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• Thursday, June 8, 2006 09:06 AM

  Married at 21...

  I married at 21. My college sweetheart (the best human being I have ever met, incidentally--our relationship sounds a lot like the LW's) and I were deeply in love and couldn't imagine living apart. We didn't even give a moment's consideration to just shacking up. Why alienate our rather conservative parents for no good reason, when we already were inseparable and planned to be so until death? Why not just formalize that inseparability in the eyes of God, the state, and society? (God has since been discounted from that group, but never mind.) I even (gasp!) took my husband's name--I wanted a new identity to go with my new life, one that I shared with him.

  We've been together and more-or-less happy--the highs approximating blissful, the lows approximating merely content--for 18 years, and it's been an entirely equal partnership, although after all these years we still argue about who does the dishes. I find myself deeply irritated with people who tell me I'm allowing myself to be oppressed by the patriarchy--were my husband that sort of man, I simply wouldn't have married him.

  Would I recommend marrying young? Probably not. When you're 21, you really don't know who you are yet. You may think you know where you're going, but you really don't. Same with your partner. We were extremely lucky that we were able to adapt to changes in each other's hopes and life goals, but we didn't go into marriage expecting those changes, and I don't think we were even fully mature then. In a way, you could say we grew up together, which made us even more inseparable. For us, though, it was dumb luck.

  I hate that ideology plays such a huge part in the decision of women whether to get married or not, but I don't blame feminism for that--the history of marriage is such that deep suspicion and skepticism is an entirely reasonable reaction. However, it's still a distraction. The LW should be asking herself, and her boyfriend, whether they can handle inevitable change, whether they will both put the marriage above everything else (important!), whether they're prepared to be attuned to changes in each other that--if they're not vigilant--could transform a familiar companion into a stranger, and not whether by joining their lots together they're somehow selling out to the patriarchy.

  —Marianna Trench Read Marianna Trench's other letters
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