Clarke

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Karen Clarke
Mr. Tyler Barnum
English 2010
Feb. 15, 2015
Confessions of a Young Marriage
Marriage can be such a beautiful thing for some. What a fairytale
idea that I had pre construed as a little girl! I loved watching the
princess that finds her prince, her one true love and from that point on,
they live happily ever after. What a magical story right? Well as sad as
it is, that is not the case for most marriages. The 2012 census indicates
that divorce is at a 50% rate of marriage (Center for Disease Control
and Prevention). I do want to point out that many of the couples that
are getting divorced are not the same ones that have gotten married in
that same year so I do see a flaw in this statistic. Nonetheless, divorce
does happen frequently.
I made the biggest decision of my life when I was just a kid; I got
married. I was married at the age of seventeen; my husband was only
nineteen. Even then I thought that it was complete craziness. I was still
a child! The reason for my marriage; I was expecting a child myself.
What a clich, a child raising a child. Ive heard that too many times in
the last couple of years. Did it hurt my feelings? Sure, but mostly it just
made me feel inadequate as a mother, trying her best with what she
had.

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When I found out I was pregnant a huge sense of fear came over
me, so when my then boyfriend asked me to marry him I immediately
said yes. Somehow the thought of having someone go through this
huge life-altering situation with me gave me a sense of comfort. I knew
I wasnt ready to be a wife but I also knew that if it didnt work out
there was always divorce. In my ignorant mind it wasnt a mistake to
go into a marriage at only 50% commitment because I thought I was
doing the right thing by giving our relationship a real shot. I really
believed that a legal document bonding me to another person was
going to fix the mess we had gotten ourselves into.
According to an article I read by David Gibson, The Truth About
Marriage Statistics, published on the For Your Marriage website, many
Americans go into marriage with an attitude similar to mine at that
time- one of easy escape. Gibson refers to a book written by Tara
Parker-Pope, For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage. Parker-Pope
suggests that, inflated divorce rates can be harmful Misleading
statistics have trained a generation to be ambivalent about marriage
and divorce. She adds, People are left asking, if half of all married
couples are getting divorced, whats the big deal?(Dutton, 2010).
When I was seventeen I didnt necessarily compare myself with
other marriages, as I knew how uncommon it was to have your legal
guardian sign over permission so you can get a marriage license. But I

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did acknowledge that I still had an out, if things didnt work out.
Knowing that I had divorce as an option made me take marriage lightly.
When my son was born I realized that I couldnt walk away from my
marriage so easily. I knew nobody could love him as much as his father
had demonstrated. We had plenty of mistakes where we made each
other crazy but we also aware that we had a bond that would never go
away. I learned that if any two people put in sufficient effort to a
relationship they could succeed in a marriage.
Some may think that they need to find their soul mate in order to
have a happy and successful marriage. Because of my experience, a
soul mate seems like a made up fable that hopeless romantics gush
over. I dont believe that my husband is my soul mate. I think that is a
big reason that our marriage has worked out. We didnt have romantic
notions of marriage. The lack of expectations made it easier for us to
navigate our relationship into what we wanted to create. We learned as
we made mistakes. Neither of us thought that we were made solely for
each other, but we did believe that we had the ability to create a
happy and satisfying relationship.
As you may have assumed, at seventeen and nineteen we were
both still very immature. We were selfish and didnt know how to invest
in the future of our marriage. But we had an adorable little boy in the
middle that we loved and cherished so much that we knew we had to
give our relationship a fair shot. From my perspective; I knew I

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wouldnt want to share custody of my son and I was also very confident
that my husband wouldnt let him go that easily. Reflecting back, its
fair to say that the reason we decided to try so hard was because
neither one of us wanted to lose or even share our son. It may not be
a very good reason to hold on to a relationship but it ended up working
for us.
Having in common the goal of loving our son helped my husband
and I to work through the differences. We come from completely
different backgrounds, he is Caucasian and I am Mexican. Culturally we
had entirely different views of how to interact. He came from a
household with two parents and I had a single mother, with help from
my aunt and uncle. Finding a happy medium on parenting became
quite difficult. It wasnt until we learned to communicate and listen to
one another that we started to make progress. Together we realized,
what worked for our family as kids wasnt going to work for our own
forming family. Finding a way to co parent really helped unit us.
Parenting alone is something that can be very difficult; it is physically
and emotionally draining. We quickly learned that we were better off
working as a team then being on opposite grounds and adding
difficulty to ourselves.
We learned to work together in most situations; most of what we did
was to benefit our adorable little boy. It started off with little acts of
kindness. My husband would bring me a fountain drink almost

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everyday and I made sure to have dinner ready for us by the time he
got home from work. It was the little things that we attempted to do for
each other that started our appreciation for one another. From that
came trust; I started to trust that he was a person I could count on.
From trust came caring. Eventually, Im not even 100% sure that I
could pin point an exact moment where I fell completely in love with
my husband. Not the puppy love that we felt when we said, I do, the
kind of love that doesnt come and go. I started to miss him when he
was gone; time alone with him became more enjoyable. We actually
started to be fond of having alone time on weekends as a family, and if
you know my husband you would realize how big this was for him. He
very much enjoyed spending his free time with his friends and an Xbox.
Ive always been very attached to my family, but I learned to tell them
no and put my husband first. I think this was a huge turning point for
us. That is when we knew we had made big and great moves towards
our future. I was finally starting to feel good about where my life had
taken me, because up until then I had felt lost, somewhat
embarrassed, and a completely out of control.
From my experience I have learned that not even the healthiest
marriage has it easy. The American culture seems like a fix it fast trend
but my husband and I knew we wanted different. We have had plenty
of trials we have had to overcome in order to get to where we are. We
have been through deaths of loved ones, unemployment, money

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crises; even moments in which we felt like we wanted to give up more
than we wanted to keep trying. Along with the heartache we have also
experienced what I feel is genuine love, happiness, and appreciation
for life. Our son inspired us to want a healthy marriage. The
relationship between my son and husband was one of a kind that I
knew nobody else could give him. Through the years, eight at this
point, we have learned to communicate, trust, and appreciate each
other. Its interesting to think that I made such a big decision out of
ignorance and fear but what I got in return is the most beautiful thing I
never thought was even possible.

Work Cited
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Table 133. Marriages
and

DivorcesNumber and Rate by State: 1990 to 2009.

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Center of Disease Control and Prevention. June 2014. Web.
February 15, 2015.
Gibson, David. The Truth About Divorce Statistics. For Your Marriage.
Marriage in

the News. 2015. Web. 15 Feb 2015