To ask what you think about young Christian marriages?

[Ihavewelliesbutitssunny]

So over the last few years I've known a lot of young Christian couples who've got married at about 21-23 years old. The classic situation is Christian boy and girl meet at the CU at uni and then get married when they graduate. Obviously part of this is the belief that couples shouldn't have sex before they are married but I think another factor is that they have prayed through and considered their decision to get married and trust that if it is the right decision they should just go ahead and get married. There seems often to be a critical and confused response to this idea of getting married from non-Christians so I was interested to see the mumsnet response. I suspose the idea of waiting for sex and getting married young is something that a lot of couples did in the past and many of us have grandparents or perhaps parents who married young and have had very long (and in most cases) marriages.

thread hijack: Your little ones are gorgeous Firawla. That is all. :)

I'm a christian and I don't think it is such a bad thing. I must admit I didn't follow this teaching and looking back I am not sure if it may have been better if i had done. In the church I go to some of the adults are a bit obsessive about sex befoer marriage as though it is the worst thing in the world but I think I am more liberal and don't want to be a hypocrite.

My dd's are both in relationships and are teenagers. The ED is very anti sex before marriage last time we discussed it but it is not the sort of thing we talk about obviously. She has had a steady BF for over a year. I wouldn't have a problem if she was sleeping with him.

I can see it stops then getting hurt and it is not such a bad thing IMO and it is a very personal decision.

Interesting blog that I read earlier

DH and I got married at 23 this year (we are not christian, DD was our bridesmaid!) but we do know a couple of people who have got married at similar ages in the context you describe. To me, I find it a little strange as DH and I had been together nearly 5 years by the time we got married, had been living together, sharing finances, looking after DD together...

Basically we know so much more about each other and what we would be like to spend the rest of our lives with than these other couple's do. So it would be a lie to say I don't worry about young couples who haven't been together very long.

But it is their decision. As long as no one is going to make them feel guilty if it doesn't work out, I don't think religion is doing anything actively harmful by encouraging them to get married prior to having sex.

I went to school with a guy who came from a deeply religious family, and he proposed to his girlfriend from Uni last Christmas (I've just turned 23, and he's the same age as me). He admitted to some of our mutual friends that one of the deciding factors that made him decide to pop le question was that he'd finally be able to have sex

Someone else brought up the subject of army marriages. Personally I think a lot of the ones that get engaged young do it before a tour, or to somehow cement a relationship when they've been posted somewhere far away. A guy of 19 that my partner knows recently got engaged to his gf of less than a year, because "well, we've been together a while". Another had his stag in a German brothel. I couldn't possibly comment.....

Also, DH and I both raised in catholic schools - yup, there was lots of sex! But also I think hearing the PoV that sex IS a big deal made me more adament about what I wanted any sexual relationships I had to be like, so although I didn't go in for the not-before-marriage, I did go in for with-someone-I-trust-and-love and that has served me pretty well.

We have such a couple in our family. During their courtship they would say "we are trying to be good", never stayed over, or "shacked up" So it was so special when they married. Sooo romantic. Although they were in their late 20's, I think that says it all. They really courted ifynwim and gave it a lot of "thought".

Nope not a daily mail journalist, nor new to mn but tend to lurk more than post. I was just interested to read people's views on this. I'm a young-ish single Christian and often when talking with non-Christian friends about young Christians I know who are getting married they seem quite shocked and critical of this. Its been really interesting to hear everyones views, I was a bit concerned that a bunfight may occur but thankfully thus far its been really interesting and informative .

I'm not sure how not having sex before marriage turns into getting married in order to have sex, I think that's unusual, if not pretty insulting to the vast majority of young Christian marriages which are happy and successful IME.

I was lucky enough to get married at 22. I met someone I wanted to marry and I felt ready to get married and we're still very happy 8 years down the line. I think a lot of non-religious people move in together at that age and as a Christian that wasn't something that appealed to me. It seems to me like you're living as if you are married, it's just as painful if you split up but it's without the commitment.

Getting married older is a modern trend. There are many more years behind us where young marriage was the norm.

Had a giggle when I bookmarked the post I'd read up until and mn told me I'd been 'saved'

I think it's lovely. i know a few couples like that - most are very happy. I think they have something unique, that's not to say that getting married young hasn't been a challenge for some of them.

I had a young-ish Christian marriage. Both Catholic. Both virgins when we got married. Didn't live together before we got married. Didn't work so well for me, as he turned out to be abusive (and with some serious sexual ishoos). I stayed with him for 9 years, had 3 DC before separating. Cultural and religious pressures to stay together (plus the usual abuse dynamics) kept us together that long. I see awful and abusive marriages in my extended family/friends' families and see the same pattern, but divorce is not the done thing...

I've been with DH since I was 16, married him when I was 21. We've been together for 17 years now. Although we definately did have sex before marriage, we even "lived in sin" for 4 years before we were married.

My mum and dad were married when they were 19, although they are divorced now, they were together for 24 years.

Oh, and they lived together before they married too, and that was in the 70s.

I am a Christian in my late 20s and to be honest I am always a bit horrified by young Christian marriage (and young marriage in general), and I certainly recognise the scenario of people marrying their CU boyfriend/girlfriend. I think the reason I am uncomfortable with this is that it seems to go hand-in-hand with a concept of sexual purity that I just don't believe exists, and refusal to acknowledge that sexual incompatibility is a real thing.

The CU at my university - and they may be unusual, I don't know - seemed absolutely obsessed with sex - they were forever having talks on sexual purity and had a lending library that was almost entirely full of books on Christian sex - while I'm sympathetic to people who are trying to develop their own view of Christian sexuality, they just seemed to focus on that to the exclusion of all else. It just seems odd to me - and if you really don't want to have sex before marriage, it's not going to hurt you to wait and develop a little maturity about relationships, for God's sake. I have close friends in their late 20s and early 30s who have decided to stay celibate until marriage (some of whom are in long-term relationships) and as far as I know their genitals haven't shrivelled up and fallen off.

One thing I was shocked by when I moved to the US was the prevalence of young marriage among unreligious people. There is a very strong cultural push towards marriage in your early-mid twenties here, which I find absolutely bizarre when I think about the sort of people I fell in love with in my early 20s, and how desperately unsuited we would have been. And of course almost all the people I knew who were married when I first moved out here are now divorced. Splitting up in your early twenties is heart-breaking enough - why add the legal and financial nightmare of divorce?

Theregoesfear, I'm glad you are saved :)

But your life story shows how we need to see God as loving and understanding when one of the spouses is not keeping the vow to love and cherish.

Hope you are happier now

i was a young Christian marriage. met my hubby to be in a night club kel surprise when i was 17 was knocked up about a month later living with him about a month after that so there was no, no sex before marriage for me though he was my first. he was not a christian though he did do alpha and convert. the church i went to were a bit frowny on the who shagging thing, living together thing.
we got married when i was 21 after some abstaining (didnt take so well as i was pregnant when i got married) and pre marriage counselling. we separated about 2 years ago.
i realise that i married him because i slept with him and there was a massive weight of expectation on me for that because of my beliefs, dont get me wrong i also loved him, but i thought i was doing the right thing. if i ever get married again it will be whole heartedly because i want and not because i think i should.

I know loads of couples who fit this description. Christians, married young.

I continue to be astonished at how very happy most of these marriages are !

See I think its the opposite I think if you wait until your in 30ish most people just end up marrying whoever they are with at the time as they are desperate for babies. I dont think that they often love each other in the same way and would do anything to be with each other.Thats from the young and old marriages I know, although none of them have been religious.

I suspect there are pros and cons of getting married early for whatever reason vs leaving it until later. dh and I have been together since we were 18/19, met at university and married when we were 25. My bf was horrified and said it was a terrible idea, and has now I hope found 'the one' at 40, but is struggling to have children. so there are some significant downsides to waiting. On the other hand dh and I had some fairly terrible times together in our 30s, and I wonder if we'd got to be a bit more independent earlier it might have been a good thing. dh and I are both atheists, n fact he last time I went to a church service was when I got married, and it was the confession I went to before the ceremony that made me finally reject religion.

My sister has a Christian marriage (in fact very shortly both her and BIL will be ordained). They got engaged about three months after meeting because essentially their priest told them that God had told him they were a good match. I found/find that a little disturbing really.

My bf at uni had a miserable time at uni because her and the boy she fancied both went to a evangelical type church that seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time telling them how bad they were for having any sort of sexual desires. I'm not sure it was a relationship that would even have lasted for more very long but they both tied themselves up in knots for months about it and it just seemed such a stupidly unimportant thing to get so stressed about, and I think was an abuse of position by the priest, although no doubt he felt it as the right thing to do.

I had a very strict Christian upbringing - didn't stop me having sex before marriage, although I was married at 21 and still married ( to the same man ) 20 years on. I want all my dc to marry young in a Christian church and stay married for better or for worse. It's the best life.

Sorry to bring up statistics again but there really is quite a lot of research into these matters of young marriages and marriages in conservative non denominational communities. There seems to be a lot of anecdotal stuff in this thread and very little reference to hard facts, and they are easy to find.

Couples who marry young are most likely to divorce

"In the UK divorce rate among 25-29 year-olds was twice the average across all age groups, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics." The Telegraph

The States of Marriage and Divorce

"In Arkansas and Oklahoma, men and women marry young -- half of first-time brides in these states were age 24 or younger on their wedding day. These states also have above-average shares of women who divorced in 2007-2008.1

It's the opposite state of affairs in Massachusetts and New York. Their residents marry late -- half of ever-married New York men were older than age 30 when they first wed. These states also have below-average shares of men and women who divorced in 2007-2008."

Pew Research

I'm a Christian who was married at 22 to my sixth form boyfriend, who I maintained a long distance relationship with through uni. Last week was the 10th anniversary of us getting together so we've managed to stick it out (first baby now on the way too) :) We knew plenty of couples who got married young. It's not just about the having sex, there's a lot of factors - cohabiting being frowned upon, marriage being seen as a good thing, but also the pressure that I think uni-age Christians come under to find their spouse, which really annoys me. This pressure has led to us having friends in their late 20s who are genuinely miserable about not being married yet - and I think all churches don't always deal with single young people well, which leaves them feeling awful.

On the other hand, I was discussing this issue with Christian friends online the other day and many of them were saying that they know quite a few couples who married young because they felt pressured to do so but are now separated or divorced. I have no problem with couples marrying young, as long as they have have enough preparation for what they're about to do, have dated for a good amount of time and have a lot of support. The first few years of marriage aren't always easy as it is; you can't go into it seeing it as some sort of fairytale ending. My church is quite strict about who it will marry in the sense that they want couples to be really sure about it and really well-prepared and ready - this is to try to avoid marital breakdown purely because a man and woman aren't right for each other.