So I married young. Yeah I know, you thought this article was from one single lady to the next. Hear me out, because I have something I think you need to hear.
I was you, a happily single girl. I spent my senior year of high school free as a bird and I loved it. I had no boyfriend, didn't even have a crush. It was just me and it was far better than dating some loser guy who just made me mad. I couldn't believe it either, since the perpetuating ideology of you're-better-with-a-boyfriend dominated the high school realm. Sure I thought guys were cute, but no boy was as good as that feeling of having endless possibilities and nothing to hold me down. I was comfortable with myself. Entering college as a freshman, I vowed that I didn't need a boyfriend that year.
I met Tommy, my husband, the second week of school (he doesn't remember). A new girlfriend of mine, Tommy, his now best friend Aaron, and I crawled through the attic window that lead onto the roof of Collins Alumni Auditorium. The stars were bright and the conversation was engaging, with Aaron. Tommy talked to the other girl the whole time. It's still a hilarious realization that the guy who pays attention to every minute detail and has a memory twice the capacity of mine can't remember the first time we met!
Anyway, throughout the semester it was encounter after encounter with Tommy, with each I got more intrigued, but always in the back of my mind was the promise I made myself. It was so easy to have silly little crushes on other guys because they were non-threatening. They couldn't truly tempt me out of my independent self-romance. Tommy, on the other hand, felt dangerous to carrying out my plan. He wasn't kidding, and I knew it deep down. Hence, it took me all semester to break the personal promise. On December 12, 2012, Tommy Wilson impressively performed Clair de Lune on the piano in one of the music department’s practice rooms. As his hands rolled and the octaves rose, he leaned over and kissed me mid-chord. The rest is history.
What I believed before Tommy was simply what my personal experiences taught me: boyfriends are suffocating and they take time away from family, friends, and homework. They treat you poorly, lure you back in, and break your heart once more. They aren't supportive of you when you need them to be. They can't be trusted. Most importantly, they try to chain you down. All of this I had come to believe through my important, but narrow, high school experiences.
What Tommy taught me was that a real man who loves me also loves my independent spirit. A real man loves my thoughts and my passion for justice. A real man will trust me when I push the limits of my independence. A real man, though sad and upset, will see me off at the airport as I study abroad for three months without him. This man will hug me and wish me a great night when I buy last minute tickets to a Parachute concert with my girlfriends. This real man who loves me has never once made me feel like I was missing something.
Other girls like me will list off a number of things that are benefits of marrying young, like learning and making habits together, etc. The one thing I would like for single girls to know is that the right guy will make you feel as awesome as when you are single, if you feel as good as I did. I know you aren't wanting to settle down right now, and that's great! You need to be confident and secure in yourself. Loving yourself is the only way to love someone else fully. When you know how to love yourself right, you know what the other person needs to feel loved. You should be proudly, confidently single. But this brings me to something else I feel the need to say.
I wish you wouldn't look down on me because I'm your age and married. I can't begin to recall the number of articles I've read by single ladies who are confident they don't want to be married or dating right now and here's all the reasons why, blah blah. For example, “I want to have fun and go out with my friends, meet new people, and experience crazy things.”
And, “You can work on building your resume for grad school.”
Even better, “Why be tied down during the years that fun can be endless, whether spend in or outside of your home, in the country or even in the middle of the ocean? Why be committed to someone else when you both are still in school, striving towards degrees that are for your own personal gain? Why be in a relationship when you could be having the time of your life with girlfriends, or spending a Friday night binge watching "Grey’s Anatomy: with your mom?”
Sometimes in the wake of single girls confidently professing their decision to remain single, they start to bring us married ladies down. According to the thoughts above, I shouldn’t be able to have fun with my friends, experience crazy things, be in grad school (because I obviously didn’t have time to work on my resume and I can’t pursue something for my own personal gain), or watch TV with my mom…..
Give. Me. A. Break. If you are happy you are single, don't assume your happiness is because getting married takes it away from you. Don't say you are happy that you can travel and do what you want now, because that assumes us married girls can't do that. I did not have to give up my independent spirit or my ability to travel or hang with my friends when I got married. I gained the most amazing friend and lover of my soul. In addition, I did not give up my ability to take personal time. Tommy doesn't have to know where I am every hour of the day, and he doesn't care if I need to slip away to a coffee shop without him every once in a while. And for the love of Pete, we are both in professional school. I graduated with my Master’s degree in molecular biology and I’ve started a Physician Assistant program…while married. (gasp!) Tommy is in pharmacy school and was recently the first author of a publication in Chemical Research in Toxicology. (what? Like no way!)Even more so, Tommy and I have long-term plans together. We have dreams together. Dreams of where we want to live and where we want to go. Career dreams. Pet dreams. Travel dreams. We really aren't that different from you. Maybe a little more planning is required since we have two careers and two sets of dreams to sync up, but the effect is the same.
