What's up with AS girls marrying so early...?

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I got engaged after not quite 3 months of dating someone. I was 24. He is probably Aspie too, but more importantly - I know he gets me and he is very loyal. Two qualities I rarely find in men. In the end marriage is work, and it's nice if you can have a few things to make it easier. At the time, I had my degree, a decent job (though more could be said here), and getting married was just something I wanted.

I also had many boyfriends, and having something stable, and someone committed to me was appealing a unique sort of way.

out of place as a i guy, but i was lurking and this caught my attention.


and i was just thinking wow, if only chauvinism worked the other way around too like a double-edged sword and guys could use marriage as an alternative (cop-out) to being successful too .


but no, the guy in the relationship is expected to be the main provider no matter what (ha, pressure much?), while with women, jobs and success are slightly more optional as you seem to have pointed out as long as you can rope yourself a good one. our social standards could use reforms for fairness, they're archaic
and here i thought times, they were a changin'
yet still we have no safety net for our own hopeless cases.

truthfully, also from the guys perspective choices among available women may also be limited to alcoholics, jerks, and philanderers. it goes both ways.

or maybe i'm just bitter as an aspie guy who can't seem to find a job or money for college himself *shrug*. it just momentarily seemed there was no consideration given to the other side of things. so it stung a little. though whether my reply was fully warranted or not i'm not entirely sure...

I have wondered about this too, I think it's amazing that some AS chicks act extremely introverted and disrespectful towards society until their late teens-mid 20's, then they're "Reborn", and suddenly end up having a happy stereotypical life and they're respected in society, I wonder how they can get away with that, I would like to know it.

My private theory is that pregnancy hormones and birth hormones changed me a lot. :p
Not out of aspieness, but very changed. :p

I think I got married young b/c I thought everyone told the truth like I did. I thought I was loved as loyally and deeply as I loved him. I am on my 3rd husband now we've been together 8 yrs. It is still a challenge, but I am one who has always wanted to be the wife and Mom. That was my "career" of choice and I just worked in banks and mortgage companies until I could have my real desires. I want that old fashioned love like my parents had. I think for me, my aspiness had me lock in on what I thought was a norm of my parents, high school sweethearts who married at ages 16 and 19. I wanted that to happen for me and faulted myself when it didn't. The first one I married was the one who said the right things at the right time. I just didn't "get it" and really let others hurt me b/c I trusted too much. Now I see that came out of my aspieness. But I don't know if it is different for everyone, I think for me it was a choice that I went after like I always do in a very decided and dedicated way. Also, I didn't have the ability to figure out when the other person was lying or leading me astray... strange b/c I see so deeply into ppl in matters of their lives that don't have to do with me or with social conversationing. I can't tell if they are bored by me, but if they are emotionally hurting and crying on the inside I'll see that in a nanosecond. It's part of what got me into marrying the wrong guy young, not just getting married young.

I will be perfectly honest as to why I married young. I was married at 21, and am 26 with three children.

Despite being "gifted", and doing well academically, I struggled with life. I had trouble with most of the tasks an adult needs to do. I am, in many ways, still a child. I am able to take care of my children quite well. I even have the extra challenge of having a severely disabled daughter. However, I do have trouble dealing with other people, getting bills paid on time (despite having the money), and making phone calls. I do depend on my husband for a great deal. He depends on me for other things, as my aspie focuses have proven useful.

In short, I was not prepared for life, and initially made poor choices because I was so naive. I ended up going down a road I had not expected, but I feel almost as if I needed someone else, and not for emotional support.

Good question.

I don't know but what's odd is I've often thought it was an NT thing since I never was nor plan to get married soon. Most women I talk to find it odd.

Just a theory but maybe aspie women are a bit naive at that age, I know I was b/c I never got out much. I use to assume that what ever nice thing a guy said to me, meant he meant it. That was until I had experience with one guy who went from nice to abusive. It took about a year or two to break up with him and it was there I learned not to be so quick in trusting a guy just because he says sweet nothings and wants to have a serious relationship. In fact when I look back at it now, there were so many redflags I missed like whenever he obsessively talked about his ex-girlfriend (the one he'd been sleeping with behind my back) or the time when he suggested what I should or shouldn't wear. At the time it felt uncomfortable but I thought it was just a normal thing plus I began to believe that I would never be happy without him.

I can definitely say I'm much more happier without him and being single. Sometimes I wonder if it's the way women are conditioned...to marry a guy before they get old although I think the attitude is slowly changing. The major complaint I hear from single women is that they'll be too old before they start getting into the dating game again. From a childbearing perspective I guess I could understand but I don't hear this thing about age much with guys even the older ones compared to women.

I wonder why people here assume all these things about marriage. You don't HAVE to give up your surname. You don't HAVE to dress up and invite everyone. You don't have to do anything, really, all extra stuff aside the marriage process can be very simple (OK, maybe not in all countries but generally not all marriage rules are so strict and specific). I personally see it as a legal thing that helps with sharing money and commodities, and also helping kids if those appear. Everything else should very well start before marriage. Getting serious only after marriage is a very bad idea in my opinion. I never get those "no sex before marriage" people. If you need a marriage to prove your relationship is serious, you got a problem. IMHO.

Whether I want any of that, too early to say, depends strongly on the guy. Considering that I want to mimic the Unconventional Family and have an even involvement in child raising as well as everything else, I don't think my chances are too high. Then again, exceptions can be made. So far haven't met anyone for whom I'd make an exception, though.

@Seanmw
(this is not an attack I just have an aggressive style of talking but this is not an attack)
Your argument is the same as "Slaves should be happy since we feed them and they don't have to worry about them". Not having to work is a sign of lack of freedom. With freedom comes expectation and responsibility. If it's not there, it means you're really not free.

You have issues finding a job? What about a woman finding a job? Yes, we are out there... Success at jobs optional? Hell, not for me. I don't even know what to do with that statement. Optional for the woman who like that lifestyle, maybe. For those who want to be independent, it goes completely backwards.

Not being expected to work is a BAD thing not a good thing, it makes all girls think that they don't need to be smart, or studious, or at least remotely hardworking. How many girls I saw that are like "I'm a woman I don't need to understand this as well as the guy does.". It creates a whole culture of stupid women who don't see anything beyond serving a guy. It's fading a way lately but I still see it everywhere and it really sucks to come to some group of guys and look at you like you're a dumbass by definition, because, statistically, it's true.

It also sucks to depend on someone. Do you want to depend on someone? I sure don't. It may seem cool to have them do stuff for you but you also know if something comes up, it's gone, gone, gone...

There's another side to the coin, all right, it just seems people don't see any problems but their own. Straight people never notice the problems of the gays, women don't see the problems of the guys, guys of the women. Come to think of it, "NT"s (I hate this term, I'm sorry) don't see the problems of Aspies and vice versa.

I'm old as the hills and have never even gotten a proposal.

I can't even keep friends, forget dating or getting married. There's been a few times on here that I've read about someone saying they have no friends but then later I see that they are married and that confuses me because surely the husband is their friend? How did they meet their husband and get to know him well enough to get married if they don't know how to make friends? I just don't understand how that works. I suppose I'll try reading some of this thread, perhaps it's explained somewhere.

Getting married early is not only in the AS community though, almost all the girls I knew in high school have kids a few years old now or are at least married. For instance, my cousin who is my age just had her baby last week after getting married earlier this year. My best friend in elementary school had a baby when she was 19 and also got married earlier this year. I can't even fathom starting my own family right now or any time in the next decade really.

wonder if it is more to do with the culture of your family and where in the world you live, in my small suburban town when I was growing up many were factory workers. Not that uneducated, blue collar people are less, I am just saying, the culture I grew up in, there wasn't any reason to wait. If you waited to get married and secure a good job in my Mom and Dads era you were a responsible adult ready for marriage. Some of my generation waited a bit longer, but not by much, and I think that is because none of us finished college. Matter of fact I think I am the only one who even attended. So, maybe it is an aspie thing for some, since some of us tend to be suckers for good lairs, or maybe think no one else will want us b/c we can tell wer are different. But seems where you live and who your family are have good bearing to the situation as well.

[i]I think this is from sexuality entering the equation. Guys who want sex from a woman is much more likely to put up with things than just "friends"!

I didn't get through all the replies but after reading the first few I was surprised no one had a theory. I didn't end up getting married but I did DECIDE to get pregnant at 16. If you think about aspies we don't see/understand(or sometimes, care about) those unwritten social rules like don't get married without questioning it, or wait until you are older to have a baby even though you really want one.

I agree with you, I'm not mature enough.. it just feels really weird when I think about it, because I still feel like a kid. XD;
Lots of the NT people I went to school with are getting married though. They're all in their early 20s. And actually I have one close friend who plans to get married soon too... she's not AS but I don't think she's NT, and I DON'T think she's ready. Most of my closer friends aren't planning to get married any time soon though, AS or NT.

Funny spider, I still feel like a kid too in a lot of ways.
But I think my husband does too, whether he is NT or Aspie I have no idea.

So really we both act and feel like kids most of the time so marriage works out fairly nicely. :p Being a parent and feeling like a kid is strange, but we're happily managing. :p

I got married at 26, but I had been with my husband for 5 years at that point.
I felt like I was getting married early, but there was no real reason to wait.

I never felt immature, but I had to care for a mentally disabled mother on my own while I grew up along with my own Asperger's so perhaps that aged me some.

Also, the comment on getting married so we can be taken care of was rather rude. I'm graduating with my bachelor's and hopefully moving on to my master's. I did not have to give up any goals or sit on my fanny to be with him.

Honestly, like everyone else in life, people's marriages are a case by case basis. To lump them into one category or try to generalize them is simply not going to work. I wish it were that easy.