Wedding Blog
Because I’m pretty honest about my first marriage — both good and bad — I sometimes get messages or comments from women who are marrying as young as I was the first time, wanting to know what I would have done differently (other than, I suppose, not being young). I suspect other readers have been turned off by the same topic, figuring I just made stupid decisions that had little to do with my relative youth. In my last session with my fabulous therapist, he asked me the same thing: what could I have done differently?
Thing is, I didn’t think I needed to do anything differently, not at 21. There’s not a thing you could have said to me that would have made me doubt our ability to make our marriage work. We loved each other, we’d lived together, we knew each other’s weaknesses. How could we fail?
So accepting that waiting to get married wasn’t gonna happen, I would say to myself: decide that no matter what, you won’t get divorced until you’re 31*. Wish for it, consider it, but then set it aside until your 31st birthday. On that birthday, take stock of your relationship and then decide.
Your mid-twenties are going to be turbulent years, years spent trying to figure out how to extricate the threads of your own being from the cloth of your family. You’re going to feel lost, and alone, and not very sure about anything… and you will blame your husband and your marriage for that. You’ll believe you have lost yourself in him, are alone because he’s not with you, would know yourself better if you didn’t have to worry about him, and while that may be a little bit true, it’s mostly not. Without a pact — a real, honest, boots-on-the-ground commitment — to not actually leaving until those years are behind you, you will lose a wonderful man who was a great husband. You’ll discover that your life is just as crazy without him as it was with him and you’ll suddenly realize that it wasn’t him, it was you all along.
I love the wedding ritual Miss Cowboy Boot blogged about because it’s so real it’s mind-blowing. In my determination to learn all I could to recover from my divorce, I’ve talked to countless married couples, all of whom confirmed there will be times you will contemplate divorce. Really? Yes, even the ones who’d been married for decades. Without preparing for them, you might believe — like I did — the problem was in your choice of mate. And you might be right… but you might be wrong.
So we’ll be building our own little Lifeboat Box, and I’d love to hear other ideas for how to make it through rough times. I’m also asking guests to share words of wisdom rather than the more traditional well wishes. I’ll even provide envelopes so nobody feels uncomfortable being honest. Do you have any words of wisdom to share with a new bride? Please share. I’ll take all the help I can get.
*For some reason, 31 seems like a good grown-up age to me. I suppose it might be different for you.
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I am totally in love with this post. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to think our marriages will all be perfect, sunshine and happiness every single day. I’m only 21 and my fiance is 22 ,(we’ll be 22 and 23 when we get married) and it’s just, scary to know how much we’ll change. I think you make a very good point, no matter what commit to making your marriage work. My whole i guess… “idea” on the subject, is 10 years. if in 10 years we hate eachother… then maybe we weren’t meant to be, but if on the day of our 10 year anniversary.. if we still have love for eachother… then i think the rest of our lives should be pretty safe.
31 is totally a grown up age! And I love that ritual idea. 
Wow Cheese. As always well said. I wish I had an answer to your question.
Tee Hee, at 31 I was just starting to get my sh*t together… but then I’m a late bloomer! 35 was my grown-up age… and now that I’m passed that, I’m just sure that 38 might be a grown-up age!
We’re doing the box as part of our ritual, but with a plan to open it on anniversaries.
I think this is a great post. My fiance and I are young as well, and we’ve already gone through some turbulent times in the short few years we’ve been together, but I’ve found in talking to those older and wiser than me that more than anything, marriage is a commitment-the decision to love one another rather than the feeling of love. I’m looking forward to growing up (and growing old!) with my fiance; even if we have a more difficult than average relationship, we’re both committed to making the decision to love each other every day!
Hmm, I’m 32 and wondering if I am grown up yet. I definitely feel more “grown” then I did in my 20’s, but when I’m with friends that don’t live in the city and have a bunch of kids I’m always like “this is so grown up”
Great Post. I’m glad that you are so honest about your first marriage and your mindset. Lord have mercy, if I had married my boyfriend at 22, I’m sure I would have been divorced, hopefully well before 31!!
Heh, heh. I think “grown up” is a moving target! Isn’t that funny? I’m almost 30, and I keep thinking, should almost-30-yo’s still be slobs like I am? I figured I’d have grown up by now!
My parents have the best marriage I’ve ever seen– not just from my perspective– I hear it from people all the time. They have been married for 45 years– dating for 49 years. Before I got married my father said to me– “Just remember, this is what matters, everything else is a distraction.” His words are simple– and I know it hasn’t always been easy for them– but the simplicity of this philosophy keeps us going in our hard times. In a world full of stressors, your marriage/relationship has to be your priority– the question is: what is best for us, not me, not him, us.
I really liked this post. I think it puts marriage and self-identity into perspective. I currently have a friend who is married and feels like her life has reached its pinnacle and she’s only 28. She wonders what else there is for her to do. They are married, have a kid, and have a house. I think it’s important to throw sitcom marriages out the window and get down what’s real. Marriage is not always peachy-pink roses. There are some thorns that may grow. I think this is where my parent’s advice of seeking a soul-nurturer comes in (i.e. religion, meditation, therapy).
I don’t think we’ll do the ritual at the wedding, but maybe slightly before or slightly after. It was too personal for us to do in front of guests, but the idea and sentiment is beautiful and realistic~
Just like everyone else, I loved this post. Before I started datign my fiancee I was with the same guy from the time I was 16. We dated for almost 9 years… and it was a train wreck the whole time! Lol. Looking back I am so glad I didn’t get married when I was 21. I never would have imagined someone could be as wonderful as my future husband. Thank you so much for this post. It is wonderful.
As always, I love what you have to say. The part that rang the most true for me was in essence this: “It’s not you, it’s me.”
Because at the bottom I believe we are all egoists who don’t believe we’re egoists. We think other situations and people are to blame for the way we are and the things we do, that we are rational and logical (or even if we know we’re emotional and volatile, that we know this in a rational, logical way, and that that somehow circumvents the emotionality and volatility rather than being just another manifestation of it).
In reality so much of what we do has nothing to do with others or situations and everything to do with us: our fears, hopes, desires, habits, and more projected outward and given justification in the environment. For me growing up is learning that I have so much more control over how I behave than I usually give myself credit for.
Wonderful post, Cheese.
This gave me the goosebumps.
I have been married, divorced, this is my fourth engagement, and I have two kids. I’m 31. My mom always says that I crammed the life of a 60 yo into 25 years.
I still feel like a little kid most days.
Wow. I feel like 26 is going to my grown up age, but I’ve sort of always been a little ahead of the pack.
I know we will struggle (and I’m young) but I think the way we feel towards marriage in general before we start plays a huge part in our success…because we know divorce isn’t an option for us–and we know before we started that it’s going to take a ton of hard work, even if it doesn’t feel like it will, right now.
The best marriage advice I ever heard was from Will Smith. He was talking about his marriage and how they’ve survived the usual Hollywood 7-month itch. He said that they just made divorce not an option. When that is not an option for you, you find a way of working everything out. My fiance and I both thought it sounded like such good advice that we’ve adopted that as our plan.
This really resonated with me as well. I had four very serious boyfriends in my teens/twenties and I still say that I could have married any one of them, if I had wanted to. They were amazing people in their own right and the thing is: I knew then that someday I did want to be married, and I did want to share my life with someone. But, deep down I knew I had so much of my own stuff to deal with and figure out. While I was in the relationships, I did blame them for things that had more to do with me than with them. It was unfair, but I was also young and unknowing. Depending on the person and the stage of one’s life, it seems like it is too much sometimes to actually understand these “growing pains” while you are in the middle of it all. Youth is tricky like that. Ultimately, I still keep in touch with these exes and am now engaged to not only a man, but a LIFE that is right for me. I found myself at age 30 feeling happier and more at ease with my own self than ever before. There will always be growth and change in life, but now I have the confidence in myself and life experience that I will need to stick with it and make it through no matter what is to come.
I’m 28 and I look back frequently at how much I’ve grown up in every way, but how much further there is to go, too. I look at my relationship with my fiance and can say that it’s become even better just in the past 6 months.
We used to talk about breaking up, sometimes seriously, but always because we thought the other person needed something different. So we took that off the table. We admitted to each other that we’re what we want, for now and forever, and decided to not to mention/ threaten/ offer breakups. Instead, we’ll work hard to get along. And we already have, and I’m sure there will be more of that in our future.
This is a great post Cheesey I heart you!
I also totally agree, I haven’t been married before, but I know HAD a gotten married at 22 (there was potential) I don’t think it would have worked through all the shite I needed to work through. I know some ppl CAN do it and that is great, but I believe that relationship didn’t work out b/c God knew I wasn’t ready
Cheesy you’ve done it again!!!
There was also potential that I would have been married right after I turned 21 (cuz you have to be able to drink at your own wedding!!) and had that happened I would be divorced by now. But that’s because of him being a loser and cheating and lying to me for most of our relationship. FI and i have been together basically since I was 21 (ex and I broke up when I was 20) and we have both done a lot of growing up together. But we’re fortunate in that we’ve grown together and not apart, which I’ve seen all too frequently in our group of long term young relationships. We were lucky that we’ve had the same common goal throughout, so we knew no matter what we would work through it and so far so good. We both want what my parents have (30 years in dec!) and I’m completely confident that we’ll reach that goal together no matter what
As always, I love your realistic attitude and complete honesty that you post for the hive to learn from. I was engaged previously, and it took a lot of work for me to look at myself and really figure out why it didn’t work. I may not be at my “grown up” age yet, but I’ve learned how to be honest with myself, and I think that’s the best thing anyone could have helped me with. You’ve got it down!
You write the most honest, cut-to-the-chase posts. It is so refreshing. I think it’s so true that you have to remember that there WILL be good and bad times. I love the ritual idea.
P.S. My parents have the best marriage I know (almost 40 years) and they both have said they’ve thought of divorce. I think it happens with almost any couple who are introspective and analytical. But if you plug away I think you’re usually happy you did. My parents are!
I’m a 21 year old bride (my fiancé is 26) and your posts do scare me, but I love my fiancé very, very much and I honestly think it will work. My grandparents got married at 21 and they had a wonderful relationship, I fail to see why young marriages fail today where they have worked in the past. Undoubtedly some young marriages will fail. It depends on how well you know yourself and the other person, each relationship is different. Divorce rates are high at any age and marriage is a huge gamble. But it is one that my fiancé and I enter into willing believing the odds to be stacked in our favour.
As a 21 year old with a 22 year old fiance (22 & 23 when married), I can definitely see what you’re saying. I think a lot of younger couples don’t know what they’re in for when they get engaged/married.
In fact, there are other couples my age who are getting engaged whom I feel shouldn’t. At risk of sounding hypocritical, I feel like this age is too young for most people (excluding myself).
But when it comes down to it, we’ve been together for nearly 4 years and I knew the night we met that he was (is) the one. I also think by his respecting my decision not to have any type of sex before the wedding, we’ve really got to know each other over the last 4 years and we know that our feelings are genuine.
So even if we’re young, I can’t get enough time with him so I’m so happy we have the rest of our lives to be together :).
@Lily and @ColorCoated: With apologies, I didn’t think about how this might read to someone in the age group I was when I first married. I’m sorry if it made you feel defensive!!
Knowing the risks and knowing how to avoid them are skills, as is figuring out how to get out of the hole when you fall in by accident. My first marriage would have been okay had I been less self-centered, more willing to get outside help, and more knowledgeable about the reality of marriage. You both sound like you’re great with all of that!!
And to answer the question about why young marriages fail, I see a couple of reasons in my own experience. We teach kids — girls, specifically — to be independent and able to stand on their own feet, and especially becauase my parents are divorced, I didn’t see how much “giving in” and “giving up” was acceptable and necessary to making a relationship work. If my guy tells his friends he needs to check with me before committing to a night out, it’s no big deal. But doing the same thing WAS a big deal to me. Should I have to ask him? Did I want to? Should I ask him, even if I don’t have to? And women will sometimes worry about other women who seem to be giving up and giving in too often… but boy, you have to do that in thousands of little tiny ways to make it work. I watched him very closely and mimicked his willingness to ask, and it helped a great deal. For me, that was a stunning revelation!
Wow, this response could be it’s own post!
31 is my grown-up age, too. Mr. Peng and I started dating when I was 19, and I think I was just about dying to get married when I was 24 (we got married when I was 26 and he 29). I often worried about how we’d grow to be different people over time. We’re not done growing; I was a different person at 21 than I was at 19; different at 24 from 21; different now at 27 from 24. I don’t ever think I’ll stop worrying about growing up to be different, even when we’re 60.
I’m glad we waited a while to marry (7 years), although by no means were we “old” when we married at 26 and 29. No matter how much you think you do think as a “we” when you’re boyfriend and girlfriend, it is just different when you’re married. It’s no longer something that you make a conscious effort to be; you just are a “we”. I think a lot of it has to do with how people treat you… no one expects, nor has hurt feelings, when you don’t come home for a Holiday because you’re visiting your husband’s family (a lot of bf/gf couples get this grief from their respective families, no matter how long they’ve been together), social functions always include your husband/wife, and you’re just in a state of “united”, rather than trying/saying/forcing a state of united. And as weird as it is to admit this, it was nice to retain that independence for a while when we weren’t married. I’d say life is easier now, being married, when it comes to all these outside forces, but at the same time, being young and being “independent”, even if we were in a relationship, is something I look back on with a high value.
This is not meant to put down people that marry young at all… we’re all different people. I’m just saying that, in hindsight, those 7 years that we were together and weren’t married were a time of extreme independent growth, and I value the fact that we weren’t married for that period of time, that people still treated me as an “I” and not a “we” then.
Wow, this is so interesting. I never thought of it exactly that that — very insightful of you. I was all over the place in my 20s and couldn’t imagine having brought a life partner into that crazy.
I met my soon-to-be-hubby when I was 23 and he was 28. While we joke now that we should have married six months after we met (we have been together almost 8 years now), I don’t think it would have worked out for us if we had gotten married then. We are intensely different people, and that which draws us together is partly what pushes us apart.
I do think it was important for us to learn that and to have the time to work through our issues. Or if not work through, then figure out where we stand and what we want. And I would say that we’re still figuring it out.
I will be the first to admit that we make horrible jokes about divorce and breakups (ours, not others), but I think its mostly because we know our relationship well enough to know that it has a chance of lasting. Perhaps not forever, but maybe long enough so that one of us will be dead and buried (the other cremated)
But I personally think the years in the middle, while not right for most people, was perfect for us. It gave us the time to grow up in our twenties (and thirties), and to figure out what we wanted from ourselves — and each other.
Amazing post, as always, Miss Cheese! It takes courage to see faults in our own decisions, and you’re never quick to throw blame. You will be a wonderful wifey! 
Mrs. Pengy’s post above sounds so much like my relationship with my fiance; we started dating exclusively at 19 and we’ll have been together for 7 years by the time we’re married as well. I felt like we waited too long and both of us were desperate to get married when I was 24, but now looking back at those years, I’m glad we waited. I think I have a better grasp of life and responsibilities more, now that I have a few years of “living in the real world” (and not just college-life) under my belt. Thanks for the honesty ladies!
I *LOVE* how I can expect that on Weddingbee!
I only 20, will be 21 when I get married, and although I am young, I am a realist. I saw Miss Cowboy Boot’s blog and immediately called my fiance and we are incorporating it into the reheasal dinner by having our parents place the nails in the box.
I feel extremely hypocritical when I see people my age and even a few years older and question whether their marriage will work. Yet I realize that a marriage is work, it is not playing house until you get bored and want someone else. I believe that the generation in which I have grown up in has come to see marriage as a choice that can be undone rather than a lifelong commitment. My parents married when my mom was 21, my fiance’s parents married at 19, and both sets of our grandparents married at 18; all are still together.
I feel like this comment is going to come off as extrememly hypocritical and naive, yet I know for myself and my fiance we are ready and willing to take the steps, even pre-marital counseling, that are needed to insure that this is a forever kind of decision.
This post resonates with me. You are so right with the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. If I sit down and think every time we argue, or I feel stressed or uncertain about our relationship, I can usually attribute my feelings to something else in my life. It’s not the Mr that’s the problem at all. It’s me in my crazy irrational head. Or other things in my life like work, or diet or other family that are causing the problem, but I’m subconsciously twisting it to be a problem with him. In many ways he’s actually the absolute constant in my life!
Another way I cause problems for myself is that I’ll have these day-dream exchanges in my head, like I’m having a bad day at work, I’ll get home and the Mr will have cooked dinner, the house will be clean and he’ll have bought me some flowers etc etc. When I actually get home and this day-dream hasn’t happened for any number of normal, logical reasons, I get mad because I had been dreaming of other things. Completely stupid. At least I am learning to recognise when I do it?!
Seriously dumb. Anyone else like that?!
A bought a friend of mine an ice cream maker when she got married several years ago. She said this gift has saved their marriage many times. Every time they get in one of those horrible fights that you think might destroy you, they go to the kitchen and make home made ice cream together. It was an idea they came up with before they got married and she said it works for them, because who can be mad when eating home made ice cream?
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Mrs. Cheese, Knoxville
Age and Occupation: 29, Engineering Manager
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 27, CAD Designer
Engagement Date: July 31, 2008
Wedding Date: May, 2009
Blogging Since: October 16, 2008
Venue: Our home and the two acres it sits on
About Me: I’m an emotional girl who loves sentimental things, parenthetical asides, and trying to do things herself. I can cook, sew, am a whiz at planning, terrible at delegating, and totally in love with my fiancé (who will be my second husband but first love of the rest of my life). For our home/ garden/ DIY wedding, we’ll be moonlighting as interior designers, home improvers, and gardeners with the help of our fabulous friends and neighbors. We can’t wait to be married, and are learning how fun getting married can be.
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