Let me preface this by saying I never had ANY intention of getting married at 22. In fact, part of my “life plan” consisted of going to college WITHOUT a boyfriend.I had my life planned down to ages for critical “life moments” but here I was signing my marriage certificate in 2016 at 22. I met the love of my life at 17. I was a hostess in a dingy Italian restaurant off the turnpike and the shaggy haired bus boy gave me his phone number. I had no idea this was going to be my first encounter with my future husband. We soon found out we were birthday twins and a mere 4 HOURS APART…fate can be pretty funny sometimes.
No one says how growing up with your spouse, not just growing old is a perfect foundation for a marriage. From graduations, pets, having jointly $14.56 in our bank account, apartments from the 1800’s, college, jobs that suck and of course trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives it's been a ride not many spouses can say they’ve had. I however, wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.
We’ve planned our future sitting on $50 couches with ripped cushions, shared countless aspirations over dinner on mismatched plates from Goodwill and countless nights talking about dreams on our misshaped mattress and box spring. So when we got married we didn’t have to figure out what we wanted in a life together, we had already talked about it for the past five years. I know where he sees himself in 12 years, how many kids we want to have, what kind of house we want and his dream job. Marriage at 22 wasn’t about discovering what the future held, it was about finally coming home and calling him my husband after almost 5 years together. It was about FINALLY getting to do all of those great things we planned on.
We’ve watched each other grow from boy and girl to man and woman. I knew him at 17 when he was a dishwasher with a bad haircut and no idea what he wanted from community college. Now he’s got a Bachelors degree and is working for a technology company making forms. He went from a boy with no idea to a man with many ideas and it's AMAZING to be able to be with him every step of the way. We push each other to do new things and try new experiences to grow more as people.
You don’t have to rush to have babies and can spend years (yes plural) traveling, crossing off bucket lists, and developing HEAPS of photo albums with candid tourist pictures. Or you can have babies young and be young parents and have that amazing experience. I love the fact we have all this time together as a couple to spoil ourselves, grow, learn, have adventures and not feel rushed to have babies. I mean what is better than traveling to all of these new exciting places with your best friend!?
You can make a lot of stupid choices that are not practical and spend too much money ton on silly things because you are young and still learning. Trust me the $300 “juicing” phase after watching one documentary on Netflix in 2012 was not my proudest financial choice. Plus we don’t have a ton of financial obligations currently besides rent, insurance, bills, groceries…ok so maybe we have some.
The best part of getting married young is knowing I get to do the rest of life with my best friend and I have so many more years left to annoy him..oops sorry honey!
