It’s natural to want to dive right into marriage with someone when you’re head-over-heels in love. But rather than making that gigantic leap as soon as possible, here’s why you should hold off as long as you can if you really want a fairy tale ending to your love story:
- It takes a long time to get to know someone. When you first meet someone — especially someone who likes you — they’re going to be on their best behavior. If the guy you’re dating has any sense at all, he’s going to be working his hardest to impress you. It’s only when both of you get comfortable and start letting your guards down around each other that you’re both going to start to see each other’s uglier sides. This can take a couple of years, and when it happens, you’re both going to have to figure out whether the other person’s good qualities make the bad ones worth sticking around for.
- Divorce is messy AF. A breakup is never fun, but if you’re not married, it’s relatively simple. Divorce, on the other hand, is a long and expensive legal process. Even if you feel like you’re currently dating the love of your life, it’s worth putting off marriage for a few years just to make sure your relationship can stand the test of time. If you get married too soon and discover that it’s not going to work out, you’ll regret not breaking up during a stage when you didn’t need to hire an attorney.
- Love is a marathon, not a sprint. It doesn’t take long to develop an infatuation for someone, but true love is a different animal. It takes time to build that kind of a bond with another person, and if you’re constantly rushing from one stage of your relationship to the next, you might find that you married someone you really didn’t love as much as you thought you did. Take time to let your connection develop; marriage is a big step, and it should be treated as a long-term goal rather than a short-term goal.
- If you really love someone, waiting to get married shouldn’t be a big deal. There are very few circumstances that warrant a rushed marriage, and being madly in love with someone isn’t one of them. If you care about someone enough to want to marry them, making your union legal will just be a checkpoint in your love story rather than the finish line. Someone who truly loves you will understand if you want to wait to tie the knot in order to make sure it’s the right decision.
- You have to make sure you can last through the tough times. The “honeymoon phase” of a relationship can last for one or even two years… and then, things will start to get rocky. That’s when the novelty of the relationship will wear off and the big fights will begin. And if you get married before you have to deal with these major disagreements, you might find yourself legally bound to someone you can’t stand to be around. Make sure your relationship can stand years’ worth of disagreements before committing yourself to a lifetime of them.
- A lot can change in a few years. If you look back to how your life was just five years ago, it’s a safe bet that it’s completely different from how it is now. Everything from your taste in men to where you want to live can switch around a good bit in a few years’ time. The last thing you want is to feel trapped when you realize that your marriage is making it difficult to pursue your dream of teaching abroad. Waiting a little longer will make sure that neither of you will want different things in life before settling down with each other.
- When it comes to marriage, “too late” is better than “too soon.” You’ll hear of very few people who regret waiting an extra year or two to get married, but you’ll hear many more saying they wish they hadn’t rushed into things like they did. If your love really is built to last, waiting a little bit longer than you’d like to won’t destroy what you have; if it does, you dodged a serious bullet.
- You’ll have had time to figure out what you want. Chances are you have at least one ex who makes you cringe just thinking about him. And yet, at the time, you thought he was the greatest. Just like other aspects of our personalities, our relationship preferences can undergo some serious makeovers in a relatively short period of time. Some people get lucky and stay married to their high school sweethearts until they die, but most of us are going to have our romantic desires switch around a bit during our lifetimes. It’s better to hold off on marriage until you’re 100 percent sure that your brain has finally figured out what it wants.
- You’ll have gotten used to living life as part of a couple. Whether or not you’re living together before you get married, it doesn’t take a genius to know that life in a relationship is way different from life as a single lady. If you get hitched before you’ve gotten accustomed to all the ups and downs, you’re in for a rude awakening. It’s way better to make sure that you have a handle on how to compromise and act as equals before making such a big decision.
- Your marriage is more likely to last. The numbers don’t lie: couples who date for three or more years before getting wed are 39 percent less likely to get divorced than those who date for less than a year. Given all the things you go through in a relationship as time passes, it makes sense. If you’re one of the many people who really only want to be married once, you’re better off waiting to walk down the aisle for as long as possible to make sure that you really have found The One.
