Marriage Moats-Growing Together
Published: Wed, 10/26/11
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 These two apples grew up side by side. You can tell because of the way they nestle together. One fits perfectly into the hollow of the other, so more of them can touch than if they were both perfectly round, and only bumped in one small spot.
There is a growing body of research suggesting that when couples marry in their early to mid twenties, they actually have better odds of staying attached than if they wait until their late twenties or early thirties. I have pondered this. My children's generation has raised the median age for marriage by about four years since John and I wed in 1980. Sociologically speaking, that is a noticeable blip on the marital EKG.
One presenter I have heard dissect these statistics is Mark Gungor of Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage. His stance is that when you are already well established in your lifestyle, it can leave less room to be influenced by a spouse. I know I had not yet solidified my habits by the time John and I began to make one home. He was twenty five and I was twenty two. Mark believes that couples do well to make joint decisions about careers, and graduate school, rather than to bend two well defined trajectories. Another part of the story is that people who wait until they are twenty seven or thirty to form a committed relationship are more likely to have already given pieces of their heart away. It can be difficult to regather those fragments, and repackage them for your one and only.
Of course statistics are merely that... statistics. They try to describe trends as if they are not a constellation of human beings with feelings and histories and Achilles' heels.
Yet we can do well to listen to and weigh the experience of others, rather than pretend that we are the first people to ever attempt to grow a fruitful relationship. Photo by Jenny Stein
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