She was 17 and her husband 22 when they married three years years ago. Now she is the mother of two small children. Throughout the marriage she has cheated on her husband. They fight and argue and sometimes throw things at one another. She says she married too young and wants to be able to “just date.”
There are many reasons people get married at a very young age. Three reasons come quickly to mind: pregnancy; to get out of their parents’ home; because they truly believe they’re in love.
I don’t know why this young woman got married but doing some quick math would lead me to believe that pregnancy may have been one reason or perhaps the only reason. Doing some more quick math tells me that when she was 15, she was dating a man of 20. Already there was too much wrong with this relationship and I have to wonder why her parents didn’t intervene.
Of course, that brings up reason number two — perhaps her parents did tell her she was too young to date a man this much older. If they did, she may have continued dating him out of rebellion or to prove them wrong.
In most states she would have needed parental consent to get married as young as she did. Did they give their consent because they felt there were no other options once she became pregnant? Did she get pregnant to get married and away from her parents or did she get married because she was pregnant? Did they insist on marriage once she became pregnant?
When another teen wrote about the love she felt for a man several years older she talked about love and commitment and marriage. Despite her young age, she expressed her feelings with maturity. If she does succeed in marrying young, she may be one of the few successful young marriages unlike this young woman who is asking for advice.
This young woman may have been forced into motherhood but that has not given her maturity. Neither she nor her husband understand commitment. Additionally, their immature approach to their relationship has lead to physical and verbal abuse by both of them. What kind of atmosphere are they providing for the young children they have created?
Either this young woman is promiscuous by nature or she is desperately seeking affection by having sex with many partners. Either is bad enough if she were single, but as a married woman with two small children, she not only commits adultery, she endangers her life and the life of the man about whom she says “I care so much for my husband, and I don’t want to hurt him.”
Most young people believe they are immortal and that AIDS, STDs and other by-products of indiscriminate sex happen to other people, not to them. Given her sexual behavior, this young woman is well on the way to becoming a statistic.
So, having said all that, what do I think she should do?
She believes divorce will solve her problems. Some of you may agree with her and others of you may not. In my opinion, if there is no love between these two people, if there is no marriage to salvage, divorce is probably appropriate.
However, she believes that divorce would set her free to live a more exciting, fulfilling life: “…I want to go out and meet people. Go see other states and maybe even countries….” Now we have a dilemna. She is the mother of two small children. Does divorce make those children and her responsibility to them magically go away? Does divorce allow her to reclaim her lost youth, the time when she should have been dating and partying and having a good time instead of changing diapers and cleaning house?
Divorce allows her the chance to be a single mother, still responsible for the well-being of two children she gave birth to, perhaps sharing custody with the man who fathered them. Divorce brings with it a whole new set of rules and a whole new set of problems.
Until she stops believing sex is the same as love, until she understands her parental responsibilities, and until she stops believing that divorce is the answer to all her problems, this young woman will not have the maturity she needs to make a better life for herself and her children.
What should she do? In my opinion, she and her husband should go for counseling to see if there is a reason to keep this marriage together. She, herself, needs counseling to get to the root of her need for indiscriminate sex. And, the two of them need to develop a support network of family and friends to help them through the next several years — whether they stay together or get divorced.