Do you know anyone who got married very young?

[Worryaboutmybread]

I’m a teacher at a secondary with a sixth form attached. One of my year 13 girls is engaged to her boyfriend (whose 19 and finished school last year). They’re planning on getting married this summer after she’s done her a levels. She seems very exited and was talking to her friends about going dress shopping with her mum. I said congratulations as I don’t feel like it’s my place to discourage it as she’s technically an adult but I can’t lie I felt like the whole thing is quite strange. His and her family are very religious and I think that’s a part of it, they’re apparently going to live and work on his uncles farm. It just seems so young to be settling down and like both of them will miss out on a lot. I have never come across something like this before in 10 years of teaching so I guess my AIBU is do you know anyone else who’s done this and got married while still in their teens?

My childhood best friend got married just after she turned 18. Just after A-levels. But she was a Jehovah's Witness, so definitely no sex before marriage, university was unlikely, and so was a real career as a woman. She had kids at 20 and never left her home town. We've lost touch in the last 10 years but as far as I know she was happy until then - over 20 years of marriage at that point.

We've had very different lives! But it's not my place to judge that hers was worse.

And may parents were only 20. Only a week after her 20th birthday in the case of my mum. They were still undergraduates. It was a happy marriage for the 46 years before my mother died. However, she would say herself that it was far too young and they were very lucky that it worked out!

Well, I take my comment back about being lucky.

Being there for better for worse, in sickness and health is what we've promised, and for some people, that may test them.

People are different, and people can grow from living with difficult circumstances.

Strong marriages are not given, they are built and honed. Getting through things as a couple and finding it difficult, doesn't make your marriage any weaker than someone who finds it easy.

Being there for better for worse, in sickness and health is what we've promised, and for some people, that may test them.

You may be right. It didn't test us. It just made us more determined than ever that we would deal with life's difficulties together. We share a similar personality type in that respect.

I got married at 22, still married 10 years later. It was seen as very unusual, particularly because we're not religious.

I married at 18 and pregnant back in the 70's much against my parents wishes.
He was 26.

Should have listened to them ended up divorced at 22 as he was abusive.

Quite a few at 18/19, loads just after university so 21/22. Most are still together. I married dh at 22, been together 21 years.

I met DH when I was 20. Got married when we were 30 having spent ridiculous amounts of time apart because we were both ‘building our careers’

Then being a mother destroyed my career and I wasn’t able to have as many children as I wanted cos of early menopause. I absolutely curse that I was taught that bright girls don’t have children young.

I am a HUGE fan of women marrying and having kids in their late teens / early twenties. I think it’s awful how in our culture women are pressured into wasting their fertile years to benefit the economy.

I was 24 (didn't feel young at the time, but I'd think 24 was a little young to get married now). About to celebrate 10 year wedding anniversary (16 years together).

I was 20;it was 2.5 months after my birthday;still married nearly 19 years later.

I once met a couple who were both 16 and had run away to Gretna Green to get married. I’ve no idea if they are still together as this was 25 years ago but they seemed very loved up.

Apparently their parents were fuming but I was absolutely in awe as a fellow 16 year old. I thought it was very cool to be living together in their own flat. Looking back, probably not so cool.

My parents. Mum was 19 (and pregnant with me), dad a few years older. They are still happily married today, both in their 80s.

Of my friends from sixth form, the third who went straight to employment rather than university also married their sixth-form boyfriends at some point during the three years that the rest of us were away being undergrads. The vast majority are still happily married with children who now all look the age I remember their parents being at secondary school...
The ones who went to university generally partnered up for keeps in their mid twenties and about two thirds of them then got married and had children during their thirties, now preschool or KS1.