Re: Wedding drama
Yes, I’m the oldest. And the first one in the family that’s bringing someone home for marriage on their own (my other cousins in Pak had arranged marriages and the one cousin that had a love marriage to some girl in the family was shunned from some of our elders for picking his own girl–EVEN THOUGH SHE’S A RELATIVE. ugh).
Yes I’m in my mid 20’s and so is the guy. he’s looking at a lengthy residency as of now–6-7 years at least WITHOUT a fellowship and mine is probably going to be around 4 years. If we wait until then, we’re going to be in our mid 30’s by the time we’re “settled” and that thought scares me.
Our school is pretty understanding about couples and if you’re married they do everything they can to try to place you in the same location for rotations…so that’s at least 1-2 years of somewhat of a “stable” married life where we can live in the same house together and, even though we’ll be broke students living off loans, we can have some sort of normal adult life as opposed to living off ramen noodles in a studio apartment like a bum. Couples match is also something that we for sure want to do. His residency of choice is significantly more competitive than mine but he’s a smart dude, mA, so I’m willing to compromise on location and try to match with him. The idea of having to wait until we’re 35-36 (or older if either of us does a fellowship) to START our married life together is hard to imagine. We both live away from home, and I’d be lying if I said we didn’t want that companionship sooner rather than later. We’ve already accepted that money will be tight, and he’s good with financial aspects so we’re planning it out. Plus, we’ll be doing the Income Based Repayment option so that should help a little with paying back our loans. And I mean, we’re NOT planning on running off. We’re both from fairly strong family units (even though mine sounds insane right now, I realize) and they wouldn’t just leave us out there on the streets if we really needed help (not that either one of us is relying on that).
We’re dead-set on marrying each other. So we don’t see the point of making it more difficult on one another by waiting. In the even that couple’s match doesn’t work out (God forbid) then even if we DO have to do long distance , at least it won’t be the end of the world if we fly out and visit each other since we’ll be MARRIED. To do that as his gf / fiance would be impossible. Our families are both very conservative and wouldn’t be okay with it.
Also, we both have younger siblings that are reaching the age of marriage. My family wants to have me married before they look for my brother and sisters. For me to wait until i’m in my mid 30’s would be ridiculous in that regard too.
Get married. The job stuff will fall into place later. Hospitals/residencies/med schools are understanding of these things and quite supportive actually.