“We just married too young. That’s why it didn’t work out.” -Cheater
I just do not buy the “married too young” explanation for divorce. It is an excuse.
This is a tidy lie to cover up for the cheater’s character deficits and to help people avoid feeling uncomfortable in facing the hard truth:
The cheater demonstrated a monstrously lack of character by cheating on his or her spouse ending the marriage.
The cheater’s age when he or she married has nothing to do with it. For generations, young people married and never cheated.
If the “law” of “married too young” is true, then the Greatest Generation ought to have had much higher instances of infidelity and divorce than Boomers, Gen Xers, or Millennials. As far as I know, they didn’t and don’t.
So, let’s stop with this excuse.
The marriage did not fall apart because you all were married “too young.” It fell apart because one of you chose to cheat and thereby revealed catastrophic character flaws.
That is the truth. And it is better to speak the truth even if it is less comfortable than a lie.
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*A version of this post ran previously.