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This is a guest post by Terry & Maura of TravelKiwis.
So, you’re getting married?
Yes.
But aren’t you two a little too young?
Not if we were living in the early 1900’s.
We were the 80’s kids growing up with great music, puff shoulder garments and the mullet haircut.
Oh no!
It was a time when living together was becoming more popular and accepted.
And no, we weren’t pregnant.
We had decided to commit to each other, and as a further bonus, we were getting our independence earlier than expected.
1. Friends from the Start
One of the great things about marrying young is the friendship you form with each other from an early age. Getting engaged in our teens meant we developed many similar tastes and ideas.
While working together at our first jobs out of college, we knew we had met our competitive half. We both love new challenges, so when one of us comes across something new, we share it together.
And for us, we enjoy each other’s company so why not start our married life now.
2. Lots of Firsts Together
First travels – First house – First child
Our memories together had a lot of firsts, especially the first three years of our married life when we travelled together to live and work in a new country.
Our first house was a wonderful memory of being carried over the threshold at five months pregnant. You know, those travel time zones can get a bit out of kilter when we found one month of being back in New Zealand we were expecting our first son.
Excitement, nervous, would we know what to do, could we make it with a house and a child.
Our furniture would be second-hand, but our excitement was from unwrapping all our engagement and wedding gifts stored over three years earlier. Yippee. It felt like Christmas.
3. Designing our Traditions Together
Marrying at a young age has given us the advantage of being less set in our ways and able to compromise with each other.
As young as we were, we were both on a learning curve of discovery together. And it gave us in our young married life the opportunity to make our way and have our routines.
We could decide early on what things we like, how we wanted to live our lives and what we needed to bring to our relationship.
And as for family traditions, we had some we wanted to be our own when we started a family. And one was to encourage our sons to travel.
4. Planning our Life Together
We decided from the start to combine our incomes for planning our future together. At 19 and 20 years old, we had to become financially independent. Scary but doable.
And yes, money wasn’t flowing in as we were travelling, but we were happy to share accommodation while we saved more for our travels and our nest egg.
So, what was the benefit of living with others?
Squabbling wasn’t an option. We had to work things through and fast. There was nowhere to run and hide.
And you know, this meant we had more fun as we had to laugh and carry on when we realised how silly some of those things were. We often say, learning to laugh at ourselves, while creating memories.
5. Dreams Aligned
Being young and carefree eliminated a lot of the stress, pressure and emotional blocks. With no pressure to start a family, or buy a house, we could follow our dreams.
And for us, in our 20’s our dream was travel combined with sport and connecting with overseas family.
And in our 50’s the dream to sell up the house and business to travel once again together to new places was another dream aligned.
So, for the last two years, we have been house sitting while we travel to more wonderful places. You can read more about our lifestyle here.
6. Sharing Experiences Together
We not only left home when we married but we also left our home country New Zealand six months later. Travel was always our joint passion.
Travelling for us was the experience to cement our relationship.
Why?
It was just the two of us. And we are talking travel in the 80’s when there were no cell phones or Skype. So, we had to work out our differences in the daily life of travel on our own.
Travelling taught us so much about ourselves and what we were capable of achieving. We will always have those travel memories to share. Like sleeping under bridges, on the deck of a ship and pitching the tent next to the Rhine. To
the point of annoying an attacker as we stood discussing who was protecting who. Luckily our travel stories now are to some more romantic destinations like San Marino.
7. Enjoying our Children while still Young
Our three lovely sons arrived while we were 23 to 28 years old and as our Mum would say, “kids looking after kids.” The grandparents were of course “over the moon” as they were young enough to enjoy their lovely grandchildren.
It wasn’t just the kids full of energy; we had plenty of energy too. We loved our time with our boys as we experience fun at the park, ball games and learning along with them. Without the huge age gap, we enjoy our times together even now.
So, 33 years on we find ourselves both lucky to have found someone so special when we were both so young. Making the commitment to each other at a young age has shown each of us great support, attitude and leadership.
We make a great team.
Author Bio: We are House Sitting Travellers who have left behind the corporate life at the age of 50 to search for a lifestyle of travel and location independent living. We have been to 51 countries, and experienced many wonderful travel destinations in Oceania, Asia, Europe, USA and UK. We hope to inspire you to realise you can travel often, stay longer and
experience more when you travel.
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