“How was it living with your mom as a young married couple?)

If you don’t mind me asking, how was it living as such a very young married couple and with your mum, (assuming you didn’t move out while you were still at high school)? It’s cool that she was totally fine with your marriage but there must have been times you needed your own space and perhaps during arguments (if you had any) she must have found it hard not to interfere and ‘stick up’ for you as your mother while you were still so young. I’m actually doing a bit of research into people who married young for a journalism piece, and you seem to be one of the few cases that married a: not because there was an unplanned baby involved, and b) with parents’ approval. And well done for sticking to your guns and making it work!

 Jton38 stumbled upon the post where I answered why I got married when I was seventeen and asked this question. I thought I would post my response in case anybody else was curious.

Honestly, I feel like being able to live with my mom was one of the reasons our relationship has worked so far. Being married at seventeen was not easy. I was really mean for the first year, not sure how to deal with the stress, not used to living with somebody in such close quarters or having to take someone else’s needs into consideration. It also didn’t help that Mark was unable to work for the first year (because of immigration issues) and so I would go to school, work, come home and he would want to talk to me and all I wanted to do was zone out… but he’d been home all day. If we had had to deal with huge amounts of bills on top of that stress? If I had to figure out how to keep a kitchen full, a house clean, how to make sure we were both pulling our weight, etc., I don’t know if our marriage would have lasted. Staying at home was the best choice we could have made. It allowed us to figure each other out, our relationship out, before having to figure out “the real world.” I mean, adults don’t have to do that – they do it the other way, figuring life out and then figuring marriage out. If I, when I was a teenager, had to figure out both, I don’t think it would have ended well.

As far as my mom goes, she actually never took sides. Mark never really complained about our relationship to my mom (smart), and the few times when I would complain to my Mom she would play devil’s advocate and not let me wallow very long. Sometimes I would wish she had, because I wanted to vent, but she never put any blame on Mark. I don’t know if there’s an easier person to live with on the planet. When we got married, she insisted that we take the largest room in the house with its own bathroom. She gave us the utmost privacy. She always respected that we were trying to become a separate unit. We did and do have arguments, but my mom never stepped in and my brothers (more concern that my mom, really) never mentioned them to us. I’m sure they heard us, but I think they understood that us arguing was between us and nobody else.

We wanted to move out was because we just wanted “our space”, to do with what we wished. My mom was incredibly generous and never really told us “no” (she let us get a dog, an indoor dog no less, and considered it our decision and responsibility) but there was still the limitation because it was somebody else’s house and we had to respect that. An even bigger reason we wanted to move on was because we were living in a single room, and it was frustrating to have all of our activities in the same place – homework, video games, TV, showering, having friends over, etc.  I mean, our friends would come over and we would all sit on our bed, and looking back now that feels really weird. I love that we now have a living room where we hang out and nobody ever has to go in our bedroom.

Thanks for the “well done” and good luck with your research.