April 21, 2022
I’ve written before about how men in the Church get married far too young. As a general piece of advice, I’ve mentioned both on my blog and in my book that young men shouldn’t even think about settling down with a long-term partner until at least age 35, and older is even better.
If I were told something like this back when I was a Christian, I’d be horrified. That was because, for my entire life, I’d been told that one of my biggest goals for accomplishing the “ideal Christian lifestyle” was to get married to a “good, Christian girl” as soon as possible.
This is horrible advice, and has led to a plethora of marriages that are needlessly difficult. Also, when one member of the couple starts to deconstruct their faith and the other partner wants to remain a believer, it can cause stress on the marriage, and can even lead to divorce. Marriage is hard anyway, but many problems can be mitigated or avoided by waiting a little bit longer before you get married.
Here are four reasons why men should avoid long-term, committed relationships before the age of 35. I define a long-term, committed relationship as:
- legal marriage
- living with someone in a romantic or domestic context
- promising someone you’ll be their romantic partner forever
- having children with someone.
You’re More Likely to Have Built a Foundation
By age 35, most men will have built a financial foundation for themselves. They’ll have a career with perhaps a promotion or two under their belt. Or they’ll have started a business that has legs underneath it and is expanding. They’ll have some savings, some investments, and a general financial trajectory that is trending upwards.
Compare and contrast that to the twenty-one year old man who has zero cash who wants to walk down the aisle with his high school sweetheart as fast as possible so that he can have sinless sex with her.
The established man with a foundation is able to begin the new partnership by skipping all the money struggles that plague so many new marriages between young people who did not build the same foundation before they took the leap.
Older Men Know What They Want Out of Life
When you’re older and have more life experiences under your belt, you have a better idea of what you want your life to look like in the future. As a result, you have a clearer picture of how a long-term relationship and long-term partner will fit into your life. Adding a relationship to a fleshed-out life plan is far easier than committing to a long-term partner early and when you’re young and then trying to build a life around that (which is what most people do).
There’s another benefit to this that isn’t often talked about, especially in the Church: men who know what they want out of life, and are pursuing it, and will not compromise on it are insanely attractive. It hardly even matters what that thing is that you want out of life; what’s more important is that you have one. This is a man on a Mission, which I have written about before.
This is far more attractive than the younger man who hasn’t yet discovered who he is or what he wants out of life, so he just wanders aimlessly through life, talking about grand ideas without taking any action.
By Waiting, Men Can Enjoy Their Single Years
When you’re raised in the Church, hardly anything is considered more sinful than a single man living like a single man—dating and sleeping with multiple women, even at the same time if you want.
To be clear, enjoying your single years has to do with more than just sex. But yeah, sex is a part of it. When you’ve had time to date around (and sleep around) with several different partners and try out different types of relationships with different people, you have a better idea of what you want out of a future long-term relationship.
Also, being single allows you to have more time to hang out with your friends, invest time in your hobbies, and do some traveling if you want. Often, when men get into long-term relationships, they let all of these things fall by the wayside. This is praised as him “being mature” but this is untrue. Really, he’s losing balance in his life. Men who get married too young are usually very eager to let these things go as they enter into a new, exciting marriage, only to wake up several years later and realize they’d missed out on many things.
Younger Men Often Lack the Maturity Needed For a Successful Long-Term Relationship
This sounds bad (and in a way, it is) but it’s also normal. Younger men just are not, generally speaking, as mature as older men. It’s just the way it is.
Things go wrong when these younger men think they are wise beyond their years. Christian men are especially prone to thinking this way; they believe that just because they’re a committed Christian then they are on the “correct path” whereas atheist men who are twice their age are not. This can lead to some very arrogant thinking, including the belief that he’s ready to take on the responsibility of a long-term partner or spouse when, in fact, he is not.
Maturity is obtained over time and through life experience. It’s important to give yourself time to have these experiences and thus be prepared to arrive at a long-term relationship as a more well-rounded man who is ready for a serious partnership.
Conclusion
Back in my Church days, I remember the bustle of anxiety that permeated through single men who were “getting older” and hadn’t been married yet. Now, I look back and realize how ridiculous it all was. There is plenty of time to take on something like a long-term relationship or marriage. Not only that, I’ve realized it’s better to wait, which is something you’ll never hear in a church that is driven by purity culture and wants all its young people to get married as soon as possible, no matter what disastrous results it may bring.