The benefits of marrying earlier (than currently fashionable) seem very underrated. The earlier you do, the more advantages compound.

It's not a final thing you do, like graduation. It's foundational. If you get it right, marriage means having a co-founder for each other's life.

*If* you get it right! It's like leverage. But I people reason about this part very oddly.

Most accept the plusses but then seem to think "Well I shouldn't aim for that any time soon, or at all when I'm young, since if it goes wrong..."

So they put it off for a decade plus

But that's crazy. If you identified something that FOR SURE impacted your future happiness, your ability to set long term goals, your finances, WHY would your response be "gee, better put that on the back-burner for another decade or two at least."

If there's risk & reward, you should think deeply about how to accomplish it. You should spend lots of thought on it. Your relationships should have it in mind.

(if not, you may be bound for a nihilistic status trap. @webdevMason has good thoughts here) https://twitter.com/webdevmason/status/1180685448986812416

Avoiding real risks & rewards isn't limited to marriage. I think there's a failure to be serious about anything that is really harming many people. Sadly many complain about it being hard to plan for the future when it is often their own refusal to do so.

Perhaps this is mostly a new defensive attitude brought about by internet/FOMO generation: Since your life is more visible than ever before, and one does not want to be seen ~failing~, one prefers to do less, risk less, try less. You must resist this.

The last thing you should accept is living out your life in passivity, "experiencing" things: partying, consuming entertainment, endlessly renewing your streaming services.

Think hard about "doing" things: creating, taking risks, affecting the world and others in some way.

This is more personal choice but it seems lots of underrated benefits to having kids earlier too. People think of it like "I could have 5 more years of freedom before I have kids."

But 5 more years before kids also means subtracting 5 years of your life with kids and grand-kids.

One could have kids in their 20's, teach (and learn, and play) with them in their 30's, and meet their grand kids in their 40's. I (mostly) wish I did that.

(And obviously the younger you are, the easier it is to deal with loss of sleep, keeping up with kid energy, etc.)

This isn't an exhortation to marry per se, it's an exhortation to take a very important part of your life more seriously than simply hoping you'll bump into someone and then hope to make it work. The intentionality matters.