There are many conflicting voices when it comes to the subject of marriage and relationships.

You have the camp who believes if you’re not getting married young and starting a family right away, you are “wasting your life.” And then you have the camp who claims that choosing your life partner when you are “a literal child” is setting yourself up for failure. You have to “live a little” and “figure out who you are” first.

While I may be just another voice shouting into the void, I am Team “get married when you find your person.” Age is just a number. What’s the difference if you find The One at 19 or 42?

I met my husband at 26. We were married 3 years later. That’s about the average age of marriage in the United States–too late for the “just get married” crowd and maybe a touch early for team “live your life.” I guess that’s what makes it average.

Recently, I saw a tweet (Are we still calling them tweets? This X thing has me all confused) that claimed you shouldn’t waste your twenties pursuing “opportunities,” you should be looking to get married instead.

This baffles me for a few reasons. For starters, is marriage not an opportunity? Or is it merely the only opportunity that matters? Is this advice specifically targeted toward women or does it also apply to men?

Because here’s the thing:

You might be able to convince me that I wasted my twenties. Not the entirety of them, but maybe a few years in the middle where I waffled and debated and couldn’t quite figure out an opportunity that seemed worth pursuing.

I spent my would-be college years working for a non-profit. That’s probably considered an admirable way to spend that time, even by Internet Troll standards. After all, a girl has to do something while she’s waiting for a man to sweep her off her feet. Then I spent two years working at a daycare facility. Maybe I was acquiring some tools to prepare me for motherhood… while actively working my way toward spinsterhood, but hey, not a total wash, right?

But when I started waiting tables at the age of 23 (aka “leaving the ministry for food service” as my father teased)? That’s where it gets a little fuzzy. Because those next few years of bussing tables and loving broken people and standing in the trenches of a different kind of mission field–while cherished by me–probably didn’t contribute much to the “grand story.” It was an unnecessary plot device. Filler pages.

I mean, I should-have/could-have been married by then. Probably literally, as I had recently ended my first would-be relationship with a “godly man seeking a wife” because my gut didn’t feel right about it. (I’m sure the Trolls would have something to say about that.) I had been asked out by several different men–good men even–and I chose hauling trays of food on my shoulder over every one of them. (The Trolls definitely have things to say about that.)

Here’s my question for the “just get married young like I did” crowd:

Do y’all have a backup plan?

I’m not talking about the “what are you going to do when your husband leaves you and you don’t have any job experience” backup plan. (I have more faith in your husband than that.) I’m talking, “imagine your husband didn’t exist and you had to marry someone else” backup plan. Who in your old circle would you have married instead? How many “perfectly good guys” did you pass up in order to choose your husband? (And which of the “perfectly good guys” that I “should have married” would you marry if you suddenly found yourself single again?)

But back to Opportunity Guy…

Maybe he thinks all three of my jobs were a waste and I should have settled down at 18. I don’t know. I didn’t engage with his post to personally ask him. But I do wonder whether he thinks my husband’s life choices were a waste of time or if he respects a man establishing a career before marriage.

You see, when I met my husband, he was living in a barn. A literal barn. And, no, it wasn’t one of those cute little barn apartments. This was two old horse stalls converted into one tiny living space. He cooked his meals on a propane camp stove at the foot of his bed. He washed dishes in a sink right next to the toilet. His tiny little shower was nigh impossible to shave your legs in (which wasn’t a problem for him, but it was rather inconvenient for me and my vanity when I was driving clear down there to see him every other week.)

What I’m getting at is that it was no place for a wife and kids.

It was an opportunity. A place where he could learn his trade. An internship, of sorts, in the art of horsemanship.

That’s where he was when I met him. So if I had the opportunity to time our love story differently… If I could do the whole “find you sooner so I could love you longer” thing… Would I pack 23 year old Rebekah into her car to drive to a city she had never thought about to have a chance encounter with a man she didn’t know existed yet?

Absolutely not.

I wouldn’t go back and rob my husband of the opportunity to grow and learn in his trade. Sure, that young man mucking stalls in Asheville would have been thrilled by the chance to settle down and start a family, and who knows, maybe he would have found another opportunity to pursue his dream of horsemanship (one that didn’t require living in a barn). Most likely though it would have forced him back into the familiar rhythms of construction just to pay the bills. (And Levi is not as fun to live with when he’s stuck in the familiar drudgery of construction.) Horses would have remained a hobby–a would-have/could-have dream. Or perhaps a one-day/someday dream. In either case, our life would look different than it does right now.

That is, if there even was an “our life.” You see, I really don’t think that Rebekah at 23 would have fallen for Levi at 20. He probably would have seemed too young. I probably would have still been stuck on what I thought I wanted (which he wasn’t). And there is that small detail about how I slowly fell in love with the man while watching him gentle horses–something he had not yet learned to do at that time.

I needed the filler pages. I needed those years of growing and becoming and rewriting everything I thought I wanted out of life.

He needed the opportunity. He needed someone to take this kid who loved horses under their wing and show him how to do something with that passion.

Those things were the building blocks of our relationship, even though we didn’t know it yet.

For him, those three years were an opportunity that would set him up for a lifetime. For me, they were somewhat of a holding pattern–a life I was trying to embrace while I figured out my next opportunity that I wanted to chase.

So if you feel like you’re living in the filler pages of life… if you feel like you would-have/could-have/should-have been married by now… take heart.

Sometimes the filler pages write us a better love story than we would have written for ourselves. But if your life feels like an unnecessary plot device in a poorly written romance novel, perhaps it’s time to change the genre. Find an opportunity and chase that instead. No one falls in love–with a partner or with life–while sitting on the couch. (If you did, that’s a story I would love to hear.)

Don’t let the Trolls dictate your life. Don’t let them tell you that your story isn’t pretty enough. Don’t let them rush you into settling for mediocre. You deserve more than that.