Too Young To Settle Down?

There’s a BBC article floating around at the moment, about how to buy a house before you’re 25. I’m going to start by pointing out that, for financial reasons, if you live in or around London, this is nigh on impossible. The article centres on Manchester, where the couple interviewed are both earning 20k or under, and the house costs about 150k. Bully for them, but down here? No chance.

My dad always says you can afford whatever you want, it’s all a matter of priorities. *Disclaimer: this obviously doesn’t cover poverty, unemployed, unable to work, etc. but you get the point. And my priority is to enjoy my twenties rather than stress over a mortgage. You do what you can, and you do it the way you can, and you do what you want. Whatever, you do you boo, I’m not here to judge. Though if you buy a house dirt cheap I will scowl behind your back but that’s just jealousy.

The thing that struck a nerve with me personally, however, was the amount of comments to the tune of “25 is far too young to settle down!!” and “Imagine being with the person you were with in your 20s for the rest of your life!”

If you know me or have been following me for a while, you’ll know that I am married. I’ve been married for about 18 months, having done the deed on 13th June 2015…when I was…25…

The thing is, on paper, I’d have agreed with you. 25 is too young to know what you want with your life. But for me, that means – where I want to live eventually. What direction my career will end up going in. Will I shift my focus to music one day? Will I ever write a novel worth publishing? How many kids/dogs/cats/cars do I want? I don’t fucking know. Because all of that is in the future.

Thing is, Adam isn’t in the future. He isn’t some far off thing that I might get one day. He’s here now. And he’s been here a while. This wasn’t some hasty decision, we’d been together 6 years when I finally put on the puffy white dress. And I want him to continue to be as I figure the rest of this shit out. I don’t consider him as ‘settling down’, I consider him as my sidekick, my partner in crime, the dude that I get to come home to after a day of figuring my shit out and go ‘look at this shit I figured out today’, or the dude I can sit with a cup of coffee with before work, like I did this morning, bitching that my life is a god damn mess, I’m shit at everything and I’ll never achieve anything noteworthy. (I’m a delight when I haven’t had my coffee yet). 

The thing is about a good, healthy relationship is (in my opinion) that you don’t have to settle down and stop doing the things you do. He’s just there when I’ve finished doing them, to order pizza with and make up stupid inside jokes with, and to share my car and my house and my cats and my duvet with.

Essentially, if you’ve found the person – and you’re sure you’ve found the person – then why would you ass around? We act like we’re in our twenties, we still do our own thing, hang out with our own people, make our own way. We encourage each other to go play. But we can share it, and get excited about it together, because at the end of the day, if you love someone, you love them. End of.

Also he bought me a giant unicorn, so I have no regrets.