I’ll admit it. At the drop of a hat, I could be batting for the other team. However, at this point in my life, as a young 20-something, I want to make sure that I write down this insight, however naïve or short-sighted it may be. Only two short years ago, my fellow classmates and I were contemplating if we should go out and party or stay in to study, whether we should hook up with said “fling” or not, or whether beer before liquor truly does make you sicker. Granted, we still had our share of serious problems as well- should we try to follow our significant other after graduation, should we go to grad school, take the career route or do a year of service. After graduation, we had to learn how to find an apartment on our own, how to pay for utilities, what “professionalism” truly means, and how to find a suit that fits. Amidst these growing pains came new expectations that seemed to pop out of nowhere- because with new steps in life come new societal pressures. In relationships, this means realizing that a college boyfriend either becomes just a young love or a potential husband, and that we are no longer playing “college” anymore, but real life. As soon as I graduated from my fun and careless life at college, wedding invitations and talk of embossed napkins and initialed towels came bombarding into my life. Which led me to wonder- is this “that time”, and if so, why did it seem to come out of nowhere?
With all of the talk about white weddings and engagement photos, it makes a non-married girl wonder what changed all of a sudden and if this path of college, marriage and kids should be a sign of success for females in a society supposedly trying to liberate itself from patriarchal norms. Most of all, it concerns me that females at certain older ages feel as if they have done something wrong or that their lives are not as valuable because they haven’t reached these relational milestones. Sure, I have always wanted to get married, and when I have attended the weddings of truly holy and committed friends I am a blubbering baby filled with joy for the happy couple. But I sometimes worry that in a country where about 50% of marriages end in divorce (caveat: this statistic takes into account people who have been divorced 3, 4, 5 or more times and counts them all as individual divorces) why there is still a palpable pressure for young women of a certain age to “settle-down” and all of a sudden stop thinking of frat parties and honors theses and start thinking of caterers and baby bassinets.
Among my fellow 20-somethings, I have heard stories of people feeling that pressure to get married and so give their significant other an ultimatum. Most of the time, this involves a girl pressuring her boyfriend to propose or else break up with her. What is so problematic about this type of pressure between couples themselves is that if someone does “give in”, they are doing so for the wrong reasons, abandoning their own desire to have more time and to make sure that they are really ready. When both partners are not fully committed to getting married, there almost always is one person who has betrayed themselves by brushing aside their own need to discern such an important life vocation. Although I have found myself having thoughts of what my future holds as I am “advancing” in age (something you might laugh at when you realize I’m only 24), I have realized that if two people are going to make the commitment to spend the rest of their lives together, then there is no rush and should be no rush in this very important process of discernment. And that is what it is—a discernment. I would expect no less of someone discerning to be a priest, or someone discerning whether or not they want to join a volunteer corps or a certain profession. These things take time, and there is no “right time” that they should happen….it’s just organic. Marriage is a vocation, one that should be given time and that should be chosen by both partners whole-heartedly at their own pace. This does not always mean that there is a certain age or time of life for marriage, but rather a certain state of mind and spirit. Societal pressure must not get the best of couples who want to take the sacrament of marriage seriously- after all, it’s not about the wedding, it’s about what comes after that. Maybe that is what they mean by surrendering to Kairos (God’s time) instead of Chronos (the world’s time).
