Eat, Drink, and Marry!

A long quote, but this is an excellent synopsis of what I think, in the words of Danielle Crittenden in her book What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us.

Here's another unconventional idea: By marrying earlier, a woman would probably make a better marriage. There is actually little evidence to support the wisdom of our time that waiting until one is older and wiser to marry leads to happier marriages. Marriages last not just because the people within them love each other but because the time they have spent together, the events they have mutually experienced, the memories they share, and the depth of their intimacy and comfort with each other makes marriage to anyone else seem impossible. If you wait to settle down until your hair is graying, when your heart is bruised, when you have seen a number of commitments you thought were true love vanish or waste away, then when you finally do marry, you may be wiser, yes, but also more broken--less willing to trust another or to make the necessary accommodations to married life. Two people who have spent their youth with each other have a better chance of growing old together; they become bound and entwined with the other like the sturdy, thick vines of wisteria, clambering up the same wall. Over time, the two souls blur together; it becomes hard to judge where she ends and he begins--a terrifying thought for a feminist, perhaps, but the essence of enduring, romantic love.