This is a burning question on the minds of many young adults these days. It seems to many that the benefits of marriage are less and less with each passing year, or is this just a false perception? Many believe that you lose so much when you get married. For example, you may lose your identity, your tax status, your ability to go to college, your dreams, your plans, and your future. If you're utilizing government benefits, you may lose those as well. In addition, it can be scary for young adults who are trying to make life-long decisions, to decide who they want to spend their life with (or if they even want to commit to that at all).
We want to share with you a little bit of research and help in answering these burning questions. Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia for the past 15 years and author of the newly released book: Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization, recently shed some light on this topic on the podcast Madison's Notes
He noted that most would agree that getting married later in your 20s or early 30s gives you the best chance for success, however, he did note 2 exceptions:
Couples who regularly attend religious services.
And non-cohabiting couples.
A "YOUNG LOVE" STORY:
I would like to expand on this a bit and share our story. My husband and I, who have been married for 29 years this August, met in our high school youth group at church and began dating at age 17. We were so young, and most would have said that we were "too young" and that we didn't know what we were doing, and they were probably right. Truly though, that was sort of the beauty of it all for us. There was so much we didn't know that we didn't know, but what we DID know was that Divorce was not an option, and we had to find a way to make it work. In one sense, being young and naive could have worked against us, but in another way - being young and naive worked for us because we never even considered that staying married wasn't an option. This was a lifetime decision for us - come what may.
Now we have been through it for sure. We have experienced the "for better" and we have experienced the "for worse" many times, but we will never regret growing up together and forming our beliefs and plans and dreams together - as ONE! We wouldn't have it any other way. Growing up together and figuring out who we were and who we wanted to be was such a wild ride and now here we are 29 years later - coaching and instructing marriages and loving life together! As the old song by the Judds says "Young Love, strong love, true love, It's a new love. They're gonna make it through the hard times and walk those lines. These ties will bind young love".
**Caveat: I want to add that we did fit into both of Wilcox's exceptions above as well. We attended church together regularly (always have, always will) and we did not live together before marriage. We did not know at the time that research backed up our decisions on that. All we knew was that we had those principles and they felt important enough to hold fast to them.
Of course, we aren't naive enough to believe that everyone that gets married young gets their "happily ever after", but according to Wilcox's book and the research, waiting to get married into your 30s doesn't necessarily increase your chance of not getting a divorce. Depending on your situation, it could even increase it, but that's for another day. If you want to know more, go check out the podcast and go purchase Wilcox's book.
EXCITING NEWS:
There's more!! We are so excited to announce that he will be joining us soon at Live the Life for his book tour! We can't wait for this event!! If you're interested in knowing more, please reach out to us via email. We would love to share more about this opportunity with you.
Here's to getting married young and learning how to make it work! Live the Life has been so instrumental in that for us as well. We only learned how to communicate well and conflict well in the last few years since we found Live the Life. If you haven't taken one of our marriage classes and learned these tools, we would love to help you! You can find more information out Here.