Bea Augustine | Managing Design Editor

Recently, I heard that one of my childhood friends is getting married. She’s 19. Learning this inspired some existential dread within me. I can’t imagine having my own home right now, let alone getting married.

My experience isn’t rare, either. Many of my friends have told stories of their childhood friends getting married and having children while they’re still spending every weekend going out.

I’ve always firmly believed that marriage is something that should happen, at the earliest, at the end of your twenties. Your twenties are a time to explore who you are. You start them by deciding what you want to do. Do you want to go to college, trade school, or the workforce? What major do you want to pursue? After that, you have to decide whether you want to go to graduate school, or start working, or travel the world, or something else. The possibilities seem endless. You may find that you don’t like the major you’ve chosen, or you don’t like your job, and you need to make changes. Either way, this decade is one for self-expression and discovery.

Moreover, marriages before 25 are less likely to last. Marriage is no longer viewed to be as permanent of a commitment as it once was. The belief that marriage isn’t a permanent commitment makes people behave perhaps irrationally, without thinking of marriage as a life-changing choice. Statistics show that the highest rates of divorce occur between men and women aged 25-29, and divorce rates are highest in the first 10 years of marriage. Marriage is a commitment that requires dedication from two parties to stay together through thick and thin. This becomes infinitely more difficult if you aren’t sure who you are, what you want from life, or what your future holds. Of course, I’m not saying that people completely change personalities from 20 to 29, but it’s very different to think you are marrying a doctor and then realize later that you’re married to a med school dropout-turned-barista. (For the record, I have nothing against med students, med school dropouts, or baristas.)

I would even venture to say that your twenties are one of the most intense periods of change you will ever go through. From transitioning out of college to whatever’s next, and then, if you decide to change something, whatever is after that, it’s a time filled with upheaval. In that time of transition and self-discovery, it is incredibly difficult to maintain a marriage.

In my own life, I have a friend who chose to get married to her high school sweetheart after high school graduation. They divorced two years later. They had never actually lived together before they married and found out they didn’t have enough knowledge on what it meant to live with someone else who wasn’t their parents. My friend’s spouse was also trying to figure out what professional career they wanted, which added a level of financial stress they couldn’t handle. In the end, she couldn’t mesh her own personal life with her spouse’s and, eventually, called it quits.

It’s true that for some, early marriage can be a grounding force helping center them through their tumultuous twenties. But this also requires a level of self-knowledge and communication that many people in their early twenties are still developing. I’m incredibly happy for people who have early marriages that have been successful. I just have seen more end unhappily than not.