Married Young

I married young. I was a teen bride. I was a newlywed at 19; my husband was 20. My husband and I faced upcoming obstacles that neither of us was prepared for.

One obstacle we both faced was money issues. Not many 20 year olds that I know of make a substantial income. My husband started a job at just $7.00 an hour. He was a college graduate, too. I was only working part-time as a waitress because I was still in college. Needless to say, our combined income was hardly enough to scrape by. Money definitely was tight, and became even tighter when we had a baby and I quit working to stay at home with him. Luckily for us, we qualified for WIC, which helped out a lot, because my son was on lactose-free formula and it was VERY expensive. I also was on Medicaid when I was pregnant, since my husband's employer didn't offer medical insurance. I got treated rather poorly because I was a young mother and I was on Medicaid (but that is a whole other article...)

Another obstacle we faced were the snide comments we heard from everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, including family members. They may have meant well, but their objections and comments were demeaning. On my wedding day, the day I was to pledge my life to my then-future husband, as I sat in my wedding gown, awaiting my march down the aisle, I heard, "50% of all marriages end in divorce within the first year." We had to put up with the remarks all through our engagement, before our wedding, and all through the first year of our marriage. We didn't know what we were doing. We were too young. We were too irresponsible. We would never last. The list goes on and on. It didn't matter that we love each other and that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. And heaven forbid we should fight (as every couple does!) I'd call my mother to talk and she would ask, "Are you two getting a divorce?"

A difficult hurdle we faced that we weren't aware of until after the wedding was the slow disappearance of our friends. Or, should I say, our single friends. They stopped calling. We were married. We didn't need friends. Or so they thought. Everyone needs friends, married or not. Sure, we inhabited the same house and had the same last name, but that didn't take away from the fact that we needed people outside our home to mingle with. But slowly, our friends stopped calling and stopped coming over. That was a difficult incident for us, because we weren't expecting for our friends to drop off the face of the earth.

Eight years and three children later, my husband and I still occupy the same address and our last names are still the same. We've lasted longer than my parents did, as well as my sister's first marriage. We have problems; we argue, but underneath it all, we knew what we were doing, and despite the problems we faced, if we could go back and do it again, we wouldn't wait until we were older.