Young Newlywed Thinks You Should Make the Same Mistake

A young man by the name of Brendan Clarey had an opinion column run in USA Today.

It would appear that he's in llloooooooooooooooove!

You know it's going to be delicious when it has this headline:

Dear fellow millennials, marrying at 22 is the best decision I ever made

Getting married was the WORST decision I ever made, BY FAR!

Getting married as a 22-year-old set me apart from most millennials, but my own experience made me ask: Why does my generation wait so long to wed?

If they marry at all, most don't wait long enough!

But those who do want to marry wait because they can get just about everything they want without marrying. And because they're in debt but want a big wedding. And because marrying in your early twenties or earlier is associated with a high rate of divorce (especially if you're not a member of a cult that punishes you for divorcing) and lower satisfaction in marriage.

Millennials like to take their lives into their own hands. They prove it by posting their travels on Instagram (#WanderLust). They wholeheartedly pursue their jobs and hobbies.

Men who marry young are going to have a harder time traveling, getting better jobs, and pursuing their hobbies.

Except we seem unable to commit to the same level in our relationships:

Don't confuse a lack of desire to get legally married with being unable to commit to a relationship.

Only a quarter of my generation is married, while 86 percent of single people near millennial age say they want to be at some point.

That's far too many, on both counts.

Not everyone — some people don’t want to get hitched and that’s fine, but many say they do and aren’t doing anything.

What is meant by "aren't doing anything"? They are doing plenty. Like, each other for example.

When millennials do get married, they end up walking down the aisle at a median age of 28.

Which is GREAT if someone wants marriages to last. Is this guy worried that too many other guys are having fun while he's got a ball and chain?

Our generation has basically flipped the norms of years gone by: In 1965, 78 percent of people ages 21-36 were married at the typical age of 22.

Ah, 1965. That was 53 years ago. Much of life has changed a bit since then. Waves of feminism have happened since then. Family law and family courts have changed a lot since then, too. More women were encouraged to be dependent on AND RESPECT men. A man could get a decent job, even without college, and stay with the same employer in the same place for his entire career. As others pointed out commenting on the column, women and unmarried men were frequently discriminated against back then, including in employment. 

This means that, with my marriage just over a month ago at 22, I accomplished my relationship goals six years before my generation’s average.

Your relationship goal was to get married? Bwahahahahah! That's not a finish line, buddy, that's just the beginning. And if you're like most men, you could score more increasingly attractive women for the next 30 years or so.

It also means acquaintances often congratulate me on my wedding just before asking, “How old are you?”

Congratulating you on your wedding is like asking "How are you?" It's considered the polite thing to do. More and more people, especially men, who actually stop to think about what you've done, especially when they find out your age, are cringing inside.

This question prompted me to wonder why so many millennials are forgoing domestic bliss for years and years.

Bliss!!! Hah. Maybe they've seen too much domestic "bliss" between their parents, or between a parent and a stepparent?

Bliss!!! He's probably one of those guys who thinks having sex outside of marriage is ruining a woman.

Dating is hard, but it gets easier with practice

Dating isn't hard if you're a man who knows what he's doing.

I asked Jennifer Murff, Ph.D., the president of Millennials for Marriage

Well there's an unbiased source.

and an adjunct professor at Regent University, about these trends, and she said it partly boils down to fear. It seems that my generation is too risk-averse to start and commit to the relationships so many say they want.

Fear? Now WHY would anyone ever fear signing away half of their earnings?!?

Hey, Brendan. Come over here and sign this piece of paper. It says that you'll legally owe me at least half of everything you'll ever earn. It doesn't have any legal obligations for me, though. Why not sign it? Are you chicken or something?!?

Murff said millennials don’t know how to date anymore, and I think she’s right.

Translation: Millennials don't date the way she thinks they should.

But dating gets easier the more you do it.

Great! So keep doing it instead of killing your dating life by getting legally married.

We enjoyed ourselves throughout our courtship by going on car rides, watching movies, and grabbing dinner.

And who paid for all of that?

"Courtship". Yeah, I'm thinking he's happy to finally have access.

The concept is simple: Have fun, get to know the other person, then take it to the next level.

It's funny that he thinks people need it explained to them. Oh, it's another level alright. So is the sewer. 

If it doesn’t work out, nothing’s lost and experience is gained. 

WRONG. If you're not doing it right, you're spending far too much time and money.

If my generation has a hard time meeting people and starting relationships, it’s no wonder that they have a hard time plighting their troth.

More code words for "I can't get it without paying half of my salary."
They don't have a had time meeting people. They have a hard time meeting someone to whom they should sign over at least half of their income.

I met some of my friend’s housemates this summer, and after mentioning my weekend plans were to wed, one young woman among them joked that I should chat up her boyfriend. She said they had been dating for four years, and it seemed like she thought their status wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

Why should he? He's getting what he wants. 

Murff said it’s common for the 24 percent of millennials whose parents are separated or divorced to have a skewed or damaged view of marriage, because of what they’ve seen.

Skewed, or realistic?

This is reinforced by a common perception that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. But that dismal statistic is inaccurate. The New York Times reported in 2014 that 89 percent of college-educated couples who married in the early 2000s were still married seven years later. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that college-educated women have a 78 percent chance of a marriage lasting 20 years while their male counterparts have a 65 percent chance.

And then what comes after that??? DIVORCE! Or suicide. Or murder. Or murder-suicide. Or separation. Or ongoing misery. And for the minority of them, a lasting, happy marriage.
I mean really, what a crappy abuse of stats. Hey, most human don't ever die, I mean if we count the ones 20 years and younger.

Approach marriage without accounting for the possibility of divorce.

Approach driving without accounting for the possibility of drunk drivers. Good luck with that! Actually, you're far less likely to be seriously injured by a drunk driver over the course of your life than you are to be divorced.

But remember that it's not just divorce. It is misery within marriage.

Marriages work if you make them work.

The first suspect in the murder of a married person is usually their spouse. I guess the murder victim simply should have made it work.

Now he's going on to tell you why you shouldn't shack up. So, more and more it isn't looking like it is MARRIAGE he likes so much, but cohabitation and, presumably, sex. But those are DIRTY without that state contract.

Why not test a romantic relationship before jumping into the long-haul commitment? Psychologists have found cohabiting is more harmful than helpful for long-term relationship success: It increases anxiety and aggression, and lowers relationship confidence. The CDC study cited above also says that those who cohabit before marriage are more likely to divorce in the long run.

Look, I think shacking up is a terrible idea. I do. But we have to be honest about things here:

1) Lumping all unmarried cohabitation together is highly misleading. Results are going to be different if you have young people who "fell into" living together mixed with with a pair of older professionals dating exclusively for a couple of years who sat down and made plans to move in together, talking about expectations and responsibilities.

2) Correlation is not causation. I know I sound like broken record, but we have to be honest. For most of the negative indicators correlated with shacking up, we can't say that they were CAUSED by shacking up.

Besides fear of divorce, Murff said millennials are afraid they might not choose the right person.

Most of them won't.

My advice as a married man of several weeks?

WEEKS!!! WEEKS!!! Oh, sir, I sure hope you don't look back at this column in twenty years in bitter sadness or rage.

Nobody is perfect (sorry, sweetheart).

And so you shouldn't sign ridiculous contracts with them. But if he's already saying this at several weeks in, you just know there's already a twinge of "uh oh" in there.

Waiting for a relationship that requires no effort means waiting forever.

Great! Most men shouldn't marry. And who is talking about no effort? We're talking about not putting up with pointless drama and not paying someone else's way through life.

Real love takes real work.

Got that? Do you need more work in your life, especially work that YOU pay?

A marriage starts with commitment,

Yes, a commitment for the spouse who earns more to pay the other person. And a commitment for paternity no matter who she actually made the kid with.

and it doesn’t end until you die.

If that was true we wouldn't have so many divorces.

Maybe that scares young people enough to date longer than a presidential term with just as little to show for it.

Translation: I don't value her company. No, there has to be a legal contract.

Maybe that explains why someone I had never met would half-jokingly ask me to draw her boyfriend a map to the nearest jeweler.

If she wants jewelry she can buy it herself.

Guys, don't listen to him. Consider this. And this.

Now fellas, please be polite if you write to Brendan on Twitter. He's young, naive, and he's looking at years and years of what will likely be misery.