There’s a new phenomenon coming to the world, it has nothing to do with style crazes or a new cutting edge drug, it’s something simple and easy to identify, a ring, more specifically a spouse.
Yasmeen Hassan and her husband Abdallah Sadig are in the early stages of the rest of their lives. At 20 and 27 respectively Hassan and Sadig got married on December 22, 2017 and are now in the newlywed stages of their relationship sharing almost every commonality in their hopes for the future of their marriage.
The couple says that having an initial bond from the get go, (their families have been close since both of their births) has helped them out in the long run.
“Being Arabic didn’t contribute to our getting married in the slightest, it had nothing to do with religion.” Says Hassan “It had to do with the fact that our families were extremely close and we did share those same values.”
Hassan and Sadig are in a committed relationship – with the most kind of commitment possible at such a young age they’ve had spectators from each side judging their choice to get married and asking questions the couple isn’t always ready to answer.
“I don’t think that anyone is ready for marriage,” says Sadig “there will always be hard times, sometimes the only thing holding us together might be out determination to make the relationship, the marriage work.”
Sadig proposed to Hassan during a family game night by writing out “Will You Marry Me” on the Scrabble Board.
Though recent studies have shown that the age at which you marry isn’t that big of a deal when compared to other factors, like how much you make or whether you graduated from college, both of which play more significant roles in how likely your marriage is to last, according to a 2012 report from the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project.
Though there are some compelling statistics against marrying young. The popular belief that approximately half of marriages end in divorce though recent data written suggests that the more accurate estimate is closer to one third.
As Claire Cain Miller wrote at the Upshot, the divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining since then. If the current marriage and divorce rate continues, only about one-third of marriages will end in divorce, the Upshot’s Justin Wolfers has calculated.
Ashley Edwards Walker in her article for Refinery29 about her experience as a married person in her early twenties stated. “Throughout our two-year engagement, and for years after we were married, I was embarrassed to reveal my relationship status for fear of being shamed. I avoided the words “fiancé” and “husband” like the plague. Sometimes, I went so far as to remove my ring or turn it around to not draw unwanted attention.”
Society looks at young marriage with much disdain — most of the things we hear about it are negative. For example, Olivia Wilde has said that marrying her Italian Prince ex when she was just 19 “stunted” her growth. Reese Witherspoon, who married Ryan Phillippe when she was 23 — a year older than I was when I got married — blames their divorce, at least in part, to their being “ridiculously young.”
Both Hassan and Sadig showed disdain when talking about other commitments made at a young age, “People rag on marriage at twenty but having a baby at 16 is a bigger commitment.” According to Pew Research Centre, having a baby before saying “I do” presents the exact same divorce risk as getting hitched early, yet because the former is more common — the average woman is 27 when she marries for the first time, but is 26 when she gives birth for the first time — people seem to feel better about hating on baby-faced newlyweds than couples who put the baby carriage first.
It’s people with opinions like Witherspoon and Wilde that overshadow the likes of Hassan and Sadig, who really, truly, in their opinion just felt ready for marriage.
“It is difficult, being in any type of relationship.” Says Hassan, “Everything is melded, your family is now connected forever and financially your lives merge and it gets a little but more serious than your run of the mill relationship in your twenties.”
Hassan later stated that most people her age can’t even cook breakfast while she ventured into the most important stage of her adult life quite early on.
