Why You Should Travel The World and Not Get Married In Your 20’s

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Why You Should Travel The World and Not Get Married In Your 20's - vanilla sky dreaming

I guess you can say that the title to this post, is a pretty bold statement, but I highly believe it to be true.

I’ll start off by saying, that I’ll be the first person to tell you that true love really exist. I believe in soulmates, I do believe in happily ever after and I believe that if you find the right person to spend the rest of your life with, you are blessed.

I’ve had my share fair of serious boyfriends, almost my whole life. I was even once engaged and to be honest, I actually feel pretty lucky that I didn’t get married in my early 20’s.

You see, when I was 18 I dated a man for 3 years, who was 9 years older than me and had previously gone through a divorce. He told me to never get married until I was at least 27 because you just change so much in your 20’s. Although I thought his theory was wrong, something about it, never really left my mind. As a “kid”, I thought he was crazy because I wanted true love like in the movies and wanted to be married and have kids young, just like my mom and dad.

hofit kim cohen in budapest vanilla sky dreaming Why You Should Travel The World and Not Get Married In Your 20's
Traveling Solo in Budapest!

Growing up, I thought my parent’s had your typical true love fairy tale story. My mom met my dad at the age of 13 and they fell in love right away. They got married when she was 19 and had me before she was 21 and 3 years later had my brother. Of course, she never regrets having us, she is now a proud mom of 4 and always had a lot of pride in her job of being a mother. However, I know there has always been a place inside of her that wishes she did more in her life before she had children because really, she never really had time to live life for herself and do all the things she wanted to do.

It’s just a very common story of most people who get married too young. Later on, in their late 40’s or mid 50’s they end up having a mid-life crisis and start rebelling by typically trying to dress younger, partying and sometimes it ends up in cheating. Again, a very familiar story of many.

vanilla sky dreaming in paris
New Years in Paris

Besides even taking it as far as your 40’s or 50’s, most people who get married in their early 20’s end up getting divorced a few years later because they can’t relate to the person they married and realize they have nothing in common with who they have become. Statistics say that 50% of marriages end in divorce and most do, before the age of 25.

Let’s face it, our 20’s are our time to grow and explore who we are and what we want out of life. How could we do that if we don’t go out there and explore all of our options. This world is full of SO many opportunity just waiting for us to grab.

For years now, I have been traveling the world for more than 6 months of the year and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

vanilla sky dreaming in miami hofit kim cohen
Living in Miami

Not getting married at the age of 23, led me to making my long life dream come true of moving to New York City and living in Time Square and going to fashion school. Which then led me to doing a 6 month volunteer program in Israel and then moving to Baltimore/Washington D.C and Miami and running a multi-million dollar company. Yet, most importantly it let me to traveling the world and grow as a person, who now has a million incredible stories to tell about every subject you can ever think of.

I simply couldn’t have done this and more, if I was married. I’d have to have a more stabled lifestyle. Of course, to everything there are exception, but let’s be realistic, how common is that? Not so much.

vanilla sky dreaming in amsterdam
New Years in Amsterdam

The gift of traveling and exploring yourself and this world is so precious and the best time to do it is in your 20’s. When else is a better time to take that famous euro-trip you’ve been dreaming of or that cross country road trip with your good friends or backpacking your way through India or Thailand, climbing Mount Everest or Machu Picchu, truly enjoy Oktoberfest in Germany or Carnival in Rio and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, this is what your 20’s are for!

Party it up, travel, explore, learn, connect, fall in love with cities, food and Latin lovers. Make all your dreams come true, from the smallest to the biggest because you only live once and you’re only young once.

You will never have that same energy to do these things later on, as you did in your 20’s and even if you did many of them just won’t seem as fun or exciting as they did before.

vanilla sky dreaming exploring athens
Exploring Athens

You see, the world is changing, whether we want to admit it or not. What was once acceptable or “normal” a few decades back, just doesn’t really work in today’s world. Sure, there are happily married young couples out there, but I find that more and more of my friends and people from around the world that I meet, that got married young, aren’t happy and are living envious of my lifestyle of seeing the world. But the truth is that anyone can have my lifestyle, if they wanted it bad enough. Many of them agree, that they just got married too young.

When you get married, I believe you should be ready to settle down and be committed to starting a family. You can’t disappear for 2 months at a time exploring Europe or Asia.

vanilla sky dreaming in Singapore - hofit kim cohen
Loving Singapore

One of the world’s most famous travellers is Anthony Bourdian, he once said “If you’re 22, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.” and he is right. You will learn and grow so much through traveling then you ever could doing anything else.

In your 20’s you don’t really need to have that much responsibilities and you don’t need to worry about kids or mortgages. It’s normally early into your career and you’ll never find a better time to see the world than NOW. Plus, you will also learn from a young age how to budget better through your travels.

Before giving your life away to someone else, live a little for yourself. This freedom, these adventures and your youth can never be regained. Live in the moment, be spontaneous, everything else will just fall into place in the right time.

 

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10 Responses to Why You Should Travel The World and Not Get Married In Your 20’s

  1. I really enjoyed this post and I have to say I agree. I definitely feel I need to get all my wanderlust out of my system before I think about settling somewhere long term and having kids etc. That said, I’m currently travelling with my long-term boyfriend and couldn’t be happier, I am loving exploring new places with him. Luckily he shares my want to travel & we’re in no rush to get engaged or anything. I guess it depends on each person individually and their own circumstances! Great post 🙂

    • Thank you Abbi! Glad you agree and that actually sounds pretty amazing, especially if you see you guys having a future together. Traveling is the greatest gift you can give yourself. <3

  2. Why do you think that being married means having to have a stable lifestyle and being committed to starting a family? I got married at 26, my husband was 22, and as soon as we got married we went backpacking through South America, moved from Australia to New York City, and have spent the past year living and travelling throughout North America.

    I don’t disagree that we should all be spending our 20s living life to the full, but being married has nothing to do with it! I wouldn’t even be here in USA if I wasn’t married as I wouldn’t have been able to get a US visa on my own. Being married has opened up opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

    If you want to spend your life doing exciting things, then you don’t have to do it alone. Just make sure you pick a partner who also wants to do those things.

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