They say you don’t really grow up until you have kids of your own. And in many ways, that’s true, and I’m grateful for my children. They bring me deep joy, pull me out of my selfish tendencies, and teach me the satisfaction of responsibility. But I didn’t realize marriage and kids would make me a grown-up in the bad ways too.
I constantly mix up my kids’ names. I think to myself, “My daughter was born in 2022? Man, I feel old…” It is only through great force of will that I don’t thrust pictures and videos of my (adorable) children on all my friends and co-workers all of the time. I cannot listen to rap music any more. It’s too coarse. I cannot listen to “The Best Day” by Taylor Swift any more. It makes me cry, and it’s really embarrassing, even when I’m in the car by myself.
There was nothing more cringe growing up than Boomers desperate for celebrity conversions: “Did you hear about this? Justin Bieber is apparently on fire for Christ and is just telling everyone about it.” “No, I think after making The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson became a Christian.” “I noticed after that touchdown, Chad Ochocinco pointed to the sky. Is he a Christian?”
This past week, I hit rock bottom on my slow descent into becoming everything I once hated. I was reading about the wedding of Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things and Jake Bongiovi (Jon Bon Jovi’s third child). Two blue-chip celebrities, and I thought to myself, “Isn’t Brown still pretty young?” Yes, it turns out.
On their wedding day, Brown was 20 and Bongiovi was 22. With unexpected force, I was hit with a rush of excitement. As someone who also got married young, I began gesticulating excitedly at my computer, such that my co-workers rushed over to make sure I was okay. I managed to sputter, “They did it! They did it! I’m cool now…”
Go ahead, make my day.
From Leonardo DiCaprio to Taylor Swift, high-status people don’t marry young. The implication being: those who can, wait; those who can’t, marry. So it’s striking to see a wedding so lavish—one with so much wealth and star power on display—with a couple that’s so young.
Celebrity divorce rumors are always good tabloid fodder, but in this case, it didn’t take long for speculation to begin (e.g. “Is Millie Bobby Brown Getting a Divorce From Jake Bongiovi in Less Than 6 Months of Marriage?”). Even though these rumors turned out to be baseless, they were believable. When it comes to relationships, few associations are more ingrained than marrying young and divorce.
Some predicted an imminent break-up while others argued that their life in the limelight made them effectively older, more mature, and thus ready for marriage. No one could accept that a couple actually that young could actually marry and make it.
When I got married, about 5 years ago, I was the same age as Jake. For the next few years, I suffered an ambient dread of divorce. I thought I was mature enough, that we were a good pair, that we weren’t headed for divorce court, but doesn’t everyone on their wedding day? It was an unfalsifiable fear. I knew that if we did break up, people wouldn’t need to look for a cause. Our age would be sufficient evidence to say, “I told you so.”
By contrast, waiting to get married is often portrayed as all upside: more maturity, stability, and wealth. Who wouldn’t want that? More than that, according to Brad Wilcox’s research, a recent survey found “75 percent of adults ages 18 to 40 said that making a good living was crucial to fulfillment in life while only 32 percent thought that marriage was crucial to fulfillment.”
Yet, the case that Wilcox or David Brooks will make is that a healthy marriage is the biggest contributor to your happiness, far more so than a successful career or a wildly varied sex life or whatever else you imagine marriage would deprive you of. And contrary to popular belief, after age 20, age doesn’t appear to be a causal factor in divorce risk. For religious couples, marrying young may even be an advantage.
Nevertheless, as someone who did get married young, I know well how breaking from the herd can make you feel exposed. The risks are highlighted, the benefits downplayed. Yet, I also am friends with other young married couples, and I find when we talk about that choice, the most common sentiment is: “the best decision I’ve ever made.” We see marrying young not as an eccentric, I-just-met-the-right-one-so-what-else-was-I-going-to-do-ya-know decision. It was a principled prioritization of marriage, one that we now see saved us from a multitude of modern pitfalls.
To be clear, I’m not saying anyone should force a bad fit. I’d merely like to explain why I’m grateful as I come up on my 5-year anniversary, why delaying marriage seems riskier to me than the conventional wisdom would have you believe, and thus why I’m bullish on these two.
A “frictionless” life makes marriage feel like death, but…
“Friction is what gives interest and fulfillment and satisfaction to our lives” - Nicholas Carr
has argued that the tight knit communities, the proverbial “village,” of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was indeed real, but it was perhaps more a matter of necessity than we often credit:
So why did these tight-knit communities fall apart? Historian Marc Brodie suggests that it comes down to simple economics: people got richer. As Brodie writes, “The mutual help and cooperation seen as fundamental to these communities may have been in large part instrumentalist in nature. What appeared to be close, friendly relationships and freely given reciprocal aid seemed to mostly vanish as soon as economic circumstances improved and the poor no longer needed to rely upon each other for simple survival.”
To her point, as America has grown richer, we’ve steadily chosen to move away from other people. Catherine Pakaluk recently wrote about this and its effect on marriage:
Approximately 37 million Americans, nearly 10 percent, live in one-person households—a whopping one-third of all households. Compare this to 1950 when just four million Americans, about 4 percent, lived alone. Or to 1850 when just 74,000 Americans, less than 1 percent, lived alone. “So essential was marriage-based family life,” Andrew Cherlin observes, “that the New England colonies passed laws forbidding people to live alone.”
There’s always been the trope of a longtime bachelor or spinster struggling to adjust to married life, but I worry the rigidity that once resulted from age can now be acquired by lifestyle. After all, the explicit design motto of Silicon Valley is a “frictionless” experience. Whether it’s logging in, paying, or scrolling, the goal is to make it as smooth and painless as possible. We regularly interact with feeds and services that seem to know us better than we know ourselves. Facebook claims it only takes 300 likes for them to know you better than your spouse does.
We live in a time of unprecedented control. Young people can live alone, work remotely, get dinner delivered, and binge Netflix. Just as our wealth allowed us to withdraw physically into more isolated homes and home-offices, our phones and computers allow us to withdraw on a psychological level as well. People choose comfortable, customized experiences over unpredictable, “real” ones.
From Her. The phone in his breast pocket allows his AI girlfriend to see, the earpiece allows him to talk with her.
From this vantage point, it follows that marriage is an intrusion and divorce is liberation. As Jill Filipovic has argued, “divorce is still largely seen as a failure rather than, often but of course not always, the end point of a successful relationship.”
There’s a character in The Brothers Karamazov that Pakaluk quotes to begin her paper:
As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours, I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me.
Though this character once would’ve been called "cranky,” I imagine today he’d be lauded for his strict “boundaries” and self-care! I can see the viral TikTok now. The irony is, we know from experience that hard things—friction, if you will—are essential for all the most meaningful things in life, from training for a marathon to raising a child. Yet, we struggle to do what we know we ought. This is what it means for marriage to be an institution. Here’s Pakaluk again:
Most people cannot manage even a small personal resolution—like daily exercise, reading, or prayer—if left to the ups and downs of emotional inclinations. Those who succeed do so with mechanisms for accountability—memberships, apps, friends, and partners…But in matters of great importance—how we spend our lives in relation to God and our family—self-help books would be a pitiful answer to human frailty.
Institutions provide for what we lack by offering us rules and norms, not of our own choosing, necessary to live nobly. Institutional other-regarding marriage did just this. The law and social norms put divorce off limits, “protecting us” from our worst selves in weaker moments, helping us through to victory in the long run.
While I would’ve agreed with all of this on paper—marriage is an institution, it’s about “us” now—I know this change would’ve been far more painful had I waited. It cuts against the grain, the water we all swim in. I’m glad I was plucked out of that stream sooner rather than later.
The silver lining of getting told that you’re too young to marry is that you know you still have growing up to do. So when your wife is explaining to you what a top sheet is and why you should use it, the most plausible explanation is that she’s helping you and sanding off your rough edges. Because the alternative, that you’re so mature that you don’t have any rough edges, is just laughable.
Dating:Consumption::Marriage:Common Goods.
“If you want endless repetition, see a lot of different people. If you want infinite variety, stay with one.” - Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell said that in the 80s as her marriage to Larry Klein was beginning. After years of dating around, she had some insight during this period of relative relational stability: “What happens when you date is you run all your best moves and tell all your best stories — and in a way, that routine is a method for falling in love with yourself over and over.”
Young adults today are primed to think of themselves as the customer and thus in grave danger of falling in love with themselves. Colleges accommodate their activism and triggers. Churches appeal to their preferences, lest they continue shopping around. Movies offer shameless fan service. Video games are tailored to their precise skill level, videos to their niche interests, and communities to their bespoke identities. It is all about you.
Is it any surprise then that some of the most-hyped AI companies are premised on offering friendship, romance, and even social media without any other humans involved? Here’s
There are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends, of course. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems. And imaginary friends, like that AI necklace who is “always listening”, announced with the tagline: “introducing friend. not imaginary.”
There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic”, apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.” In other words, your own imaginary ‘X’, with infinite “simulated fictional characters”. You, alone, in a vast social network of AI bots.
Screenshot: @michaelsayman, ‘X’ [I’d encourage you to really read the comments in this fake social media. They are bizarre.]
If you are the only human in the relationship, would that not be “falling in love with yourself.” Even if you don’t go quite that far, dating apps, with the endless options and carousel of first dates, also pose a temptation to fall in love with yourself. Though they clearly can and do lead to wonderful marriages, there is a danger in constantly centering your desires, your deal breakers, your market value. Again, here’s India from her recent conversation with
Now we find our partners by swiping through endless people like products and advertising ourselves like things. When you say Airbnb has “bleached all the mystery” out of small towns, that’s how I feel about social media and falling in love. Romance is dead. You can’t wonder what your crush is up to you anymore because you can just watch their Instagram Story. You can’t wonder where they have been, what music they listen to, what their life is like; it’s all there, listed on their Facebook profile like a product description, their personality packaged into their Instagram grid. And now it’s not just places we review, but people. We leave reviews of one another constantly with our likes, comments and Tinder swipes. Again, profane.
If we remain in neurotic, self-centered love, we are using others to expand our own sense of self-worth, power, and pleasure. As India is hitting on in the above line, this becomes “profane,” and I might add denotatively demonic. In The Screwtape Letters, this is the fundamental distinction Screwtape draws between the aim of “Our Father Below” and “The Enemy.”
To demons, the goal is “the absorption of [humanity’s] will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense…We want cattle who can finally become food; [God] wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.”
The institution of marriage calls us to sacrifice for others—namely our spouse and children—and in so doing become something greater than we would be otherwise. When practiced properly, Pakaluk says “it should lead husbands and wives to become the sorts of persons that they promise to be when they wed.”
She goes on to discuss the Catholic concept of institutional marriage as a common good, which is “a good shared by a community, not diminished by their sharing it, which cannot be had without the other members of the group.” In the case of marriage, she says children are the “identifying common good,” the reason for the union.
This idea of a common good echoes the idea that “the Enemy” wants to give out, to flow over, to be united but still distinct. It’s an idea that’s almost completely at odds with the popular model of marriage as a self-regarding means of self-actualization. I’m grateful that I didn’t have to date around in my 20s because the dating discourse and environment seem almost designed to breed resentment.
Marriage is the best defense against the Total Sex War
“Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of "Beauty and the Beast." Every man has to find out that his wife is cross—that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity.” - G.K. Chesterton
When USA Today did a write-up about Bongiovi and Brown, a therapist offered a telling quote: "It really depends on what marriage means to you and what you want in life. If you want a life filled with meaning and depth of relationship, it may be better to marry young. If you want a life where you minimize risk of having a partner that you're not completely compatible with, it would be better to marry old.”
Perhaps the push to delay marriage isn’t prudence, it’s hedging your bets. That would explain some of the most toxic, vocal anti-marriage advocates. They aren’t speaking to people’s good sense to ensure their careers are well in hand before embarking on the next stage. After all, look at all the data that marriage leads to greater wealth and labor force participation!
No, they’re speaking to people’s fear of being hurt and being left.
If you probe just an inch below the surface on the far-left and far-right, the dominant emotion is fear. This is fixed with power. As
has pointed out, there are identical, “mirror-image subcultures of ‘redpill’ men trying to manipulate women into granting sexual access, and women trying to manipulate men into granting emotional commitment…This toxic arms race sees both sexes weaponise the other sex's characteristic preferences and mating strategies in pursuit of individual gratification.”
She goes on to say, “All men are potential threats to all women… It doesn’t matter if he’s a nice guy, a feminist, or an ally. If he’s a man in a patriarchy, he poses a theoretical threat.”
Within this mindset, marriage is an uneasy alliance requiring constant vigilance. There is a fox in the hen house. You can never fully trust, never let your guard down. They may be a traitor to their sex, but as with any double agent, you must always be wary of their loyalty. Your spouse needs to be under constant submission and scrutiny.
Although Villines and Tate are admittedly extreme, more mild versions of blaming the opposite sex while exonerating your own are quite common. As
recently said, “It’s become deeply uncool as women to acknowledge any sort of affinity or appreciation for men. To do so runs the risk of being a “pick-me” or “not a girl’s girl” — two of the greatest sins a girl can commit. In order to be pro-women, one must now be vocally anti-men. Conversely, to be pro-men in any way has become synonymous with being anti-women.”
Though men have different words for this sort of behavior—simp, cuck—a similar dynamic obtains. Dependence is a dirty word, and modern dating seems set up to leave all parties hurt and jaded. And when that hurt comes, there are vocal blocs, sirens really, like “Men Going Their Own Way” or “Brides of the State,” always telling you, “It’s not you. It’s them. They can’t be trusted.”
The demagogues on the right and left prey on men and women who are hurt and lost. When I see the endless recriminations between and within the sexes, I wince. Marriage isn’t a panacea obviously, but staying out in the storm of the gender wars any longer than you must isn’t benign either. Over time, once good, marriageable men and women may succumb to bitterness and despair.
In the shelter of a marriage, you may find (surprise, surprise) that some of these differences are real but highly symbiotic, especially when raising children. Knowing one woman well can be far more informative than watching endless explainers about “what women want.” Armed with that nuance, you can sniff out rabble-rousing pretty quickly.
In a healthy marriage, the sex wars are not a zero-sum game. I want what’s best for men and women because I am a man, and I’m inextricably linked to women. What might’ve been siren songs were I still single now just sound absurd.
It’s too early to have data on Zoomer marriages, but my theory is fortuna fortibus favet: Fortune favors the bold. For a generation marked by rumination, living vicariously through screens, and fear of commitment, those who go all in don’t guarantee their success, but they might give themselves the best chance. We’re not the FOMO generation. We’re the “rotting in bed scrolling” generation. So let’s go for it.
I’ll give Brown and Bon Jovi the last word.
Regarding her marriage, Brown said, "I think so much of life is overthinking. The one thing that made clear sense to me was him.” Her father-in-law Jon Bon Jovi (who is still with his wife of 35 years) added, “I don't know if age matters. If you find the right partner and you grow together...my advice really is growing together is wise.”
Right on.
If you’re a young adult that also married young, drop me a line! I’d love to hear your perspective.
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I was 23 when I got married, almost 15 years ago (reading through these comments, I don't even know if that counts as young in this context, but it was sure unheard of in my neck of the woods!). My husband was 24. I wouldn't change a thing. Other people have said this, but we were both so clueless, we were just clueless together, which helped. Right before we got engaged, we were having lunch with his pastor, a man who'd gotten married at 19 (I think he was in his 40s at the time), and he said he'd always been grateful that he and his wife had grown up together. That's stuck with me for the last 16 years or so. My husband and I really have grown up together. I told him the other day that I loved him for who he was, always, but that now he's growing into what I always knew was in there. I remember thinking at the time that I didn't know what would happen with us, but I just wanted to be there for the ride. Our circumstances have changed, many many times, but that feeling has never changed. It's been a hell of a ride!
I loved this piece ! As someone who will be marrying old and is susceptible to the fear of losing my freedom / judging those that didn’t have the experiences I had in my 20s— I really applaud your writing and voice in this piece. Also love the odd drop about demons and the red thread on choosing community over isolation.
I was 23 when I got married, almost 15 years ago (reading through these comments, I don't even know if that counts as young in this context, but it was sure unheard of in my neck of the woods!). My husband was 24. I wouldn't change a thing. Other people have said this, but we were both so clueless, we were just clueless together, which helped. Right before we got engaged, we were having lunch with his pastor, a man who'd gotten married at 19 (I think he was in his 40s at the time), and he said he'd always been grateful that he and his wife had grown up together. That's stuck with me for the last 16 years or so. My husband and I really have grown up together. I told him the other day that I loved him for who he was, always, but that now he's growing into what I always knew was in there. I remember thinking at the time that I didn't know what would happen with us, but I just wanted to be there for the ride. Our circumstances have changed, many many times, but that feeling has never changed. It's been a hell of a ride!
I loved this piece ! As someone who will be marrying old and is susceptible to the fear of losing my freedom / judging those that didn’t have the experiences I had in my 20s— I really applaud your writing and voice in this piece. Also love the odd drop about demons and the red thread on choosing community over isolation.