Teenager In Love

She’s 15 and in love with her 19-year-old boyfriend. They’ve been dating for almost a year and she says she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She wants to get married now instead of finishing school, college, and starting a career. She doesn’t know how to tell him that she doesn’t want to wait until he has a successful career or his college completed. She says her parents don’t understand the depth of her love.

I said:

I don’t believe you’re too young or too “stupid” to know what loves feels like. Any age can know love. Any age can be in love. It’s just that at your age, making a lifetime commitment now to that love might cause you to lose your chance at a better life for yourself in the future. If you marry now and stop your education to start a family, you will give up a lot of opportunities that are available to you now which won’t be available to you later.

If this man loves you, he will want you to have the best start into the adult world. That means going to college, having a great career, enjoying your friends, doing the things you need to do so you won’t look back years from now and regret not having done them.

Why do you think marrying him now would make him less apt to put his job ahead of you now or in the future? Until you have the chance to support yourself, to learn just how difficult it is to pay all the bills that it takes to survive in this world, you won’t really understand why people do focus so much of their time on their jobs.

Why don’t you do this:

Write down the monthly cost to buy the house or rent the apartment you’d like to live in.

Add in the monthly cost of the car you’d like to drive.

List the monthly cost for utilities, food, clothing, insurance, medical bills, incidentals.

Add in the cost of one, two or three children

Add everything up to see how much income you and your husband would have to earn each week just to make ends meet.

I’ll bet the figure surprises you. Hard dollars are necessary for survival. Love alone doesn’t make it. The better education you and your boyfriend have, the better chance the two of you have for moving past the “making enough money to survive” to an economic future that is bright for both of you.

I don’t believe that your parents don’t want you to fall in love before you’re 36. I do believe that they want the best for you and, at this time, they understand that if you marry now, before you get your college education and start into a great career, you’ll lose out on the best of everything.

Expressing your love for your boyfriend by having sex with him now would not hold him in a relationship nor would it make him love you more. And, yes, in most states he could go to jail if you did have sex with him, even if it was your idea.

Please don’t rush into being an adult. You’ll never get a chance to go back and do all the things you miss out on if you skip them now.