Lastly, in our brief look at engagement, let us take a look at premature, that is, immature marriages because the seeds for these usually disastrous relationships are sown during the courtship and engagement phase of a couple’s development.
By immature marriage we mean one entered into under the age of twenty. However, many much older people are so immature that they also have disastrous marriages for the reasons we outline here.
All the available statistics show that marriages entered into where the woman is twenty or under have very high failure rates indeed. Not only do at least one in three of these marriages fail but they still have an above-average failure rate as long as twenty to thirty years after the marriage. So why do youngsters do it?
One of the commonest reasons is that the immature man has a poor sense of his own masculinity and by marrying tries to prove something to himself and society. Girls tend to marry this young for many reasons including an over-romantic desire to ‘be married’ – one which is almost totally unfounded on reality; to escape from the sexual or other restrictions of their parents; to go along with their friends who have married young; because they desperately want a baby; because they desperately want sex and cannot have it outside marriage; because they are so immature that they cannot make a realistic choice between the options that are open to them in life and marriage seems a good way out of the dilemma; and because they can simply think of nothing they would rather do unless it is to become a single parent.
Because most young marriages are entered into for the wrong reasons and because the personalities of the couple are immature, they are almost doomed before they begin. Young couples think that difficulties and differences (often apparent, even to them) will be smoothed out as the years pass, but this rarely happens because all too often their personality developments do not bring them together but separate them further. Many such marriages end within five years and leave the couple free to try again, hopefully wiser and better equipped to do it better second time around. The tragedy is that many young couples in this group have a child as soon as they get married and quite a few are actually forced into marriage because the girl is pregnant. Young couples having children immediately may do so because in their immature way they see it as a way of proving to the world that they are really grown up. It is a sad fact that many of these couples are not at all adult and often have to live with in-laws or parents because they are so poor. This is yet another nail in their marital coffin and things quickly go downhill. Young men in this situation are often very restrictive and jealous of their young brides and yet often become involved with other women. The marriage slowly, and — inevitably — painfully, drags to an end.
Any of us who are parents or have responsibilities for the young will want to see such young marriages discouraged wherever possible. But handling the situation can be very difficult because parental friction is often at the heart of the problem anyway. If you as parents feel things are going this way for your under-twenty-year-old, it is best to get outside help unless you have such a good relationship that you can have a frank two-way discussion about the subject. The problems are, ironically, much more serious when immature thirty-year-olds want to marry and no one but an expert in this field would recognise the reason why.
Immature marriage and all its dangers can be minimised by going through all the stages of courtship and engagement in the way we have suggested. The golden rule must be that if anything you have read in the last few chapters makes you unsure about your intended marriage- don’t go ahead with it. Wait, think about it, discuss it with your parents, if you can, or with a friend or even a doctor or other professional who understands the problems.
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