Our daughter stayed home sick yesterday and was talking with my wife. Somewhat out of the blue she asked When do I get to start having fun? Not sure of the context, my wife asked “Do you mean when you aren’t sick any more?” No, later. After college. “But college can be fun.” At this point my wife was on the receiving end of an exasperated look. The look reserved for when a grown up doesn’t understand. Then our daughter clarified:
When do I get to have a husband? When can I be married?
This pleasantly surprised us both. While you probably have guessed that I’m pro marriage, we don’t lecture our daughter on this issue. But we are very happy, and laugh a great deal. So I think our daughter was paying us a huge compliment in her own way.
My wife and I were talking about it and neither of us had this attitude as kids. We both had it drilled into us that you had to “have fun” before getting married. We married fairly young anyway, and both are glad we did. Think of all the fun we would have missed otherwise. My wife mentioned the standard bromide that you need to “see the world” before getting married. As if this somehow wouldn’t be possible once married. We both did do some international travel before getting married, but we have done far more since we got married than before.
While there are some good potential reasons to hold off on getting married for a bit (not mature enough to commit, haven’t found the right person), wanting to have fun first strikes me as the worst reason. Not only is it not true, but it is an awful way to think about marriage. What does this say to your future spouse?
Yeah, I wanted to get the fun stuff out of the way before I got tied down with you!
