I often hear about people my age getting married or seriously dating. It absolutely terrifies me. Okay, yeah, to each their own, but I simply just can’t imagine being married or even thinking about it at twenty-one years old. I’ve felt some kind of invisible pressure where I’m at the age that I need to meet someone to date seriously ASAP. It’s not even like I’m being told these things or even having a family member hint at it, but I still feel some kind of weird societal pressure to meet the guy who is going to ask me to marry him – and to meet him soon.
Can I just say something?
Marriage and seriously dating one person in your early twenties is complete bullsh*t. Not to be a Negative Nelly, but I think it leads to serious disaster. Case Study #1: My parents.
My parents met when my mom was twenty-one and my dad was twenty-three, and those suckers ended up getting married some five or so years later. A couple years after that, they’re buying a house together and I was born (yikes), and a few more after that, they’re divorced and hate each other, yet forced to be in contact with each other because they had married, bought a house together, and had me.
I’m twenty-one, the age my mom met my dad, and personally, if I was to see all the guys I’ve “talked to” (whatever that even means anymore) or hooked up with or casually dated in a room and was told one of them was my future husband, I think I’d have a breakdown. No joke – I think I’d actually spontaneously combust, because, to be blunt, I have sh*t taste in guys and just…ew.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say is that I can’t even imagine finding someone and putting in that commitment at my age – it baffles me. And not even that, I just don’t want to be tied to someone I would eventually hate at such a young age, which is what happened with my parents.
So now I turn to some words of advice that I have heard and read (paraphrased): Be single in your early twenties.
We are young women, exploring our lives and who we are in college and getting our education. I know so many women who would throw away their future just for a guy. I’ve done it. Before I came to NC State after high school, I went to UNCC for my high school boyfriend, as he’d gotten a major scholarship. He broke up with me a week after we got there. It pissed me off because I wanted to originally start at NC State and had gotten in, and I threw it away to follow this lame guy. SO many young women do this.
Your college degree, money, prospects and opportunities are not going to wake up one day and decide to break your heart. Going through at least the first half of your twenties focused on yourself will get you so many places. This isn’t the past where women were expected to marry young and cater to their husbands. By the way, I don’t hate marriage or dating, I just think there is so much more to life than that. If it’s 100% for you, then great, but there shouldn’t be any pressure to have to settle down right now!
You should be your #1 priority in your life, especially in your early twenties. Don’t waste these years on someone who could be temporary when you’re the most permanent thing in your life.