the mail didn’t keep up. Finally, one day my dad received three-months of mail from my mom and spend the first few hours arranging it all in chronologically before reading the first letter. Times remained tough when he returned from the war, living with his parents and my dad finding only a meager job selling women’s underwear at a local department store. Then they had me and that was yet another mouth to feed. Needless to say, my parents had their share of life obstacles like everyone else, but they pulled together in all those difficult moments and spent over 60 years as man and wife. This union worked.
Marrying at any age is a risk no matter how old or how long two people have known each other before hand. I wish I could say that everyone is mature enough to enter such a close relationship at any certain age, but I would be either lying or blind. I was 22 when I first married, and that lasted twenty-five miserable years. The two of us just didn’t meld at all, and as the years passed, we slowly drifted further apart from a not-so-close-in-the-first-place beginning. But then again, both of us had no idea about what to look for in a mate, or how to be a good companion. I had my parents as examples, but my then husband did not. So our ages when we got married had nothing to do with the quality of the marriage.
Taking the plunge again at the old age of 50, I had lots of hindsight into the endeavor so I took a more pragmatic approach. I didn’t wait around to find out those things I considered important in marriage, I just sat the guy down at Olive Garden and grilled him like chicken. He also had gotten out of a less-than-stellar marriage, relished the down-to-earth approach, and began firing questions at me every time he could get a word in. Five hours later we sat back and evaluated where we stood and got married less than six weeks later. We knew what we were looking for and saw no reason to dilly-dally around. After all, neither of us was getting any younger. Our 12th anniversary is approaching and we’re inseparable.
So as I look back on experience I still say that there is not perfect time for everyone to get married. There’s no “too young”, or “too old”. There’s no “wait at least blah, blah, blah time.” The key is for two people to trust each other enough to decide to spend the rest of their lives together working through problems and turning to each other when times get hard, enjoying being together and coming to the realization that life is so much richer with two than it is going it alone.
