[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by RealJames

In my opinion, people change a lot before the age of 30, and even more before 25 and infinitely more before 20, and are entirely different humans before 16.
Promising to stay with another person who's changing just as much as you are is like buying a house without looking at it or choosing your career by drawing cards out of a hat, in my opinion.
I really do feel you got lucky.

My feelings on this; People tend to become more "settled down", and more serious in life pursuits as they age. When starting out as someone who is already quite serious, with a very realistic view of things, and with very realistic goals - I do not believe that age is necessarily an issue. (Within reason, of course.)

From my point of view, the biggest reason marriages made between younger people tend to fail isn`t because of *age* as much as it is because of unrealistic expectations - basically a romanticized view of how a relationship will progress. A lack of education plays a much larger part in this than age - but the younger you are, the less likely you are to have had a decent education.

In the end, if you`re intelligent and educated enough to realistically judge whether the relationship will work, you`re also intelligent enough to judge when it likely will not. As there aren`t that many relationships that will work out in the long term, the odds are against you finding one. Age is not the factor - correlation is not causation. It`s just that you`re much more likely to be more educated when older - whether it be a book education, or educated via experience. Poor choices result in poor marriages.

I don`t encourage anyone to get married while young, but at the same time I`m not going to write off a relationship just because those involved aren`t past a certain age. I don`t think there is something wrong with someone wanting to commit or to be in a serious relationship at 18 - but at the same time I would expect them not to make the choice to commit hastily.

I definitely agree that children should not come into the picture at all until you have quite a lot of stability. We may have gotten married when I was 20, but we waited until we could buy a home before deciding to have a baby. (And were all moved in by the time the baby was released from the hospital.)

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Anyway, back to the original topic.
Or maybe not...

Love weakens up after time and everthing becomes boring and normal.. this time frame depends on every relationship.

You`re confusing different types of love. Obviously that initial spark and thrill of a new relationship is going to fade once a relationship is no longer new. If the relationship was founded ONLY on that spark, well, of course there isn`t going to be anything left once it fades. Long term relationships are founded on different types of love.
I don`t know why I am bothering to reply to you though, as you have shown how open you are to listening to others in the past...

Now, I know that Japan is a very Western socialised.. but when you look at real Asians who crew up without any contact to the Western society. They would never cheat on you or try to divorce with you. It has to come from the guy with the Western mindset. But if he Loves her forever, they will never divorce.

I can do nothing but laugh at this.
It might be a good idea to look at the history of divorce in Asia. If you were correct, it would not exist until there was a western influence in Asia - right?
That is most definitely not the case - and is often the other way around. (Due to missionary activity and the advance of Christian views on marriage.)

Japan had a pretty high rate of divorce in the 18th and 19th centuries - I recall reading it was something like 1 in 6 marriages.

Now back to the original topic;

At 16, a girl will have finished middle school (as far as I'm aware it is not mandatory to go to high school in Japan) and if she gets pregnant she stands a chance of the birth not causing her too much damage, whereas a younger girl is more likely to have medical problems because her own body is still developing.

I think that you`re on the right track.
It looks that in the past, it was fairly common for the marriage to be arranged at a very early age, and for the girl to enter the husband`s household. With mandatory schooling, the age she could move from one household to another was set - as chances are, she would have too many responsibilities in a new household to attend school.
I do not believe it has as much to do with pregnancy or childbirth, but more with education.

I am a bit curious why there is such fascination with this though... Most of the world is about the same in terms of age. Japan is not strange or unique.