When I wrote about my wedding recently, several readers left comments on the Deseret News Web site decrying my naivete and predicting certain disaster for my marriage.
"One can't help but wonder if maybe you married too young," someone wrote.
"Every social scientist will tell you that in study after study people who marry younger have a much higher incidence of divorce," another wrote.
One reader even went so far as to publicly discourage any potential "copycat weddings" prompted by my marriage (what?) and said I was "setting a bad example."
This, apparently, is the neo-Mormon view of marriage. Gone are the days of congratulating the newlyweds, replaced by the en vogue practice of condemning their foolishness for marrying young.
It worries me that so many active Latter-day Saints would react so negatively to what should be deemed happy news. Did the cultural pendulum really swing so far toward obsessive mate-hunting that it has now rebounded to the point where we shudder at the mere mention of marriage?
I learned long ago not to be offended by anonymous readers who make entirely unfounded assumptions about my personal life. After all, I wrote about my wedding, and I suppose anything in my column is fair game.
So rather than talking to the embittered marriage cynics, I will address those who are still single; those who the cynics are trying to reach.
The discussion on the Deseret News message board was mostly dominated by a lot of people saying effectively the same thing: Utah's divorce rates mirror the national average because Mormons marry so young.
Aside from being based on a faulty assumption, this argument makes no sense whatsoever.
First of all, most estimates indicate that only about 60 percent of Utah's population is LDS, which makes it illogical to come to any conclusion about Mormons based on Utah's statewide statistics.
Furthermore, surveys show that temple marriages have a much higher success rate than the national average. You can attribute that to a lot of factors, but the faithful Mormon will likely recognize that marital happiness is much more likely when you're striving to honor a three-way covenant in which God is involved.
So, don't get scared off by statistics, especially those that are misrepresented.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the majority of people who will try to dissuade you from marriage without knowing the personal details of your life and relationship are probably reacting to their own personal struggles.
It seemed like most of the readers who were criticizing my decision to marry at 22 were people who had, themselves, married young and ended the relationship in divorce. But remember that just because they made an unwise choice of partner does not mean you will.
And that leads me to my final message to the Mormon singles community I am leaving behind:
Pray about it!
Nobody is a better expert on you and your potential spouse than Heavenly Father. Anyone who self-righteously tries to tell you to wait to get married is trying to replace the role of deity. (The obvious exception is righteous priesthood leaders and trustworthy parents.)
Don't let anyone keep you from participating in the most exciting swim of your life just because they jumped before they learned to doggie paddle. Take it from a guy who has only been married a couple weeks, but looks forward to many more to come:
The water is just fine.
McKay Coppins is a journalism major at Brigham Young University who writes about the Mormon 20-something experience.
E-mail: mcoppins@desnews.com
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