Say 'be mine' in your own good time

By the time this appears in print, we will have all lived through another Valentine’s Day. My thoughts on this holiday change from year to year. Some years, I contemplate how I became so cynical at such a young age. Some years, I reflect on how any given holiday is only as important as the observer makes it. Some years, I throw aside all pessimism and dress in pink and red (disclaimer: I do not think this has actually ever happened). This year, however, I thought of how often these past few months I’ve bothered my friends to get married shortly after graduation—and why I was wrong to do so.

I often joke to those friends of mine who are in relationships (and some of those who aren’t) that I want them to get married sooner rather than later. I want to go to their weddings while I’m still young enough to enjoy their weddings, I tell them.

In one sense, I really am joking. Obviously, I want my friends to get married whenever they want to get married. But I am also not joking, and not only because I want to go to cocktail hours, or simply because I’ve watched too many hours of TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress,” but also because I grew up with a certain idea of people getting married in their early to mid-20s, settling into their professional and personal lives, and building a future together.

The truth, of course, is that the future is looking less and less like what I imagined it to look like in the past. The Pew Report, released just this December, noted that people in the 1990s were getting married for the first time in their mid-20s. Today, they’re waiting until their late 20s, many not tying the knot until after they’ve tied up their 30th birthdays. Our generation grew up in households led by people who met in college and married relatively soon thereafter. Why, then, are we so unwilling to follow suit?

Maybe we aren’t. Maybe we are just doing so on a different schedule. My parents, for example, met in college, went straight to law school, and got married immediately thereafter. If they met in college today (a scenario that ignores the ever-evolving collegiate dating scene), who’s to say that they would have both gone to law school directly thereafter? The average age of a law student at many top schools today is around 25—the year my mother graduated and got married. If my parents met in college today, they might choose to live in Brooklyn for a few years, change career paths, head off to graduate school, and only then, if they’d stayed together, decide to make that together forever and ever, amen. Maybe they, too, would have waited for a ceremony that is essentially a celebration of two lives coming together.

Perhaps the reason that our generation is getting married later is that it is taking longer for those lives to be established. Or that learning how to live means something different for our generation than it did for that of our parents. That the world turns and people change and societies evolve, and we do our best to meet all of the above. Perhaps people are getting married later because, due to a whole host of issues that are at least as complicated as any 20-something’s relationship, it is taking longer for them—for us—to figure out who we are and what we want to be and how we want to live as individuals, much less as couples. And perhaps that’s just the way we’re living now.

Some people, for cultural, religious, or personal reasons, still get married quite young. And that’s just fine. Some people choose not to get married at all, ever. And that’s fine (although those in this category should note that this column does not speak on behalf of your grandmother).

But some people do believe in marriage as an institution, and for those who are indeed able to get married (that this clause needs to be included in this column is another discussion for another time), but who want to wait until they’ve lived, which means something distinct and different for our generation—that’s fine, too.

If you got engaged to be married this Valentine’s Day, or will be doing so soon, or shortly after graduation—congratulations! You have my unsolicited blessing.

And those of you who didn’t, and who won’t be? You have my (still unsolicited) blessing, too.

Emily Tamkin is a Columbia College senior majoring in Russian literature and culture. She is the general manager of the Columbia Political Union, vice chair of the Senior Fund, literary criticism editor of The Birch, and a former Spectator editorial page editor. Back to the Future runs alternate Wednesdays.