Why the rush to get married?

Certainly people aren't getting married in the United States at such young ages as they did in centuries past, but many weddings are still happening before the couple graduates college, if they go to college at all.

This is something my friends and I notice as we watch another friend get married at age 24, 22, 20, 18... I will attend a friend's wedding in a month, and she just graduated from high school.

If I were to marry early, it would be perhaps to start the count for a great anniversary party... we all admire marriages that last 50 years or more, so the earlier you marry, the sooner and the more likely you will reach that point.

Otherwise, there's no point. I can have just as much enjoyment in being single but still being with my soulmate. Many psychologists have even found that marriage can decrease a couple's happiness with each other, perhaps because marriage brings higher expectations for the relationship that are harder to reach.

It also seems that it is not as positive to marry early because the young bride and/or groom will not have as good of a chance to discover who they are, what they want, what they're good at and what they need. Being established in a career or having a degree or even experiencing more of what life has to offer before tying the knot can mean more stability to hold up the marriage. A few years can bring many realizations... maybe one of them prefers one type of person after all, or there are much bigger differences between them than previously thought. Then what? That may be part of what contributes to the fifty-percent overall divorce rate in the United States.

I am in no rush to get married for selfish reasons. If I marry early, I probably won't spend as much time with friends or discovering things I can only find out by myself. When I'm with my partner, I need to spend time to connect with him the proper way; I can't neglect him, but I'm not ready to neglect the other parts of my life either.

I suppose that it depends on the couple; many of my friends and acquaintances who married early are still together. There are also circumstances that force people together sometimes, such as unplanned pregnancies or unpleasant home lives. It just seems like the longer you wait, the more certain you are likely to be about the life of your relationship to your spouse. Life is short, but that doesn't mean there's plenty of time to make mistakes, especially if children are involved.