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?

It is unusual, but not wrong if they're really meant for each other . The youngest people I know to get married were sweethearts at our school and married more or less on graduation. They didn't have kids until nearly 15 years later though - I assumed they either didn't want to or couldn't, and wasn't going to ask as those were probably the only two answers. Turned out they just wanted to have a good stretch together before considering kids - still together after over 20 years.

I got married at 19 and still married 20 years later

Yep, loads of people I know got married at 18 and 19 and are very happy.
Also, I had lots of friends at university who met in their 2nd and 3rd years and married after graduation at 21 - all of them still together and very happy.

A girl my daughter went to school with married just after her 18th birthday, the guy she married was late 40's 😳

All the people I knew at school and uni who got married very young (younger than 22, say) were born-again Christians - I'm not really still in touch with any of them, but I know that they take marriage very seriously and may therefore stay in marriages that don't work or with partners whom they've outgrown, as it were, while other people would have divorced and moved on.

It does seem to me to be a risk of marrying young - whether you grow up into similarly compatible people.

I was at school with a couple who got together at age 13 or 14, married at 18, went to university together and celebrated their 40th anniversary a while ago.

Not Christian or any other religion, just deeply in love.

A girl in DS's year at school got married at 17 but apparently is now divorced a few years later.

Yes, I know a couple who married at 16. They were from religious families and she was pregnant. They're still together (early 30s now)

There were a couple of Mormon girls at my school who got married young. One was 19.

I agree with this.

I married at 23. Still happily married 20 years on. I got a lot of stick at the time for being too young. Told I should play the field. No thanks.

Our neighbours are a young, married Christian couple. Married at 22 and 25. They have two children now and seem really happy. I do think age 20+ is preferable though.

Nobody in my age group (early 30s). Plenty in my parents age group (early 50s) did though, they were late teens early 20s. Some still together, some divorced.

A cousin of mine got married at 17 to his first girlfriend who was 16 and only just left school. He was one year in to his apprenticeship. Don't know what their parents were doing to encourage or allow it.

The marriage lasted barely a year.

Still at least they got that out of their system young and went on to more permanent relationships when they were a bit more grown up.

Agreed. We lost quite a few friends over it actually but I wouldn't change a thing.

I got married the day before my 20th birthday to Dh who was 25. We celebrated our Golden Wedding Anniversary this year. My dm got married at 19 as well and my df was 31 but it was just after the war and they were married for one month short of their diamond anniversary.

Are you really a teacher? You can't punctuate or spell. If you are a teacher, honestly it is none of your business, is it? What do you think she will be missing out on anyway? Loads of drunken nights and one night stands? What else will she miss out on if she gets married? If you marry the right person, you can do absolutely everything you want to do except fuck other people - there is nothing stopping you.

My best friend at university was a born again Christian and she was a engaged in her second year, married in third. Loads of her church friends got engaged at a similar time. I remember being quite shocked that her church leader told her that she needed to either split up with her boyfriend or marry him and then he proposed then next day. To be fair, they are a lovely couple and still happily married 15 years later.

We got married at 20 and 22 after 5 years together. That was 38 years ago, still very happy.

My parents married at 21 and were together until my mum died 62 years later.

It worked for them and for us but I'm glad my kids waited a bit!

Met my husband in the university refectory at 19 and we were married shortly after graduation. First child a year after that. I’m now 42 and we’re very happy together.

My Dsis was 19. Nearly 50 and still married. I was a couple of days after turning 21, divorced 3yrs after that.

I was horrified when I read the OP, and then I remembered that my parents met at church youth group and married when my mother was 19. They're still very much together 40-something years later. Not everything has been easy, but then lives aren't. My mother did make space for herself to change career, develop as adult, which was crucial.

A friend of mine married at 18, marriage lasted a few years. I lived with my fiancée, we were both 18, got married at 23, still happily married now, with grown up children.

An aunt and uncle did, she was 16 (and pregnant), he was 19. Not religious but it was the late sixties so I imagine it would have been very difficult for her to be able to keep her child as a single mother and would have had to give them up if they hadn't married. They had another child together and were happily married until he sadly died in his early forties.

My mum was only 18 when she married my dad.

I got married 5 years ago and I was 22 😊

I was 21 and 3 months old in 1990
Still happily married ...

My mil married at 16/17 (divorced after 4 kids) my sil ditto ( divorced after 3 kids) . Noone else that I know of, but I know quite a few who married later and also divorced.