First off, you've wasted a lot of time asking about individual opinions if you have already made up your mind, "damn the torpedoes" and all. That's not very becoming in terms of maturity, but I was "young and stupid" myself at one point in time (maybe I still am?)...

Secondly, there is no "magic" age as to when you are ready for marriage; some people jump in head-first when the are VERY young and some folks wait until their early 30's or even later. Ultimately, age has next to nothing to do with how successful a marriage is or will be, but dedication, maturity, wisdom, compatibility and "true love" (the type that means no sex for you and having you change her diapers for the rest of her life if she gets in an auto accident tomorrow) is the stuff that seems to be the "spice" that makes it all work.

If you aren't comfortable with the above, then you have no damn business even considering marriage at ANY age. Period...

My wife and I waited until we were 26/27 and having lived together for about 4 years (we started dating exclusively when we were 20/21). It was a smart move for us, since we are the "try before you buy" type people; we wanted to make sure we saw pretty close to the absolute worst and best in each other before we dared to go before God and our families with such a joy and burden. In short, we pretty much knew that we were a great fit for each other in even some of the WORST of circumstances, but that knowledge only came about due to us having a fair amount of experience with each other...

In any case, we both put a lot of stipulations on each other before the "M" word was to be brought up, like finishing college, minimal debt, savings in the bank and once again, TIME with each other.

There's simply no substitute for time in a budding relationship; though it, you get to experience some small subset of how each of you will react towards happiness, tragedy, day-to-day change, stress, etc., etc. Not to be trite, but a whirlwind engagement followed by a teen-age marriage usually doesn't allow for any of this to take place and even if it does, it's usually meaningless since the majority of people don't become comfortable with themselves until their mid 20's anyway...

Take out the "love" piece and see how compatible you are outside of the sack or if you've yet to consumate your physical attraction towards each other, think about all the other things that keep you interested in each other. If there's litle to no commonality apart from sexual or emotional attraction, then you WILL have issues later on in the marriage. Guaranteed.

I personally think that on average, 19 is a bit premature to embark on such a journey as marriage these days. I see too many people 4-5 years older (my younger brother's age) that are just absolutely "adrift" in terms of their lives and these are folks that are moving into solid jobs, have college degrees and have traveled around and seen a "thing or two". Unless you AND her have lived a LOT in those 19 years, I would counsel patience...

...but your attitude of "no stopping us" no matter what the advise is quite telling of what you think of patience.

Food for thought.





JaTo e-Tough Guy Missouri City, TX 99 Contour SVT #143/2760 00 Corvette Coupe