Divorced 29-year-old says people under 25 shouldn’t be allowed to marry

A recently divorced woman has a message for those under 25 considering tying the knot: Don’t!

A recently divorced woman has a message for those under 25
considering tying the knot: Don’t!

In a column for The Huffington Post, 29-year-
old Toronto PR professional Jennifer Nagy is making a case
for why people under the age of 25 shouldn’t be allowed to
marry.

“I do believe that it would be for the best, better both
for the institution of marriage and the individuals
getting married, if we could change the law to prevent
couples from getting married before the age of 25,” Nagy
writes.

Nagy got married when she was 24-years-old, and by age 29,
after a nine year relationship, she and her husband
separated.

“I was with this person since I was 19 and I found in my
experience that going through a long-term relationship
starting when you’re so young and you don’t have the
knowledge of yourself and what you want in life, wasn’t
necessarily the best idea,” Nagy tells 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ross and Burbank Show.

She says in her case, she’d been so focused on working and
developing a career she hadn’t really spent a lot of time
considering who she was and what she wanted, and when she
finally took the time, she realized she felt pretty
disconnected from the life she’d established for herself.

“I found myself as a much older woman realizing that I
didn’t really know myself. I didn’t feel connected to my
life. Once I decided that, it was very tough to be able to
continue with a marriage and a life that I didn’t feel any
connection to.”

Ross and Burbank host Luke Burbank, who also married
before age 25, says he too feels he wasn’t ready.

“I think about some of the fights that my ex-wife and I
had, and some of the ways that I acted. I was just not
ready to be married to another human being.”

In her column, Nagy cites statistics from the National
Center for Health that says around 60 percent of marriages
of couples between the ages of 20 and 25 end in divorce.

Co-host Dave Ross says he and his wife made it OK.

“I was married at 21, and next year it will be 40 years if
we make it,” says Ross.

Nagy says she doesn’t expect every marriage between people
under age 25 will go bust, but she does think it makes
things more difficult.

“I do definitely think that there are people out there
that can make it work,” says Nagy.

“I think the reason I wrote this article was because I
wanted to raise awareness of the fact that people should
be thinking about more than just ‘I love this person and I
want to get married,'” says Nagy. “I think there should be
some thought about who I am and whether I’m ready for
this, and whether my maturity level, and my potential
spouse, whether their maturity levels, are high enough to
really survive the ups and downs of marriage.”

Listen to Ross and Burbank discussion with Jennifer
Nagy:

By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor