When Margie and Stephen Zumbrun were battling the urge to have premarital sex, a pastor counseled them to control themselves. The couple signed a purity covenant.
Then, when the two got engaged and Margie went wedding dress shopping, a salesperson called her “the bride who looks like she’s 12.” Nonchurch friends said that, at 22, she was rushing things.
The agonizing message to a young Christian couple in love: Sex can wait, but so can marriage.
“It’s unreasonable to say, ‘Don’t do anything … and wait until you have degrees and you’re in your 30s to get married,'” said Margie Zumbrun, who did wait for sex, and married Stephen fresh out of Purdue University. “I think that’s just inviting people to have sex and feel like they’re bad people for doing it.
Hey, arranged marriages! It’s biblical and culturally accepted world wide. No option for those in America, huh?
I do enjoy the irony of the application of current social pressure to resist social pressure, though. I doubt the purveyors are aware of their Fe++ -y content.
So what’s wrong with getting married right out of university anyway, or before university for that matter. If both he and she are solidly grounded in the faith and are mature enough to handle it, go see the parson, buy the rings, set the date.
Women seem to mature faster than men these days. Any young woman who would be willing to tie herself to a 21- or 22-year-old man is asking for heartache.
Check out the “poster couple” for the young and married argument — the gal is a fifth-grade teacher who owns a cake decorating business and the young man is a “singer-songwriter.” Any bets on how long it’s going to take for her to resent being the breadwinner and taking care of the house and baby while he does his “singer-song-writer” thing? Sigh…
OK, I’ll admit it. When I was 21 and at university, I was dating a young artist with a purple mohawk who was as passionate about social change as I was. Hanging out with him was interesting but there was no way I’d marry him! And young people should have the time and freedom to do that — get to know different types of people. They shouldn’t be fixated on getting married so they can have “legitimate sex.” And, yes, that IS what this is about.
I (and many of my friends) graduated from university retaining our virginity. It’s not that difficult if you’re working on a career and personal development. The last thing you want is to risk a pregnancy changing your plans. I wish I could honestly say that the religious arguments kept me honest, but they didn’t. If there was a 1 percent chance I could get pregnant, that was too risky for me and for all I had worked.
I feel for the gal in the article. She married her artist and she will now have to find a way to motivate the dude or be willing to shoulder most of the responsibilities until he grows up. If he doesn’t, I daresay the future probably includes a divorce. My mohawk guy was fun but NOT husband material.
[blockquote] I (and many of my friends) graduated from university retaining our virginity. It’s not that difficult if you’re working on a career and personal development. The last thing you want is to risk a pregnancy changing your plans. I wish I could honestly say that the religious arguments kept me honest, but they didn’t. If there was a 1 percent chance I could get pregnant, that was too risky for me and for all I had worked. [/blockquote]
Back before the days of more effective birth control and abortion on demand, this was a big motivation for many teens and young adults, including the boys. Did you really want to blow a future comfortable life for a couple hours of pleasure? Two observations:
It is possible to get married relatively young and stay married. Also, you honestly won’t die if you delay sexual activity past the teen years. Below are two non-random cases in point.
NW Bob and Dallas Alice got married at ages 24 and 20 respectively. Dallas Alice’s father had to appear before a magistrate and give permission for her to marry. The age of majority in our then state of residence was 21!
That was 37 years ago! We were no paragons of virtue. But, we had this abiding sence that marriage was a life long commitment and decision, not a feeling. We were both raised as Christians but had both fallen away from the church for a while. Yet, God never gave up on us. We were married in a Episcopal church with the aid of a member friend. We started attending and found a home there. God reeled us back into the sheep pen. (He must have had something in mind, even back then. Two years ago we were founding members of a church plant, now an ACNA parish.)
My paternal grandmother, born in 1890, did not marry until she was 30. She promptly had 3 sons. So here is, (whoops, was) living proof that you won’t die if you delay marriage and sexual activity. We are asking people with same sex attraction to forego sexual activity altogether. How can we not ask our opposite sex attraction people to wait for a while?
Yours in Faith,
NW Bob
More proof that you can abstain from sex and not die. I’m 46, single, never had sex. One can even abstain from sex and be joyful and content. I know it first-hand.
But certainly even 25 years ago when I was in my early 20s, there was more support for celibacy and chastity, even though my own liberal Episcopal church provided no such support, I had plenty of support from a Christian fellowship group I was a part of.
I see the fear of commitment as being a very big issue in our culture today. Promoting earlier marriage could be a very good and important message with many societal benefits. But it shouldn’t be all about providing a legitimate outlet for sex.
Sex aside, I think getting married younger forces you to grow up faster and not delay adulthood (which I don’t think really begins until you’re married). By staying single, you tend to frolic and prance around and develop selfish tendencies. You’re also much more likely (I assume there is evidence to confirm this) to be un churched.
I can say without a doubt that waiting until I was 30 (she was 29) to get married has on the whole been deleterious to our marriage – we both had been living accountability free for 7 years post college, and had developed habits that are difficult to integrate into marriage. The “time to mature” theory is really not that at all, I look at it more as a time to delay.
Additionally the grandparents, through no fault of their own, are much older and less able to help you. My parents went to Europe for 6 weeks when I was 8 years old, by contrast my wife and I have never gone away for as much as 6 days.
Each situation is different. I know several couples who married early, and the results span the gamut. One little couple got pregnant before they wed and are expecting their second child any minute. They live with her parents and the husband is having trouble keeping low-paying jobs. Another couple I know married right out of college, having dated since high school. They have four kids, and one of the strongest marriages (and Christian commitments) I’ve ever seen.
I would say that the article argues that a young age shouldn’t be a reason, by itself, not to marry, and that a benefit to marrying young is easing the burden to remain chaste in a culture that doesn’t support that commitment.
I personally married “late” at 32 and we have experienced many of the pros and cons of that – we were on solid ground financially, but were pretty set in our ways which made for challenging adjustments, and we also were not able to conceive as easily as we would have liked. I was 39 when my only child was born. This also has plusses and minuses. But I know the Lord guided our decisions and our circumstances.
Every couple is different, and they need the clear guidance of the Holy Spirit to know how the Lord wishes to orchestrate their life together. Set rules here may not be helpful.
Chris and Cindy are both on the mark. Some people never “grow up” to a maturity level necessary to a good marriage. Others grow up fast when they are given opportunity. Others grow to great maturity but are never called to marry (see Anonymous).
When my wife and I married, she was 19 and looked like 15. I was 20 and looked like 18. Being in Virginia, I had to go to the county of her birth and buy her at the courthouse for $2. Also, since I was under 21, I had to have my parents consent to marry. We were totally adult and totally prepared to build a life together. Our Pastor was happy to marry us. My grades in college improved and I graduated on schedule, and rose high in my profession.
This all happened 47 years ago. The secret is God put us together. We both looked to Him for guidance in selecting a mate and found great happiness in submitting not only to each other but to His will for our life together. I cannot imagine that life could be better in any other way.
Today, our culture holds kids back for a variety of reasons. Not all of them are good.
RE: “Sex aside, I think getting married younger forces you to grow up faster and not delay adulthood (which I don’t think really begins until you’re married). By staying single, you tend to frolic and prance around and develop selfish tendencies. You’re also much more likely (I assume there is evidence to confirm this) to be un churched.”
I’ve seen the opposite effect — single people marrying so that they can inflict their prancing around and selfish tendencies on their spouse and remain a child.
Signed,
A Single, Christian Adult Who Is Thankful For Paul’s Teaching
well #9, I wrote “tend to” so it’s certainly not an absolute.
What are the financial realities of being a married undergrad? You’d probably get more financial aid since you’d be considered independent of your parents, right? My parents lived in their university’s married housing in the 60s after marrying at the end of their freshman year, does that still exist?
Honest question here – if you get married while you’re still in college and like most people you have to take out student loans – are both spouses equally responsible for the loans if they divorce later?
It’s just nothing I ever considered before, sorry if I sound naive. Although I’m really, really happy to not be married to my high school/college girlfriend. Really, really happy.
Is our life not on God’s Time?
bl
My husband and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary this last Friday. I am 26 and he is 27. That means (let me do some math…) I was 21 and he was 22 when we married. So I guess you could say we married young. However, he is the most grounded, down-to-earth man I have ever met, one of his mother’s friends told him he was the oldest young person he had ever met (this was when he was a teenager). So I guess I got a pretty good deal.
He is a software engineer, I am a stay-at-home mom of an 19 month old boy, we own our home, and I’d say we have a pretty strong marriage (although like any marriage it has a few bumps).
On the other hand I know middle-aged people who have never grown up and probably shouldn’t have ever married.
Just a few thoughts.
Grace,
Many thanks for these very wise “few thoughts”. — Stan
My wife and I also celebrated 5 years, this past February. I am now 24: my wife was “willing to tie herself to” a 19 year old! When we married, I didn’t have a job, although I had already graduated from college a year prior, but I certainly agree that marriage, and the kids that followed, matured me faster than any other track my life could have taken at the time. My wife has stayed at home for over a year prior to having kids, and I have been working as a software engineer since then.
I consider my marriage one of the most amazing blessings I have received from God, including its timing in my life. I never imagined myself marrying young, and both our parents were rather shocked and at first appalled at our intentions when we decided how soon we wanted to get married. But they had both come around to it by the time of the wedding, and now my parents are even proponents of early marriage as a result. Especially since they are young enough to really enjoy their grandchildren!
Had I waited to pursue serious dating until I was older, I probably would have had lots of preconceptions of what I was looking for in a wife that would have been entirely based on my own foolish notions. Instead, because I was young and had never dated, I was just discerning what to do with my life and enjoying having fellowship with other Christians when I met my wife at our church (now an ACNA parish in Pittsburgh). Our church community has been a huge source of support to us in our marriage, first by taking us seriously, helping us get set up in a home (e.g. we lived in an apartment owned by our rector until I got a full time job and we bought a house), and giving us both time to be together and build our marriage and also responsibility to the body as we have grown.
I certainly have no regrets for never having had a period of delayed adolescence in my early 20s, which is what I’m sure I would have defaulted to if I hadn’t gotten married. Without the immediacy of having a family, our society makes it very easy for us to eschew responsibility. My wife and I have noticed sometimes that there are individual things we would have sometimes liked to do but are more difficult now, but we’re always aware that such things are fleeting. So what if we can’t go on international vacations for pleasure right now, because we aren’t willing to leave our kids behind and it’s too expensive/inconvenient to take them with us? We’re not going to look back on our life and regret not having had that opportunity.