So, when's a good age to get married, then? Assuming we're agreed that the brain is immature until the mid 20s, any time before 25 is too young, right?
Not exactly. You might pick the wrong person in your teens, but before long, for all sorts of reasons, they become the right person -- at least for the first 20 years. I'm speaking for myself here.
That's me on the left in The Double Wedding painting above. Painted by my sister Lesley Evans, it (sort of) shows me and another sister, Deirdre, on the day of our double wedding. (Don't ask.) I was 19. Madly in love with my tall, dark and handsome fiance, and never doubting for a moment that we were a perfect couple.
Well, we weren't. We're so different that one of my sons is gobsmacked that we even chose to be friends, let alone got married. He's right: it's bizarre.
But Grant was tall dark and handsome and has always been a thoroughly kind, good and honest man. We shared many adventures and four amazing children. To say the marriage was a mistake would be outrageous, terrible -- because it had to happen, in order for our children to be our children.
So you could say I was far too young (though I sincerely believed I was frightfully grownup at the time) and I made a weird decision with my immature brain. And you'd be right. Yet in hindsight, I made a brilliant choice, despite the marriage ending inevitably in divorce.
When I look at younger people now, I'm glad I was blindly in love with the wrong man. I'm glad I married well before any possibility of making a mature choice. I'm glad I was a child bride. I'm glad I didn't try to find my true identity before bonding in passion. As it turned out, developing my true identity is taking an awful long time, so I'd probably still be a "spinster".
Instead, I am delighted that we married young. That way, we could divorce young, with decades to explore life independently. Thank goodness they didn't have MRI brain scans in our day.
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