The Pugnacious Irishman

Young adults today, in general, tend to delay marriage much more than young adults in ages past. The median age of first marriages has risen a little more than 5 years in the last 30 years.

photo credit: thenewsmanual.net

For some of us, marrying later is not a choice.  We try to pursue marriage, but it takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

A guy asks a girl out, but gets turned down, because the girl either has astronomically high expectations that not even Jesus would satisfy or she’s waiting until her 30s to get married, wanting to “have fun” first.

A girl earnestly desires to be a wife and raise a family, and she prays earnestly to that effect. If a guys asks, she’ll accept his invitation (as long as he doesn’t smell like fish, drive a windowless black van, live with his mom, and have that creepy cross-eyed look). But the guys–who want a girlfriend with the spirituality of Beth Moore, the voice of Rebecca St. James, and the looks of J.Lo–aren’t paying attention.

Can I get an amen!?

But, for countless twenty-somethings, marrying later is a conscious choice. More than any other generation, for various reasons, we delay marriage until our late twenties or thirties.

At first glance, those who adopt this lifestyle seem to get the best of both worlds. Build career now, travel, live in the city, go to Vegas every now and then, see the world, maybe serve the Lord in unique ways, get some extra education, then settle down, marry, and have kids. You can have it all!

But I gotta ask: is this wise? Is there a hidden cost to needlessly delaying marriage that we are blind to?

Well…yes.

The first one is perhaps the most obvious, and it is geared mostly towards women: ye olde ’biological clock.’ Sociologist Jean Twenge jokes about what she calls “women math:” “If we get married next year, I’ll be 32; we’ll want a year or two to be married without kids and it might take a year to get pregnant, so I’ll be 34 or 35 before I’m pregnant and probably 36 when the child is born. Then if we wait until the first kid is two years old before we try for another one, I’ll be trying to get pregnant at 38. Crap.”

The other reasons are not so obvious, and they pertain to both genders.

You’d think that the longer you delay marriage, the happier you’ll be once you are married. We think this because we assume we mature as we get older in singleness. We think that singleness is a sort of “marriage incubator.” But really, it’s not. Extended singleness can give wisdom to a select few, but research shows that as far as marriage happiness is concerned, the sweet spot for getting married is between 24 and 27. After that, happiness declines steadily with each year. Of course you can beat the odds…I’m just giving you the trend.

Mainly, we pretend that years of single living where we call the shots ultimately won’t have an effect on us. When we want, we’ll be able to settle down and love sacrificially just fine.

When you are single, even if you have roommates, and even if you serve the Lord in many ministries, its nothing compared to marriage (so I’ve heard). When a friendship gets uncomfortable or inconvenient, or you just don’t like the person anymore, you can avoid them or stop hanging out with them. You can leave your roommates behind. You can change ministries. But you can’t run from your spouse! You simply cannot live as an “independent, free” individual in a marriage.

Lemme put it straight: The longer you live “independent and free,” the harder it will be for you to adjust to a marriage. I’m finding this true even in dating. It’s a HUGE adjustment to me to think about another person to the degree I need to in this relationship. This will exponentially increase when I’m married. The thought patterns and life habits I’m struggling with are just the ones that I’ve ingrained in myself as a single man.

Ladies: age doesn’t necessarily guarantee maturity in a man. Yes, sometimes it does, but if you needlessly delay marriage, you might turn 30 or 35 only to find out many men your age have been hugely affected by their years of playing the field, going dirt biking with the bros on the weekends, and playing video games. That’s not a good formula for a husband. The ones who are good husbands now took that vocation seriously in their early 20s and got down to business. Sometimes, the guys who are still single are passive when it comes to marriage and they have been allowed to be that way.

Don’t misread me: I’m not saying that if you are single in your late 20s or 30s that it’s your fault or that you are immature (see the paragraph about marrying later not being a choice for some for evidence of this!)….someone is bound to twist my words–always happens–but, hey, I’m almost 30, and I’m single, so be realistic in interpreting my words.

All I’m suggesting is that you can’t just turn off the independent living switch when you get married. It takes work, and turning off the switch is much, much harder when it’s all you’ve known for an extended period of time.

Bottom line: We are moldable when young, but as we age, we become “set in our ways.” Many of these ways are antithetical to a happy marriage, and they become harder to shake off the longer we live in them.

So save yourself the grief…get going!

So, how do you “get going” without overdoing it? Tune in Monday for some suggestions.

Be sure to check out the following related posts:

Top 5 Things Women Find Attractive in Men

The Dating List

Redefining the Family

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