Enjoy college, marriage can wait

My Facebook news feed nightmare came true over winter break.

A few days after Christmas, I was up at 3 a.m. and talking to one of my friends on instant messenger. I checked my friends page and saw that my ex-boyfriend had changed his relationship status. At first I got a little excited. That small shred of hope I still had for our relationship was there; I thought he was single again, and maybe there was some slim chance things would work out. I clicked on his profile.

But his relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend of a year and a half wasn’t canceled — they were engaged.

My heart sank. We had broken up nearly two years ago, but stayed friends. We had been engaged as well and I had finally given him my ring back at the beginning of break.

I didn’t feel better until my friend gave the marriage two years. Another friend of mine gave the marriage two months — if the engagement lasts.

He told me a few days later that he hadn’t given her my ring and he thought getting married would help him “grow up” and “get his s— together.”

But growing up isn’t a reason to get married. Neither is having sex, which was the reason why two 21-year-olds got married on the new MTV show “Engaged and Underage” that premiered Monday night. The show is about young adults who fall in love and get married.

“We’re 21, and we’re virgins,” the groom, David, said in the beginning of the show.

The pair met at a Christian college their freshman year and fell in love. They had a small outdoor wedding and started their lives together in a cottage in David’s parents’ backyard.

“Either way, I know I’m going to marry Lauren, so it’s not worth it to wait,” David said.

When I heard that, I laughed — isn’t waiting what makes it better?

The only logical thing I heard in the entire show was the concern Lauren’s brother posed. He said that when he told people his sister was getting married, the idea was never received well because of her age.

“I’ve not once received congratulations. It’s always been ‘why?'” he said.

And her brother is exactly right. Why would anyone want to give up their young adulthood for a husband or a wife?

There were 41,720 divorces in Ohio alone in 2005, according to the National Vital Statistics Reports made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The odds are against young couples. Couples who marry past the age of 25 have a 24 percent decreased risk for divorce, according to a report by the Americans for Divorce Reform, a group that advocates divorce reform laws.

And even if you do find the one you really love when you’re 18, do you really know what love is yet?

Wait a few years. Enjoy your college years — without a fiancé.

Kali Price is a junior newspaper journalism major and assistant forum page editor. Contact her at [email protected].