Ring By Spring

This post started out about marriage in general, which I found out that I don't  have that big of a problem with. The root of my anger here is with my old school, Messiah College. There is this thing called "ring by spring." Basically it's that you should have the goal of being engaged by the spring of your senior year. It may not be a case of "should," but it is the case that a large number of students follow this trend. It isn't an official thing, but more of a social trend. I would say that about +20% of my graduating class was engaged to either a Messiah student or someone else, some of them were even married. Remember, they were no older than 22 and they had just graduated from college.

There are two major problems with getting engaged and married before you have a stable life; first is the drastic personality changes that happen to you during college and when you begin to live on your own, and the second is the difficulties created by having to synchronize the building of your own life with another persons, which I believe rarely works out as expected or intended.


Ch-Ch-Changes
If you met Steve 4 years ago you would have no idea who you were talking too. I was, for lack of better terms, and idiot, a brute, a neanderthal, a coward, a fool, an emotional weakling. Honestly, I don't even know why people talked to me back then. I constantly thought and talked about girls, petty issues, meaningless things, what alcohol was like, how to get away with tom-foolery... I was a hooligan. If I saw old Steve come into current Steve's supermarket, I would probably have someone watch him as he shopped. I have emotionally and mentally matured to a point that I couldn't even have imagined back then.

You may be in college or high school right now and say to yourself, "that's just you and you're very tall. I think I'm going to stay pretty much the same for the rest of my life personality-wise." I would windmill kick you in the face if you were right here, and believe me, I'm a pretty big guy. I may bruise my butt from the fall but you will have your jaw broken. You WILL change a lot by the time you graduate or you didn't do college right. I'm not saying that you won't like the same things or look back fondly at the same memories, it's that you will have to start justifying to yourself why you like certain things, whether the investment is worth it, how sustainable it is to your other habits, and whether or not you really enjoy whatever it is. You will even pick up new things you love. For me it was reading and public speaking, two things I genuinely hated prior to my sophomore year of college. I love reading books about philosophy and history, as well as giving speeches to large crowds about a variety of topics. I even used to play video games for 40 hours per week in high school, and while I still enjoy them, I only play about 10-20 hours per week to make time for my other, more important hobbies.

Chances are you will end up dating someone with similar interests as you, or that is currently the case. What will happen to your relationship if you suddenly realize you have an intense desire to pick up something they have no interest in? Even worse, what if you're new interest and your old interest clash? Will you keep up with the old thing just to maintain your relationship? Yes, this could happen at any time in life, but I find it much more likely to happen between 16 and 24. This is primarily due to the dynamic, ever-changing environment you're absorbed in. There are a lot of opportunities to try new things, opportunities that you should take! Unless someone asks you to do something you are fully opposed to like straight up murdering someone or plucking all the hair off of a baby, you should try whatever it is. You may like it or you may hate it, but this is the one time in your life where you can do just about anything with the justification of "I'm young." The best advice I can give to anyone is that they should put their own life and priorities first. Figure out what you're passionate about and keep on that passion. You should find someone to love who is compatible with your life, not find a life that is compatible with someone you want.


Eating For Two
It's hard enough for one person to find a job that utilizes their degree and pays well. Imagine trying to find another person a job as well in the same geographic area. When all of the fluffy emotions start to wear off and you both realize, "oh crap, we need to start living in the real world," you're going to have a hard time juggling wedding planning, job seeking, resume building, catching up with family/friends, adjusting to non-college life, finding a place to live near your eventual job, carrying any financial baggage from your partner, etc. There are a lot of real world issues that probably not many couples in love are thinking about when they pop the question. All you know is that you want to spend your life with that person, which is a noble thought in itself, but without a plan it is doomed to several months, if not years, of hard times.

I should also mention that you will learn a lot of things you didn't know about your partner once you start living together. That slight over-controlling quirk they have when you're in public may be tolerable, but what about when they need to have the cups and plates stacked in a certain way?




Lastly, I would like to address one final issue on ring by spring. If a big reason you want to get married is to have guilt-free sex, you're doing it wrong. There is no doubt that sex is an integral part of any marriage, but marriage itself is a societal symbolic tradition where you are saying " I love this person and I would die for this person." You may be completely compatible with someone emotionally, mentally, personality-wise, etc. You may both have rich parents who will take care of you for entire lives. You may even think that they are "the one." But if you really love them then you probably shouldn't be marrying them just because sex is the one thing you aren't allowed to engage in.




I will admit that there are probably couples that got married in this way and are still together happily to this day. I will also admit that there are probably just as many couples who got in a few years and thought, "I've made a terrible mistake." If you take nothing else away, take the wisdom that before you go off making monumental changes in your life, life-long decisions I might add, that you should think about what you want to do in five or ten years. Where do you see yourself? Do you think you could spend the next 50+ years with this person? Do your goals in life, your morals,your methods of raising children, your work ethics, your comfort with being vulnerable match up with this person? These are things you yourself may not be fully aware of until you get out on your own for a few months, if not years. I have only been out of college for 4 months and can safely say that every day I discover new things about myself, and understand aspects of myself more clearly than I did before.

Have patience, and when you are truly ready with no doubts, take those steps.