Originally Posted by Nyororin (Post 868302)

My feelings on this; People tend to become more "settled down", and more serious in life pursuits as they age. When starting out as someone who is already quite serious, with a very realistic view of things, and with very realistic goals - I do not believe that age is necessarily an issue. (Within reason, of course.)

From my point of view, the biggest reason marriages made between younger people tend to fail isn`t because of *age* as much as it is because of unrealistic expectations - basically a romanticized view of how a relationship will progress. A lack of education plays a much larger part in this than age - but the younger you are, the less likely you are to have had a decent education.

In the end, if you`re intelligent and educated enough to realistically judge whether the relationship will work, you`re also intelligent enough to judge when it likely will not. As there aren`t that many relationships that will work out in the long term, the odds are against you finding one. Age is not the factor - correlation is not causation. It`s just that you`re much more likely to be more educated when older - whether it be a book education, or educated via experience. Poor choices result in poor marriages.

I don`t encourage anyone to get married while young, but at the same time I`m not going to write off a relationship just because those involved aren`t past a certain age. I don`t think there is something wrong with someone wanting to commit or to be in a serious relationship at 18 - but at the same time I would expect them not to make the choice to commit hastily.

I definitely agree that children should not come into the picture at all until you have quite a lot of stability. We may have gotten married when I was 20, but we waited until we could buy a home before deciding to have a baby. (And were all moved in by the time the baby was released from the hospital.)