Some Gustavus students will soon tie the knot and say, “I Do” while others say “I Don’t” to the idea of marriage for now.

I’ve always been told that college is a time when you grow, hopefully in the right direction. The tricky part is that whatever growing, evolving or maturing we college students do, we all seem to move at a different pace.

At Gustavus there is a huge range of people in different stages in their life—from those engaged and counting down the days to an eventual wedding, to those who are single with plans to stay that way for a while, to every shade of gray in between.

With so much emphasis placed on the post-college transition that includes getting a job and making a living, the fact that one’s personal and professional lives will change is easy to overlook.

After hours spent searching post-graduation possibilities on the internet, it was easy for me to forget that some students are simultaneously planning weddings. Then three of my friends got engaged in a matter of weeks.

“But they are so young,” I thought, which is really just a way of saying that I feel young and selfish—too young and selfish to seriously consider making a lifetime vow to another person.

But are we really that young? Years ago I remember thinking that early twenties are the perfect age to get married, and many of our parents were married around that age.

First-year Jessica Wagner recently became engaged. “Sometimes I do worry because we are young [and] there is a lot of growing that will happen between now and the time we get married,” she said. “But I don’t necessarily agree with the statement [that I am too young], at least for me.”

Dozens of other Gustavus students have similar plans for a wedding soon after graduation.

Sophomore Religion Major Ben Hilding recently proposed to Senior Psychology Major Alicia Blomquist. “People are at different stages at different times in their lives,” he said.

“For some people it might be outrageous and for some people it is obviously the right thing to do,” Hilding said.

I’ll admit that as a first-year I was in the camp of people who could imagine getting engaged around senior year of college and marrying soon after.

Since then I have consistently gravitated towards another camp of people—those who shudder a bit when they hear about their peers getting engaged, but smile politely, and say “Congratulations!” while a part of them disapproves, and thinks, “But they are so young!”

Perhaps no matter what pains one takes to make life plans, there really is no way to predict what will happen and how future experiences will shape one’s opinions. This might even apply to the possibility of engagement.

“I was not going to get engaged until I was thirty and I was going to have my Ph.D. before,” said Senior History Major Anne Vermersch. “I got engaged when I was seventeen.”

Alicia Blomquist also did not plan on her engagement. “When we met I was at a point where I thought, ‘I don’t want or need a guy in my life right now,’ and that’s when Ben came along,” she said.

Maybe there is no perfect age for marriage that applies to everyone.

“You can’t just make those sweeping generalizations, because everybody’s different,” Wagner said. “We’re not just one uniform population.”

Senior Chemistry Major Nissa Hanneman became engaged to her boyfriend of five months over Spring Break and plans to enter the Peace Corps with her fiancée.

“I do question sometimes: is this what we should be doing right now?” she said. “I always come back to where we are, but I feel like it’s really healthy to ask those questions.”

At the end of the day, the most anyone can hope for in a relationship is for it to be a healthy one. For these couples, recognizing the reality of a lifetime commitment is extremely important.

Hanneman met her future husband while working with him at a camp. They led a canoeing trip together that was an absolute disaster.

“It was a crash course in problem-solving and learning to be there for somebody,” she said.

Anne and Senior Psychology Major Melissa Vermeersch, an engaged lesbian couple, face a unique set of conflicts in their relationship.

“It’s really easy to be a couple when things are going well. As soon as things start getting hard it’s more challenging [to] be a functioning couple,” Anne Vermeersch said.

In addition to the challenges of maintaining a healthy relationship, the couple also spoke of the difficulty in facing daily antagonism from those opposed to their relationship. Through looks of horror from shoppers at the grocery store, verbal harassment from passersby and other outward signs of disapproval, the two learned to deal with conflict early in their relationship.

“It gave us a lot of experience to work off of as a couple. We’ve learned to trust each other and rely on each other,” Anne Vermeersch said.

Hilding said that even in great relationships couples will be faced with conflict and adversity.

“The perfect relationship isn’t one that smiles all the time,” Hilding said. “We do our fair share of smiling but we’re there for each other when things are hard too.”

From all of these couples, we can learn that there are a few prerequisites to a healthy relationship. It is crucial to consider how your values align with those of your partner.

“We obviously have some differences, but the things that matter the most are the same,” said Blomquist. For her and Hilding, their Christian faith is central to their relationship.

“It’s important to think about where you want to end up in the future,” said Junior CJ Erickson, who is engaged to Junior Chemistry Major Carly Johnson. For them, faith was not a large factor, but it was important that they had similar long-term goals.

Both grew up in the same town and eventually plan to return there.

Hanneman said that it is important to think critically about the commitment of marriage. Throughout the excitement of hearing engagement stories, looking at brides’ rings and making wedding plans, it’s easy to overlook the gravity of this commitment.

As Hanneman said,“It’s not about a fancy dress or a diamond ring. It’s about finding somebody that you want to live with and spend the rest of your life with.”