Why Marriage at 23 Worked for Me

You can’t trust statistics. They’ll warn you of the high risk of divorce that comes with marrying young—but that didn’t stop Katie Arnold-Ratliff. At 29, she’s been married 6 years to a man she met at 15, and they couldn’t be a better match, she writes in Slate. Arnold-Ratliff gave up the college of her dreams to stay near her then-boyfriend, and the two “became 20-year-old senior citizens” when they settled into a home together. Still, it hasn’t always been easy.

“By the time I hit my ripe old mid-20s, I was already heading for divorce,” she writes. For reasons that are “lost to history,” arguments flared, and she “said flatly that I wanted to end our marriage.” She headed across the country for grad school with a goal: "I would go into the world alone and grow up, and then see if the grown-up me still loved him.” After several months, she drove back home and found him again. “I'm not saying I take him for granted. I'm saying he's the bedrock of my life.” Click through for the full article. (More marriage stories.)