Stuff about marriage and peer pressure
Sooo yesterday my close friend was proposed to by her long-time boyfriend. This will be two (three if you count n4nuk4 ) friends who have gotten engaged or married in about a year. Which is cool. I mean it's awesome, but I have this one little problem...
"Sooo.... You're next right? When are you and Ziggy getting married?"
Call me old (or old fashioned, I've been called both), but I honestly don't think most people should get married at my age. I know every life situation is different for each individual person, and it's not my place to be like "you're too young to get married, child :|". But I'm one of the younger members of my group. Not the youngest, but on the younger side of the group. I also still live at home. I'm unemployed. I'm still trying to get my degree. I don't drive. That isn't to say that I'm forever going to be in this place, or be in this place for a long time, but where I am right now? Yeah, not a good place to be getting married.
Don't get me wrong. I'm in love. I love Ziggy a lot. But if he proposed to me today, I would say no. Or at least not yet. We aren't ready. There is a lot more that goes into marriage beyond love, and we are not in a place that can deal with that. It really annoys me when people ask me when I'm getting married to him, because it makes me want to ask "can you not see where I am in life? Can you not tell that now is not the right time?"
Let's just think about it with some math to illustrate why this is silly. So we've been dating for 5 years. I guess that could be considered a long time, people have certainly said it has been a long time. But really, how much time has it been? Well, we see each other (on average)... 2 times a week. So that's roughly 100 times a year. So let's put it up at 500 times. For those 500 times, each visitation is roughly 4 hours (give or take, but I'm putting that at the average). 2,000 hours, / 24 hours in a day *calculator ahoy* is 83.3333 (repeating of course :P) days. DAYS.
People will say things like "Oh, but you guys still talk to each other every day." Which is true. But talking on the phone is not the same as being in the same room. And just because we have been dating for 5 years doesn't mean that I have spent a lot of time with him. God knows I haven't spent very much alone time with him, since we are almost always at my house, on my couch, watching movies with my family. I'm not trying to say "Oh, we haven't been dating that long," I'm trying to say "We still are getting to know each other."
Just because we're dating doesn't mean we are ready to get married. There are a lot of things we have yet to learn about each other that will be important to being a married couple... or even just a couple living in the same house. Just an example, but Ziggy and I have very different sleeping habits. I like to get about 12 hours of sleep, he functions off of 6 or so. I cannot sleep in a room with any light or noise, he can sleep just about anywhere. I get cold really easily while sleeping, he overheats easily. I can name of a list of things that can throw any sleeping arrangement into chaos, but it's an important example. We don't know each other very well. We're still getting to know all the little things about our lives that will effect a future together. I mean, I'm not saying I can't marry a guy who is gonna stay up way later then me, but I am saying that it's gonna make a difference to me. It's something that will have to be worked out, discussed, and we're gonna have to try a few things when we do eventually sleep in the same bed. Same as EVERYTHING ELSE in our lives. We're alike in many ways, but I'm not stupid enough to ignore all the ways that we are very VERY different.
I don't mean to be unromantic, but there are some things I don't know that may or may not be deal breakers and I won't know it until I get a chance to experience it. It would be so stupid of me to say "Yeah, I know I'm gonna marry this guy even though I don't know very much about his personal habits" at this point because that's like saying "I'm gonna buy this car without ever driving it. I like the way it looks on the outside." Why would you do that? Why would people think I would do that?
And it's not a secret that Ziggy and I don't see each other a lot. Everyone knows we have a very limited schedule of time to be together. So that just adds another "why?" to the list of questions towards the people asking me when I'm gonna get married. We're still very young, we still haven't finished growing mentally. We need to find a place in the world for ourselves before we can think of finding a place for each other. There's nothing wrong with being in love, but it's foolish to think that love is the only thing we're gonna need to get by, so we might as well get married now.
Of course, now I'm never going to hear the end about getting married. I've mentioned before to my friends that we aren't ready for that, but all they seem to see is I'm dating a nice guy for several years and I don't have a ring (from him anyway, I always wear the ring cattalia gave me!) on my finger. No, I'm not getting married any time soon. Maybe in another 3-6 years, I'll think about it. I'm not in a hurry, if it's meant to work out, it will continue to work out in a few years. I just wish people would shut up about it!
"Sooo.... You're next right? When are you and Ziggy getting married?"
Call me old (or old fashioned, I've been called both), but I honestly don't think most people should get married at my age. I know every life situation is different for each individual person, and it's not my place to be like "you're too young to get married, child :|". But I'm one of the younger members of my group. Not the youngest, but on the younger side of the group. I also still live at home. I'm unemployed. I'm still trying to get my degree. I don't drive. That isn't to say that I'm forever going to be in this place, or be in this place for a long time, but where I am right now? Yeah, not a good place to be getting married.
Don't get me wrong. I'm in love. I love Ziggy a lot. But if he proposed to me today, I would say no. Or at least not yet. We aren't ready. There is a lot more that goes into marriage beyond love, and we are not in a place that can deal with that. It really annoys me when people ask me when I'm getting married to him, because it makes me want to ask "can you not see where I am in life? Can you not tell that now is not the right time?"
Let's just think about it with some math to illustrate why this is silly. So we've been dating for 5 years. I guess that could be considered a long time, people have certainly said it has been a long time. But really, how much time has it been? Well, we see each other (on average)... 2 times a week. So that's roughly 100 times a year. So let's put it up at 500 times. For those 500 times, each visitation is roughly 4 hours (give or take, but I'm putting that at the average). 2,000 hours, / 24 hours in a day *calculator ahoy* is 83.3333 (repeating of course :P) days. DAYS.
People will say things like "Oh, but you guys still talk to each other every day." Which is true. But talking on the phone is not the same as being in the same room. And just because we have been dating for 5 years doesn't mean that I have spent a lot of time with him. God knows I haven't spent very much alone time with him, since we are almost always at my house, on my couch, watching movies with my family. I'm not trying to say "Oh, we haven't been dating that long," I'm trying to say "We still are getting to know each other."
Just because we're dating doesn't mean we are ready to get married. There are a lot of things we have yet to learn about each other that will be important to being a married couple... or even just a couple living in the same house. Just an example, but Ziggy and I have very different sleeping habits. I like to get about 12 hours of sleep, he functions off of 6 or so. I cannot sleep in a room with any light or noise, he can sleep just about anywhere. I get cold really easily while sleeping, he overheats easily. I can name of a list of things that can throw any sleeping arrangement into chaos, but it's an important example. We don't know each other very well. We're still getting to know all the little things about our lives that will effect a future together. I mean, I'm not saying I can't marry a guy who is gonna stay up way later then me, but I am saying that it's gonna make a difference to me. It's something that will have to be worked out, discussed, and we're gonna have to try a few things when we do eventually sleep in the same bed. Same as EVERYTHING ELSE in our lives. We're alike in many ways, but I'm not stupid enough to ignore all the ways that we are very VERY different.
I don't mean to be unromantic, but there are some things I don't know that may or may not be deal breakers and I won't know it until I get a chance to experience it. It would be so stupid of me to say "Yeah, I know I'm gonna marry this guy even though I don't know very much about his personal habits" at this point because that's like saying "I'm gonna buy this car without ever driving it. I like the way it looks on the outside." Why would you do that? Why would people think I would do that?
And it's not a secret that Ziggy and I don't see each other a lot. Everyone knows we have a very limited schedule of time to be together. So that just adds another "why?" to the list of questions towards the people asking me when I'm gonna get married. We're still very young, we still haven't finished growing mentally. We need to find a place in the world for ourselves before we can think of finding a place for each other. There's nothing wrong with being in love, but it's foolish to think that love is the only thing we're gonna need to get by, so we might as well get married now.
Of course, now I'm never going to hear the end about getting married. I've mentioned before to my friends that we aren't ready for that, but all they seem to see is I'm dating a nice guy for several years and I don't have a ring (from him anyway, I always wear the ring cattalia gave me!) on my finger. No, I'm not getting married any time soon. Maybe in another 3-6 years, I'll think about it. I'm not in a hurry, if it's meant to work out, it will continue to work out in a few years. I just wish people would shut up about it!