Not even for a minute, I hope.
Surely those of you who know me especially know this could not in the slightest bit be true. If it were, you'd probably think I'd lost my mind somewhere along the way.
Today, I want to talk about engagement though. This isn't the first time I've touched on this. If you want to read my previous thoughts on it, you can click here to read my post, The Rules of Engagement.
It really blows my mind to go onto Facebook and see a new couple my age engaged every other week. I can't help to think to myself, "What are these people thinking?" Don't get me wrong here, marriage is a great, beautiful thing and so on and so forth, but at 20 years old, not so much.
At my old job, there was a girl that started working there as I quit that was a married 16 year old with a baby. I can't even imagine. If I had married the fellow I was dating at 16, I would have blown my brains out. Okay, maybe that's a bit to the extreme, but you get the point.
At 16, I had no idea who I was or where I was going in life. I was definitely not in any sort of shape to be making decisions that were going to be affecting the rest of my life. Even now, I see many of the folks I went to high school with getting married and having children. Let's focus on the marriage part though.
Most of you are nuts. I mean, I'm happy for you I suppose. You believe you've found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with and you're content with the decision you've made...for now. I can't help but think that in 10 years you might be looking back either divorced or in a miserable marriage thinking "Why didn't I just wait it out? I had the rest of my life. Why did I decide to make such a life impacting decision so young?"
At 16, I thought of marriage, as every 16 year old girl does. I thought what my life would be like if I were to marry my boyfriend at that time and how wonderful my life would be. That sure as hell didn't mean I wanted to jump the gun and get engaged though. I knew even then that it would be a good while before I would even consider any kind of engagement. I think at 16, I figured that I would have my shit figured out by 20 and I would be ready to be engaged and then married and starting a family not long after that. Now, I laugh in my 16 year old face.
I am nowhere near ready for marriage. I don't feel comfortable making such life-impacting decisions that I am going to have to face for the next 50-60 years. Don't get me wrong. I'm extremely happy where I am now. Lance and I have been together for quite awhile now and he really makes me happy. I took a big jump moving in with him and I am content with that for now. I am fairly confident that he will be the man I marry someday, but that's the key word: someday. I feel like in the next 2-3 years I could be ready to be engaged. I could be ready for some sort of life long commitment, but I also accept that in 2-3 years I may be laughing in my 20 year old face because I may still be nowhere near ready for that kind of thing.
I think a large part of engagement is not only knowing your partner, but really knowing yourself. At 20 years old, you are still this newly become adult. You're still working on figuring out how the world works and the evil things that it can throw at you. Although you're teenage years are over, there is still a lot of self-exploration and having the freedom to really figure out what you do and do not like and what's good for you and what you think is good for you.
I feel that being in your 20's, there is no need to rush into anything like this. Naturally, there is the worry of biological clocks and wanting to have your own children, but that doesn't mean that you need to get hitched at 20 and start having babies pronto.
Through the last couple of years, I've noticed that people who get married later in life tend to go a much shorter time before they are engaged, sometimes even less than a year. At first, I thought these people were just as psychotic as the ones getting married at 20, but then I realized that these are the people who already have life and themselves figured out and it is a much safer bet to be getting married in such a small amount of time. At my age though, I'm figuring the best bet is to be with someone at least 3-5 years before even considering any kind of engagement.
I think that's all I have for you today, folks.
Oh, and just to clarify: I am NOT engaged to be married, just in case you missed that.
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