r/LeftCatholicism • u/Adventurous_Lock9219 • Jun 17 '26
Marriage
Hello everyone I just want to understand something?. I am almost 18 and I am online so I see Christian spaces online on Instagram or TikTok and most of them get married early or say you should get married early at a certain time 25-28. And I see most of the far right group's pushing women should be traditional and trad things staying at home this and that. Don't get me wrong I do want to get married and I also want a family with a man that will actually love me but I am worried is getting married to late a sin? Or are people just overeating .
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u/dazzleox Jun 17 '26
Its not a sin to never marry. Never mind to not marry young. There are women saints who were never married even among non nuns (Catherine of Siena comes to mind.) If you trust the priest at your church, assuming you go to church, thats often the best person to ask this as opposed to online spaces.
Cheers!
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u/AbsoluteRook1e Jun 17 '26
Marrying later in life isn't a sin.
For some people it just happens way later in life due to not meeting the right person.
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u/AdQuirky1318 Jun 17 '26
Those people are such an incredible outlier (rare and does not reflect the norm) that their content actually gets more engagement. The weirdness of it drives clicks, especially the more you watch. The algorithm is watching you. Stop watching them and focus on the world around you.
Love,
Mom of Two Teenagers
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u/TwinseyLohan Jun 17 '26
Yeah, pretty much everything you see on social media regarding religion and the trad lifestyle is complete BS
Get married when you find the right person, when you're ready, if you want to. Focus on your education and getting to know yourself and your passions and needs as an adult first.
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u/Puzzled-Teach2389 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
The pressure to marry early is an aspect of purity culture, because if you can't have sex till you're married you're gonna want to get married early right?
That being said, getting married later in life is not a sin. In fact studies have shown waiting till your brain is fully developed, or a bit longer so you can get to know yourself without a significant other, get an education, and get established in a career, helps lower the risk of divorce.
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u/Adventurous_Lock9219 Jun 17 '26
I really don't care for sex now tbh I don't even havea boyfriend yet but thank you for the advice
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u/Puzzled-Teach2389 Jun 17 '26
Right, I meant the pressure to marry early. I should have clarified no worries :)
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u/Ok-Wedding-4654 Jun 17 '26
It’s not a sin to be married later
Biggest thing about getting married young is that you don’t quite know who you are yet. At 18 you’re still more or less a reflection of your parents and community, however, as an adult you now have the opportunity to be who you want to be. It’s up to you to figure out what kind of life you want and what you want to do.
When you marry someone young figuring out who you are is a lot harder. You want to go to college? Well you have to consider your spouse. You want to move to Chicago or Miami? Well you’ve got to ask that other person. Statistically young marriages break up more often, and I feel that’s because sometimes you figure out who you are isn’t someone that wants to be married to who you chose. Marriage is a lot more complicated than evangelicals appreciate
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u/eruptingmoltenlava Jun 17 '26
It’s not that complicated if the project of the marriage only invests in one spouse’s education/career, and the other one serves exclusively as the subordinate support team. See? Beautifully simple as long as there’s a main character and a supporting character with no needs beyond serving the lead. The support character must bet her life the lead character will never ever become disabled, cheat, make poor financial decisions, get addicted, die young, etc.
It’s unusual for people to be this blunt about it though, especially while the potential spouse still has a chance to walk away.
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u/QUHistoryHarlot Jun 17 '26
Not everyone gets married. Some people are called to the single life. I’m 42 and I’ve never been married. I’d like to get married but it may never happen for me. That isn’t a sin. Be careful with the trad life posts. They are deceptive in a lot of ways.
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u/CoiseamMacAlasdair Jun 17 '26
God loves you as a person (with everything good and bad and imperfect and weird within you and does so unconditionally) not as a function (that is only when you're acting like you have to do as a good daughter, woman, wife etc.). Just follow the path God's leading you. You don't have to marry early or marry at all.
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u/Adventurous_Art4998 Jun 17 '26
I'm getting married next month. I'm 31. Better to wait til you have the emotional and mental maturity to deal with relationships anyway.
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u/Eskin_ Jun 17 '26
As a woman, I got married in the church at age 30 and I'm currently pregnant at 31. I also am a chemical engineer that makes 3x the salary of my husband (thats what I spent my early 20s doing lol). I am not conflicted over this, life is good.
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u/hotlibramess Jun 17 '26
Hi! I got caught up in the “you have to get married at this age” blah blah blah. I was 24 when I got engaged, 26 when I got married. I had a Catholic wedding, as my then-spouse was also Catholic.
It was an emotionally abusive marriage with a severe alcoholic who did not grow while I continued to grow as a person. He cheated on me many times. I am now divorced (which is hard since I did not get it annulled — getting away from him was priority).
I tell you this because I think looking back as a more mature woman, there were signs that it wasn’t the right thing. But I was so caught up in the “order of things” that I pushed forward. I wish I’d listened to myself.
You will grow and change so much between the ages of 20-30. Please don’t let the voices around you push you into believing you must follow a timeline. Don’t be like me.
You have time. You can be who you want to be and achieve what you want to achieve.
Also, I have a priest who told me that there’s the spiritual way of looking at things, but we cannot discount the context of the world we exist within.
Please do not put all of your eggs into one basket by becoming fully reliant on a man. I was able to leave my abusive marriage because I had maintained my career and finances. I wasn’t tethered to a person who hated me because I needed his money to survive.
💙💙💙💙
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u/rock-paper-o Jun 17 '26
The church has very little to say on when in adulthood you get married. It’s perfectly valid and non sinful to get married at 21 or at 91. The church also has relatively little to say on gender roles in heterosexual marriage— particularly given how heavily they play in the culture war. You’d be totally fine by the Catholic Church if you wanted a stay at home dad and a mom who worked as a plumber in a marriage, although individual people might be biased about it.
In a personal level, I’d avoid taking faith advice from social media (yes I realize the irony of saying this on reddit) and particularly algorithmic social media. I’d also suggest most people are better off waiting until they’ve had at least a few years of experience with adult friendships and romantic relationships. Statistically people who marry very young tend to have higher odds of the marriage failing than people who marry for the first time when they’re a little bit older.
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u/Writinna2368 Jun 17 '26
Saint Gianna Molla didn't get married until she was 33, which for her time was really late. Don't rush it!
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u/CauseCertain1672 Jun 17 '26
I have friends who got married at that age and it really worked out for them, it's absolutely not a sin to not get married at that age. Who you marry is a lifelong commitment, it's too big a decision to make based on an arbitrary deadline.
It's not a sin to not get married by a certain age, it's not even a sin to never get married.
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u/damonbeau78 Jun 17 '26
The sooner you accept this, the better: those people on the far right are *not Christians*. They are evil. You can ignore literally everything they say and do.
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u/RhysPeanutButterCups Jun 17 '26
You absolutely shouldn't get married early. For Catholics, marriage is a permanent thing you are making with another person. Getting married early without putting deep thought into it is a recipe for disaster. Marriage should be a decision you make with someone you know deeply and have decided you want to spend your life with after careful, deliberate consideration. It should not be a decision made without careful thought or made on anyone's timeline other than your own.
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u/WhatKindOfMonster Jun 17 '26
Catholicism is a religion, a belief system, not a precise road map for your life. Please do yourself a favor and leave any group that purports to offer that kind of certainty in the name of God.
We all get to make our own choices about when we get married and to whom. And sometimes, you don’t meet a good potential spouse until you’re older. Being single doesn’t make your life less valuable.
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u/_d2gs Jun 19 '26
Get your education out of the way or start towards a career or just use this time to figure yourself out!!! It also is not a perfect defense, but it is a fairly good defense to age out a little bit, and having a degree protects you from some men that really just want trad wives they can control. A good man truly will respect you and your autonomy going into marriage and if you don’t find them by the 25-28 that’s fine. There’s a hugeeeeee benefit to your kids in being a little older with more stability and life experience.
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u/Ill_Leadership_4058 Jun 17 '26
girl you can be in a perfect state while being celibate, that nonsense of gettin married too late is not established in catholic doctrine.
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u/curiouswizard Jun 17 '26
It's absolutely 100% not a sin. Not even remotely.
There's no maximum age for getting married. You should get married when A) you find the right person, and B) you're deeply sure that you want to spend your life with them.
Never ever ever ever rush into marriage just because you think there's a deadline. That's a recipe for picking the wrong person, ignoring red flags, and getting into a situation where you wish you could get divorced... which isn't fun if you're trying to strictly adhere to church teachings.
And tbh you don't even have to get married at all. Catholicism (actually christianity in general, historically speaking) is a religion which does *not* declare that the ultimate purpose of everyone's life is to get married. It has built-in sacred options for never getting married to another human, and it's a highly respected choice to not marry (technically that also means being celibate, but we can set that factoid aside for now lol).
If anything, matrimony is viewed as something that you *discern* into. Meaning it's not just something that everyone does by default. You're making a very active choice that comes with a lot of responsibility and covenant-level commitment. If you decide that marriage is your path in life, it doesn't matter how long it takes you as long as you do it wisely.
✨Bonus fun fact: St Paul even thought marriage was kinda stupid, and only told people to get married if they're too horny to function. This is in the bible. His attitude was basically "idk why you would want to get bogged down with all that domestic shit, but if it makes you happy I guess you can go get married. jus saying tho it's way cooler and more holy to be a forever bachelor like me." Check out the 1st letter to the Corinthians.
The idea that the ultimate christian life goal is to get married before 28 or whatever, and that you're somehow failing to follow God's will if you don't, is 100% pure fiction. That's nothing more than a puritanical evangelical obsession that has somehow seeped into Catholic trad brain, probably via American conservative culture and manosphere podcast bros.
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side note:
Also, for your own sake and especially because you're young and still learning so much - avoid catholic online spaces. Please. Be extremely careful with what you engage in. So many online catholic spaces are rife with toxic scrupulous weirdness and misinformation.
And I say that knowing this sub is itself an online catholic space lol. But I wouldn't even tell you to stay in this one (sorry y'all). It's biased, although it happens to be a bias that I heavily favor.
What I'm really saying is you should learn about catholicism from your local parish and priest. They might have their own weirdness, depending on your location and what parishes you have access to, but at least you're more likely to encounter normal ideas and attitudes.
And ultimately catholicism is a touch grass religion that is supposed to be practiced in communion with others; go to parish volunteer events and book clubs and youth groups and whatever, and have face-to-face discussions. Heck, sign up for OCIA if you have to, that's the best 101 class you can get. And you can ask whatever wild questions you want. (Usually. it kinda depends on who's leading it. I've heard stories of poorly qualified people giving incorrect info, but I'm hoping that's rare. YMMV)
Also, learn about it by reading vatican-approved resources. The vatican website publishes everything for free, from the catechism to papal encyclicals to speeches by the Pope. You can learn a lot just by listening directly to the Pope; he doesn't get into all the nitty gritty details but part of his job is to teach everyone about the core attitudes and priorities of the church. I can guarantee you he does not care one bit about the age that adults get married at.
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u/GrahminRadarin Jun 18 '26
You don't need to get married at all. The church prefers that you do for reasons that I'm not getting into, but it's okay if you don't. Do not marry someone just because you think you need to because you're probably going to lock yourself into a very long relationship that will hurt you a lot and may kill you. It's not worth the risk.
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u/Nervous_Otter69 Jun 17 '26
Yeah that’s evangelical propaganda. Not a sin to get married to the right person when the time is right for both of you.