AIBU to feel shocked my 23-year-old daughter is marrying?

[SlothsRUs]

My 23 year old daughter has just announced that she is getting married next year.

I am completely shocked.

Surely it’s not normal anymore to marry that early.

I tried to be joyous and congratulate her but would you be happy?

I want to know why she wants to marry this young.

I know she is an adult and what she does is nothing to do with me but I am really shocked.

I got married and started my family much later than that. Im not sure I’d wait so long given my chance again!

'I know she is an adult and....' just stop there OP. Unless you think it's abusive or coercive then it's her choice as the adult you know she is.

How?

So you don't actually have an answer how marriage takes away financial independence. Instead you're rambling some kind of bullshit. Rather than answering ONE question I asked

So how iam I behaving then to be called a troll ???

You call yourself emotionally intelligent but you don't understand the meaning behind what I am saying. Unless you're privileged and come from wealth.

What you say makes a lot of sense. But some of us met someone we got along well and shared a great friendship, there was nothing wrong as such but the life happens and relationship didn’t last that. It can happen with early marriages too. But then there are those who married early and still going strong 4 decades later. I guess it’s hard to plan life.

I think that is young. I was still on my gap year then! I hadn't even had a proper job.

DH and I were together 9 years before we got married. We brought a house prior to that together, so we couldn't have afforded a wedding anyway. Kids a few years later - who are now 4y and a 7m old baby.

What’s the relevance of AI and job market to the post? You mean women are now choosing to go back to traditional roles of staying home and raising kids? But there needs are not lesser than those of millennials and Gen X. So how will they afford one person earning? Make videos for social media?

I have heard quite a few early twenties marriages in the last couple of years. It is early but I wouldn’t be worried if he’s a nice guy and they are both working.

Yikes! That is young. YANBU.

I got married at 22, still married 18 years later. If the guy is lovely just be happy for her, she's an adult!

Nobody is taking anybody's choices away - but my objection is to people who sneer at other people's perfectly normal choices for themselves as wrong, naive, stupid etc.

Even if couples who marry in their 20s are more likely to divorce - and I suppose it stands to reason that they are more likely than couples who marry at a later age, as they have more time for their marriage to fail(!) - that doesn't negate the fact that a great many couples marry in their 20s, knowing full well what they're doing, and they stay married until one of them eventually dies.

If we're only caring about cold statistics, we might as well take marriage as a whole: the odds are that people marrying at any age may well end up divorcing; so why don't we pessimistically denounce everybody getting married - whether aged 20, 30, 40, 60, 90 as 'in a starter marriage' that will likely fail?

I think getting married that young is the opposite of settling. At that point you still have all your options open to you, years left on your biological clock and most of the potential partners aren’t already taken.

Conversely I think many people do choose to settle when they get to their 30s and realise time is running out and there’s not a lot of choice left.

I got married at 24 and are still going strong 14 years later. Best decision of my life.

Getting married 20 years ago is not a different era! It was the 2000s, not the 1960s. At that time things were the same as they are now - getting married around age 30 was normal, getting married at 23 was considered very young.

So yes, people who say they’ve been married 20 years have a valid experience that is relevant to today.

What is actually wrong with 'settling' though? Is it bad to settle into school as a child/young person, and study to pass exams and get qualifications, instead of bunking off all the time and refusing to do any homework or care about it? Is it bad to settle into a career, instead of flitting from one dead-end job or idealistic dream to another? Is it bad to buy a house and settle, instead of wandering hither and thither and never having a place to call home? Is it bad to settle with one person in a stable relationship and bring up children together, instead of having them with several partners and having to make separate arrangements to spend time with them all?

'Settling' doesn't have to mean taking the first option that comes by. Many people actively make decisions to 'settle' in all spheres of life - and many of them look back decades later with great happiness and gladness that they did so.

OP your response is saddening.
This isn’t someone she just met- they’ve been together for two years. In every one of your posts you’re talking as if it will fail. Make no mistake your daughter will pick up on this and carry it with her and there’s a real risk it will affect your relationship.
Be happy for her. Whether she marries now or in 3-4 years time it’s still the same legal contract - time doesn’t alter that.

Or the support (financial and otherwise) that enables her to do all that? I did my degree at 30, when I'd been married 8 years. I doubt I'd have done it without DH's encouragement and support. We also travelled together much more than I ever did single. And buying property young has given me tremendous financial feedom.

Because ..... ?