The Problems With Young Love

They say we’re young

and we don’t know /

We won’t find out until we grow.

Well, I don’t know if all that’s true /

‘Cause you got me, and, baby, I got you.”

From “I Got You, Babe,” Sonny and Cher, 1965

Lane Fields and Mary Willis began dating around Valentine’s Day, 1986, when he was 17 and she was 16. Within a year, each began thinking funny little Valentine kinds of thoughts--like maybe they had found a lifetime partner. But unlike most other teen-agers who think such thoughts and then two weeks later are dating someone else, Lane and Mary did an unusual thing: They got married.

Unusual, because on their wedding day in May, Lane was 19 and Mary 18. At a time when people are delaying marriage (the national median age for first-time marriages is 23.1 for women and 25.7 for men), Lane and Mary decided to buck the odds.

Why?

“You know if you’re ready or not,” Lane said, sitting with his bride in the living room of their Santa Ana apartment. “Some people might look down on you, getting married this young, but a person must choose for himself. We are both the oldest in our families, so we’ve had a lot of responsibility that way. I think a more pressing factor might be if you’re responsible enough.”

National statistics indicate that about half of the marriages that start today will end in divorce. While none of several professional psychologists interviewed had statistics on teen-age marriages, all said the chances for divorce are much higher for those marriages than for the population at large. “I’d say it’s probably more in the 75% to 80% range,” said Linda Grossman, a Laguna Niguel clinical psychologist.

“What I usually try to tell teens who are even thinking about (getting married) is that people in their late teens and early 20s change a tremendous amount--and very quickly--in their goals,” family therapist and psychologist Thea Reinhart said.

Asked if teen-agers can understand that, Reinhart, who doesn’t know Lane and Mary and who was speaking generally, said: “They can if they’re insightful, but if they’re very determined (to get married) for other reasons, like a deep inner need for love or to anchor or attach to someone, they won’t hear it. They’ll understand it logically, but their deep inner feeling will drive them to hold on to that thought of marriage.”

Statistics are unavailable on the number of married teen-agers in Orange County, but a county court official said there probably are thousands. One barometer is the county Superior Court’s Mediation and Investigative Services, where, as required by state law, a counselor interviews teen-age couples applying for marriage licenses. The counselor then recommends to a domestic relations judge whether the license should be approved.

In 1987 in Orange County, the service evaluated 185 applications, down from 290 in 1986. Jan Shaw, the director of the county program, said the drop-off most likely reflected the county’s enactment in 1987 of a more thorough evaluation procedure. When teen-agers learn that the county has more than a pro forma procedure before they can get a license, Shaw said, “A number of them will say: ‘Fine, we’ll go to Las Vegas.’ ”

Through July of this year, the service has intervened in 103 cases, recommending that 89 be approved and 14 be denied. Shaw conceded that the percentage of favorable recommendations was high but noted that many couples withdraw their applications during the evaluation procedure. “Often times, we’re successful in helping couples understand they’re not ready for this marriage,” she said. The county doesn’t keep track of what happens to couples who aren’t recommended for a marriage license, she added.

Although the state requires counties to evaluate marriage license applicants under 18, it doesn’t specify the program. Orange County toughened its evaluation because the same counselors who interview those applicants also handle cases of child custody and visitation resulting from broken marriages, Shaw said.

“Because we see so much of the other end of the continuum (the failed marriages), it became very obvious to us that we needed to take as close a look at these under-age marriages as we could,” Shaw said. “We really try to sort out these couples that are likely to make it and those who are not.”

The mediator’s interview with the couples, which averages 1 1/2 hours, is designed “to paint a picture for the court . . . in terms of the suitability of the couple to marry,” Shaw said.

None of the professional therapists nor high school counselors interviewed for this article--picked at random and asked to speak in general terms--expressed much overall confidence in the ability of teen-age marriages to survive. To oldsters, the reasons the professionals give are painfully obvious: teen-agers aren’t aware of the changes they will undergo or the difficulties of married life.

“They don’t see financial stability as part of the big picture,” Irvine psychotherapist Pam Ferguson said. “Yet, when you get couples in marital counseling, that’s a major issue. . . . They don’t see the financial implications of living together.”

All agreed, in separate interviews, that the marriages have better chances of succeeding if one of the partners is out of their teens. Supportive families are another benefit, they say.

“It’s still the storybook kind of ‘I’m just in love, I can’t live without the person,’ ” Shaw said. “We’ve seen couples come in here who say they’ve never had a fight. That causes us problems. We ask what would happen if they did, and they’re so unrealistic and naive that they say, ‘We don’t expect to have a fight.’ We say (to the girl), ‘What if he goes out with the boys more than you’d like?’ She’ll say, ‘He wouldn’t, because we’re too much in love.’ ”

That may explain the loud groans sometimes emanating from the courthouse. Shaw, however, said the counselors try to remain neutral in their questioning.

Jane Dill sees teen-agers from several vantage points. Dill, who is a college instructor, high school psychology teacher and a private marriage, family and child therapist, said she is encouraged by most teen-agers’ thoughts about marriage. That is, she said, most of them aren’t interested.

“They’re scared,” she said. “So many of them, if they don’t come from divorced marriages, have friends who are the products of divorce. They feel that it’s a tough world out there financially. They’re very confused about relationships. I think generally they’re more realistic about the difficulty of relationships than previous generations.”

However, she said, there remains a minority that has sounded the age-old trumpet of young love. “It’s sort of the high school sweetheart syndrome,” she said. “I don’t think that’s any different than it’s been throughout the ages. They fall in love and think they’re in love and get caught up in making plans and living out the American dream.”

Asked if she is biased against teen-age marriages: “I’m biased about it on the side that our civilization is so complicated and our economy is so difficult, especially in Southern California. I’ve seen couples in their 30s struggling to make house payments and find their dream--much less 17-year-olds. On the other hand, if they’re willing to struggle at it, work at it and they have that kind of maturity and good (role) modeling at home so they have an idea of what a working relationship looks like, then I’m not biased against it.”

Lane and Mary Willis seem like the kind of couple that give counselors hope for teen-age marriages. Neither had a starry-eyed notion of married life, they said. They talked about finances, the amount of time they would spend apart from each other with friends and a plan for handling problems. They aren’t planning to have children for several years.

One of the factors in Lane and Mary’s decision to marry was that they are deeply religious and wouldn’t entertain the idea of living together out of wedlock. “Age should be an issue, to a point,” Lane said. “You can’t just say you’re high school sweethearts and after you graduate, go out and get married. I’ve seen that happen, even with friends of mine . . . and right now, I know their marriage isn’t the greatest.”

Mary: “I think it’s not just the age issue, but maturity. The maturity of the people themselves. Some people don’t grow up and mature until they’re 25. They’re not mature in their minds. Some are and have a career in mind. It just depends on the people.”

Pat Carney, a marriage and family counselor in Tustin, said a young couple has a better chance if families and friends support them and if they have a realistic attitude about the obstacles in marriage. Asked for his scenario of two teen-agers making a successful marriage, Carney replied: “It’s hard to imagine it. I think a lot of luck is involved. Part of it would be perseverance and a willingness to face problems. I come back to the idea that the more they go in with their eyes wide open, the better chance they have of making it. . . . We’re always talking about how well-exposed young people are through the media and how well-informed they are and that they’re not naive, but what I find is that kids are still very naive. They get blasted with a lot of information, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily digesting it.”

Lane and Mary have heard plenty of advice about marrying so young. “It didn’t really annoy me,” Mary said. “Sometimes it did. Sometimes it sounded aggravating, but there again you think, ‘They are older and they have seen things that didn’t work out.’ ”

When Lane proposed, a little more than a year after they met, Mary was so flabbergasted she didn’t say anything. “I had to ask her what her answer was,” Lane said. “I knew she was surprised, but I couldn’t tell what her answer was.”

They set the date for May 28 of this year, which was more than two years after their first date. Both sets of parents supported the marriage, and Lane and Mary had discussions about their view of married life.

“Coming from single life to married life, you’re used to having all your time your own and all your money your own,” Mary said. “But when you’re married, you share.”

Lane said his biggest time of soul-searching came several months before the wedding. “I don’t know if I was so much worried or concerned with whether I was ready or not as I was with knowing I was going to have the responsibility to support a family in the years to come, and that’s what hit me.”

He said the age issue wasn’t a pivotal concern either of his or Mary’s or, surprisingly, of the parents. “My dad told he he’d like to see me wait until I was 21,” Lane said. “He said, ‘I’m not going to tell you that you can’t get married now, because you’re 19 and you should be mature enough to know if she’s the one you want to marry and you should be responsible enough to make a decision like this.’ ”

Both Lane and Mary said they expect changes in the other and aren’t fearful of them. “I know it’s going to happen sooner or later,” Lane said. “But marriage is an institution where you can grow together.”

“If you wake up and say, ‘What’s happened? You’ve changed,’ maybe not only (the other partner has) changed, but you’ve changed, too,” Mary said. “Maybe you left communication out. I’m looking forward to it. You look forward to growing and changing and learning new things about each other. You’re never going to learn it all.”

Both say divorce isn’t an option if problems arise. “The way we’re raised is that you’re married for life,” Lane said. “It’s plain and simple.”

Realities have already presented themselves. “Before you get married, you think you know everything you could ever need to know, but there’s always going to be something you did not know,” Lane said. “That’s basically the fun of being married--that you get to learn more about this person that you’re going to be with for life.”

And although she’s just about to turn 19, Mary said she feels like she would have forfeited something if she weren’t married. “You not only learn about the other person, you learn more about yourself. Even after two months, you learn so much about yourself. . . . For me it’s difficult to picture myself not being married, because I’ve learned so much more about myself and him. There’s already a part of me that would be missing if we weren’t married.”

Lane and Mary’s situation apparently isn’t the norm. Tony DiLisa, a counselor at Santa Ana High School since 1967, said it is hard to discuss teen-age marriages out of the context of troubled family lives. The reason, he said, is that so many marriages involving them seem to have that theme.

“A troubled background, poverty, the environment--it all adds up to the kids saying, ‘I’ve got to get out of this.’ (Marriage) is an escape route. Unfortunately, they fall further into a hole. They get deeper into the things that they want to get away from.”

DiLisa, who said he still loves working with high school students, notes that he is hard-pressed to think of good scenarios for teen-age marriages. For one thing, he doesn’t accept the idea that today’s teens are more mature than those of previous generations.

“I see them as somewhat less mature, because they’re rushing,” DiLisa said. “These are young bodies and young minds going into very mature situations that are difficult to handle. Unfortunately, what ends up happening is that in two or three years, a lot of them are heading for divorce court. In a lot of cases, the husbands are taking off and (the women) are left with the children.”

Lane and Mary, who good-naturedly discussed their marriage and concerns for the future in an hourlong interview, say they have already learned a fundamental lesson of married life: “No matter how much you think you’ve prepared yourself,” Lane said, “you’re never quite as ready as you need to be.”