Waiting Awhile
So on the other side of the coin, if you wait until you’re older to get married, whether by choice or by circumstance, you end up growing on your own in a way that will allow you to bring more maturity to the relationship. You inevitably learn who you are as a person, what you stand for, and what characteristics you like or dislike in people. You may have also gone through a series of failed relationships and learned what you can accept to live with and what you absolutely can not. This allows you make a more informed--not better or worse-- judgment on what kind of person you want to spend your life with.

On the same token, however, if you wait quite a while before getting married, you may get to know yourself too well, getting stuck in your ways and not being able to compromise on things in a relationship. This is a huge aspect of marriage--finding a way to compromise with someone and taking someone else’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions into consideration. You also don’t share the same kind of history with another person-- you are two people who grew in completely different ways, bringing two different sets of experiences to the relationship. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

Dr. MacLean says, “The advantage of getting married later in life is that you know yourself and who you are in the relationship. You know what works and what doesn’t, what you want and what you don’t want. No matter what age you decide to marry, however, it still remains that you have to first decide to invest in the growth and development of that relationship because it serves you just as much if not more. You have to make a conscious commitment to work on the relationship and support your partner.”

“Being single is great!” says twenty-something advertising and marketing specialist, Seema Whig, who is enjoying her twenties and has no dreams of marriage just yet. “You have time to learn about yourself, move anywhere in the world, and do everything you want to do in your life--right now, when you’re young--without having to think about the impact each one of your actions has on someone else. There’s a whole lifetime for that.” And she’s right--to a point. When you’re in a relationship, your significant other always has a say in what you do, no matter how open the communication lines and how much freedom you give each other.

“Even in the best of marriages,” Dr. Mclean says, “Sometimes there are problems and people need to get help from a trained therapist. Every marriage has conflict like every other relationship in the world. Marriages that will survive are those in which there is a commitment where each person feels that the relationship is important enough to want to preserve it. As long as one party doesn’t feel marginalized or is being hurt, either physically or emotionally, other problems such as communication problems, difficulty in developing joint goals, these can be overcome as long as the couple learns to work together and make the appropriate changes.”

In the end, there are pros and cons to both sides. Although, whether you marry young or old, you will end up realizing that Prince Charming hasn’t been on the market since the days of Snow White. What you should realize is that your prince may already be in front on you and it is both of your’s willingness to work on the relationship that will turn it into the fairytale you have always dreamed about.


***************

Rachna Vohra is a writer, poet, and editor living in Montreal, Canada. She works as a technical writer and trainer by day, and runs her own business, S’Apostrophe (www.sapostrophe.org), offering writing, editing and translation services by night. She has published two books, The Distance Within and The Acorn and the Caterpillar, and has had her work featured in a poetry anthology, Beyond Memories. To find out more about Rachna and her creative endeavors, visit www.rachnavohra.com.