Kevin Jonas Is a Statistic in the Making

Kristen Stewart is rumored to have recently turned down her boyfriend’s proposal of marriage by saying she is too young to become a ‘Mrs’. Me-thinks this may be the smartest thing the flannel-clad angst machine has ever said. Too bad 21-year-old Kevin Jonas didn’t feel the same. After getting engaged to his girlfriend over the weekend, the eldest Jonas will now forever be known as “that floppy haired guy who’s dumber than that Twilight chick”. As it is, the odds are already stacked against marriage these days. Throw in a cherub-faced couple whose biggest life memory thus far is prom, and the odds that the marriage will end with a bang in Judge Judy’s courtroom skyrocket. Here, in my humble opinion, are the top reasons not to get married before the tender age of 25. (Note: I really think marriage shouldn’t be considered until 30, but my therapist tells me I need to work on not being so cynical so, 25 it is).

9 - Macaulay Culkin, LeAnn Rimes, Kobe Bryant, and Britney Spears (And sooner than you know – Speidi). These are only a smattering of the celebrities who’ve married at young ages and are already divorced (Spears twice) or currently experiencing troubled and highly publicized marital discord. Granted, these are celebrities who all need an entire season of Oprah specifically dedicated to working out their deep-seated mental and emotional issues that go far beyond marrying too young, but who wants to be in the same category as any of these hot messes for any reason?

8 – You don’t want to be “that” guy/gal. You’ve just turned 21, so all your underage friends are going to ask you to buy them beer. It’s sort of a cool rite of passage to be the older brother/sister buying cigs and Mad Dog for your younger siblings and their friends. Say “I do” though, and you become the creepy old married guy who delivers the keg to the party then stays and stands in the corner telling inappropriate jokes to all the underage pootang he can no longer get. Or, for the ladies, you morph into the bitter drunk Mrs. Robinson type who buys her younger brother a fifth of Jim Beam but won’t give it to him until his highs school QB friend lets her put her hand on his thigh and tell him stories about her long-gone unfettered youth. Throw a camcorder and youtube into the mix and you’re a cliché waiting to happen.

7 – Your social circle collapses. When you’re single, you tend to hang out with single people. It’s no fun being the single guy/gal sitting in the corner playing Mafia Wars while your friend “discreetly” gropes their significant other. Likewise, it sucks to be in a couple and watch your single friends do body shots off hotties all night. When you marry young, it’s likely that none of your bone-headed friends are also married yet, so you don’t have a built-in couple’s support system. No couples to hang out with for date nights, Bunko tournaments, cook outs, or partner swaps. Once you get sick of hearing about your single friends’ conquests and they get sick of hearing about how you’re feng shuing your bathroom again, you’ll find yourself spending Friday nights in your sweats staring at your amore and wondering just how much Lunesta will knock them out for the entire weekend but not get you arrested.

6 – You’re not playing with Monopoly money anymore. When you’re under 25 you probably don’t have any assets yet, so you don’t think to get a pre-nup and save yourself from future financial ruin. In the case of the Jonas man-boy, I’m sure this isn’t the case. It’s likely the entire Jonas clan has performed an intervention and gotten Kevin’s fiancée’s signature on an ironclad piece of “keep your hands out of our cookie jar.” But in the real world where most 21-year-olds are grunting it out in an unpaid internship, stocking aisles at Target, or living off their parents, there isn’t a lot financially at stake yet. Now, I know everyone thinks they’ll be married forever, but statistics say that one day you’re going to wake up, roll over, and want to punch your spouse in the face for having the emotional intelligence of a 2-year-old, shaving your cat, spending your entire savings on an ATV/Gucci purse, getting fat, sleeping with your best friend, insert reason here. Now, because you married young and built your “wealth” together, divorcing means you’re going to have to split 50/50 with the person you used to adore but now want to see roasting over a spit. Your A-Team figurine collection, your signed poster of James T. Kirk, your eBay earnings, and your drawer full of “pipes” will now all belong to a person who appreciates them even less than he/she appreciated you. If you’d waited until you built your wealth on your own and gotten married later in life you could have pre-nupped your precious and left the ex with nothing but some scathing posts on Facebook.

5 – Babies having babies. Once married you’ll get pressured to have children, then life as you know it will really be over. You just learned how to do your own laundry – are you really ready to launder diapers? How about bibs? Your ball and chain’s underwear?

4 – The Stag Party. Your friends aren’t old/wise/rich enough to throw you a decent bachelor/bachelorette party. This is twofold. When you marry at 21, chances are some of your friends are still not legal to drink and won’t be able to wrassle up a fake ID to get into the stag party to begin with. Also, your of-age friends probably aren’t all that inventive or imaginative or endowed with cash. All they’re going to try and do is get you shit-ass wasted drunk on the cheap. So, basically you’re getting a keg of PBR and some local community college girls stripping, which equals a pounding hangover and a possible case of herpes. Wait until you’re older and maybe your friends can spring for a long weekend in Vegas, a sailing excursion in Miami, or a trip through wine country. Don’t worry, all these more adult parties can still include strippers, but they’ll also be a lot more fun and activity-oriented than most underage bachelor/bachelorette parties, which are usually just your typical Friday night on ‘roids.

3 - You haven’t had good sex yet. If you believe Team Jonas, Kevin hasn’t had any sex yet, but this article is for the normal 21-year-olds out there who are at least willing to admit they’ve put the tip in. If you’ve gone to college you’ve had sex in a frat house bathroom, or in your bunk bed in your dorm room with your roommate pretending to be asleep, or next to a statue of an old dead guy in the quad. If you haven’t gone to college you’ve had sex in a union worker’s truck, in your parents’ basement, or in the alley behind your local karaoke joint after 18 shots of Don Julio. Though you probably woke up with a hangover, I’m 95% certain you didn’t wake up with your no-no still tingling in bliss.  It takes some time to figure out that sex is more than just rubbing and fumbling and getting things to go in the right places. Maybe you’re a quick study and could teach sex ed classes by the time you’re 21, but chances are you’ve really just barely figured out how to put the condom on with minimal embarrassment.

So, #1 – you don’t really know if your partner is that good in bed or not because you don’t have a ton to compare them to. You could be satisfied with bad sex for the rest of your life (or the next 3 years until you divorce) and never know the difference. And #2 - When you get married young, odds are you and your partner have probably been very polite and gentle during sex and haven’t really figured out what you like or how to ask for it. Maybe you’ve done some light experimenting with food or props or mirrors, but you haven’t yet figured out that you want your partner to sit in a swing, or that you’re really turned on when they crow like a rooster, or that you ‘O’ louder than a freight train when they dress up like Obama or use their knuckle, etc. Whatever your sexual appetite calls for, you probably haven’t discovered it when you’re 21, so it’s very likely your wants/desires might turn out to be not quite as compatible with your partner’s as you initially believe. When you’re 21 you both might totally be into missionary. Imagine how awkward it’s going to be when you turn 25 and discover you’re vanilla and he’s a Furry. Do you really want the divorce papers to read “I’m just not that comfortable peeing on him”? Save yourself the grief and get married later when you know what moves you between the sheets.

2 – You’re only young once. You haven’t figured out a path for yourself yet – but when you get married you suddenly have to have everything be contingent on this guy/girl? The world is a big, big place. It extends beyond your local Applebee’s and two-screen cineplex. One day you’re going to wake up and realize you can do anything you want. Maybe you’ll decide you want to join the Peace Corps, become a pyrotechnic, move to France and sell hair wraps. The thing about being married is that you have to run every crazy wild hair you get up your ass by somebody else. And they’re always going to have a reason why now is not the right time to go to Ibiza or to open that comic book store. Being young is about exploring your options and figuring out what makes you tick. When you marry young you say “no thanks, world. I’m really not that curious about anything. I want to stay in Flint, Michigan and marry the first girl who let me put my hand on her boob because there’s nothing else in the world that could fulfill me. Ever. Really.”

1 – Your Permanent Record. You think nothing makes you feel dumber than the glazed and terrified look your blind date will give you when you try to explain to them why you’re already divorced at 25. But then you remember your parents are still paying off the wedding, and that makes you feel even dumber.  And at every family gathering from here to eternity, all of your relatives who flew in for the wedding and whispered behind their programs to each other that the marriage was a bad idea and would end within a year will be smugly and silently sending you ‘I told you so’ looks across the green bean casserole as they look at the empty seat beside you that once, briefly belonged to your spouse.  Save yourself the grief and let your cousin Judy be the dumb one everyone whispers about.  You’ve got years and years and years of awkward family gatherings ahead of you - do you really want to rush into them?