Ashlee is going to rant about marriage for a second

First things first, this has been building up for a long time. I think the whole Zerrie engagement thing kind of made it boil over, but this isn’t just about them I promise. I have a ton of friends who are my age, some maybe just a year or two older, who are getting engaged like it’s going out of style right now. Now normally I’d be happy for them, throw the whole “congrats, whoop-de-do” and what have you, but unfortunately it’s not really for all the right reasons, at least not to me. Most of my friends getting engaged right now are very religious and don’t believe in having sex until marriage, so a lot of them are getting married fresh out of high school just to have sex. I hate to sound blunt but,

That’s fucked up.

The non religious folks I know are getting married super quick because I guess somebody somewhere decided being married is “in” right now. Like tattoos and denim jackets. Again to be super blunt

That is also quite fucked up.

But the thing I think bothers me most is that most of my friends barely know their fiancée. One of my friends, (We will call him D) proposed to a girl he had been dating for three weeks. THREE WEEKS. He hasn’t had any other girlfriends, and he met her a month before they started dating.

HE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW HER MIDDLE NAME GUYS.

Now call me old fashioned, but I think marriage should be something that is between two people, who know and have loved each other for a very long time, who plan to spend the rest of their lives together. It should not be between two people who are like “hey, you’re not too bad looking. And if it doesn’t work out we can always get divorced.” THAT IS NOT WHAT MARRIAGE IS FOR.

I mean, I can understand the entire “love at first sight” argument, that’s what happened to both of my parents. But they both also have been divorced once before from super young marriages because, guess what? When you’re thirty you want different things than when you were twenty. PEOPLE CHANGE. That is what happened in both my parent’s first marriages. And do you know what? Even though it was love at first sight when my mom and dad met each other they still waited two years before they got engaged.

I’ve known my boyfriend for about three weeks, I can’t even imagine getting married to him right now. We both have no idea what we want to do with our lives, are focused on school and our jobs, and we barely know each other. I don’t know his middle name, his favorite color, anything. I mean, I trust him, but I couldn’t even begin to think of spending the rest of my life with him.

I also know that from the time I was sixteen to now I have changed tremendously. I have entirely different goals in life, different wants, and a different attitude. If I have changed that much in three years I can’t even imagine how different I’ll be at twenty-one or even thirty. I know I don’t want to get married until I’m at least in my late twenties, have a steady source of income and an established direction in my life. And yeah, maybe I’ll find someone and we’ll fall in love with just one look, but I think knowing someone is a big part of it too.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to get married young, because it’s not. Just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons and that you really know the person who you’re planning on spending the rest of your life with. And please, for the love of God,

Learn their middle name.