Young and engaged!

If you are in love then why do you need to get engaged now? Love is suppose to be patient! Have you even thought about how you will support yourselves while going to college? There are serious challenges to marrying young. Ask yourselves why you want to get married. If your reasons include wanting to get away from your parents, pregnancy, or fear of losing one another, don’t get married. Being on your own does free you from parental control, but this change in lifestyle brings along a whole new set of responsibilities in your lives. You will have to deal with financial issues, where to live, jobs, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, decision making, in-laws, continuing your education, and if pregnant, child care.

The fact is that most teen relationships — even the strongest ones — usually end. The key word here is lifetime — and that’s a very long time, making the commitment a very serious decision. For teens, romantic relationships can begin and get serious very quickly. We think they will last forever. But they rarely do. Young couples think that by getting married they are ensuring their relationship. They feel that by getting married the other person will never leave them. All you have to do is look at the high divorce rate of teen marriages to realize that this is not true. You both are still growing, & changing. Some will grow apart once they are older. Some will learn that they really did not love their spouse as much as they thought they did. Some will regret getting married all together. A teen couple should consider some sort of pre-marital counseling. This counseling could help the teens decide if they are really meant to be married or if they should wait. They could also talk to other people who have gotten married as teens. This could give you an idea of what life will be like after marriage. It is better to wait until you are older, more mature and more established in life. You don’t want to look back one day and realize that you didn’t really get to be a teen and young adult.

You need to remember that being married is not all fun and games. Life is tough for married teens. So this decision should not be made lightly or quickly.