[BretWeir]

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I've been dating the same girl since my junior year of high school. We started out like a lot of people did back then, we were together to [censored] like rabbits. As we got older, our relationship grew to the point where we loved each other and began forming a real relationship. We've gone to different colleges for the last 3.5 years (Princeton and UMich) and we're planning on living with each other after we graduate. She is going to do grad school and I'm going to play poker (which she is cool with) and volunteer/do research for a year , then I'm going to decide if I really want to go to med school like I had originally planned.

I love her more than anything, and I honestly feel like she's my best friend. We're going on a trip to Maui over Christmas (ty poker) and I'm thinking about asking her to marry me by a waterfall in Hana. The only reason why I'm hesitant to ask is our age. None of my friends really can talk about what I should think about or expect and my parents had nothing to say but that expected it and supported it when I told them I was thinking about proposing. Basically I'm asking if I'm crazy to do this, and what some of the older guys think about a young engagement/marriage.

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I started dating my future wife halfway through my freshman year in college, proposed the summer after I graduated (age 21), and was married by age 24 (law school = long engagement).

Do I ever have any regrets about it? Sure, sometimes -- I missed out on being a young guy with the chance to play the field in a big city; I probably have fewer "fun" stories than a lot of people my age.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. I knew she was the one, and while it would have been perfect if we had met a few years later, that wasn't how it happened. I wasn't about to let her slip away because we happened to meet young. We're on the eighth year of a happy marriage.

Short answer: yeah, there are trade-offs, but if you love her, getting engaged and married young isn't crazy.