Darragh and Kristina Bailey God remains the key ingredient, young couples tell Jason Osborne
Relationships have changed a lot in recent decades, with rates of dating, engagement and marriage plummeting amongst the young. According to the Central Statistics Office, the average age of marriage for a bride in Ireland is 34.8 years old, while it’s 36.8 for the groom.
There are undoubtedly a number of reasons for this, but they haven’t been enough to sway everyone. A pair of young couples, Katie and Edward (married 5 months), and Kristina and Darragh (married 7 months), spoke to The Irish Catholic about their decision to get engaged and marry young. In doing so, they shed light on what it is that attracts young people to marriage, and what they think will prove key in making marriage an appealing prospect to the culture again.
Never-ending choice
The first question I put to each of them was how, in this world of never-ending choice, they knew they’d found the person they desired to spend the rest of their life with.
“For me, it was pretty early on in our friendship, which definitely came first before our relationship, and then we were colleagues, we were working together. And then through working together at the Pro-Life Campaign, we formed this fantastic working relationship, we were really able to feed off each other’s strengths and compliment each other’s weaknesses and it was from there, sort of having a series of gradually more, I guess, intense conversations about what it is we’re each looking for in life. Both sort of laying it out on the table very early on, you know, that we’re both very family-oriented, that our Faith was very important to both of us,” Edward says.
“We had (these conversations) very, very early on and we found that we actually matched up on an awful lot of those, what can be, sort of, hard topics. So yeah, for me it was, obviously you know there’s the shallow side of being incredibly attracted to Katie physically to begin with,” he laughs, “but beyond that we also needed to match intellectually and I think sort of morally and spiritually as well. That was really, really important and we managed to do that.”
Katie echoed all of the above and emphasised the importance of the depth of their shared Faith: “Well yeah, just like a few examples, I guess because I think you cover most of it. So, definitely we had the foundation of our friendship and being very attracted to each other. I think that was obvious pretty early on.
“So, then there were a few conversations we had that really stood out to me. So first of all, finding out you’re a Catholic and you took your faith seriously, because I didn’t know that when we first met, so that was a huge stepping-stone for me. Because, yeah, I just, I hadn’t seen you in that light yet, so when I realised you were really serious about your faith, that was really exciting. And then I remember we were walking down some street in Dublin, I’m going to forget the name of it, but we were talking about family and it came to light that you were really intent on spending a lot of time with your family and really investing in your children and, just hearing how much family meant to you was another huge box ticked for me, a really important one. And then, the last thing: just shortly before we started dating I gave Edward a Jason Evert book, because that was kind of the last step for me, to make sure he was fully on-board with chastity and everything, that obviously would be in-line with our Faith, so I gave him the book and I think you read it in like, two days or less… One day. And you said you agreed with everything in it, and I was like, ‘Ok, this is it’.”
Litmus test
For Kristina and Darragh, it was a similarly Faith-centred discernment, with Kristina telling of the “litmus test” she used when considering potential suitors.
“Well, to be honest with you, for me it’s like a litmus test in regards to relationships and dating. Anytime I didn’t feel peace, I didn’t go for it. Every time that I didn’t feel that it was right, I never went for it, and for me, a litmus test would be peace. That’s like a marker – ‘Ok, go for it’. You know? And Darragh was the only one anyways ever since my conversion that I felt really at peace. He was pretty much the very first, kind of, boyfriend that I had, that I went for so look at me now! I didn’t go on any more dates,” she laughs.
Darragh’s side of things was equally certain, if not more so: “I suppose, yeah, in my past I would have been in different relationships before my conversion and I had only converted about three months before I met Kristina. I grew up quite involved in the Faith but never really made my own decision to, kind of, immerse myself in Catholicism and was a lapsed Catholic for years. So, I had had my conversion and about three months after I had a conversion I met Kristina. We met at a pro-life party in Knock in 2018, and I suppose for me personally in my experience of meeting people in general, she just blew me away. About a week and a half later, we met up for the first time since we first met in Knock and I would’ve given my whole testimony to Kristina on our first – I suppose, looking back, we kind of say maybe it’s a date, but at the time it wasn’t, it was just like a friendly meet-up. But she was the first person I’d ever given my whole testimony to and I told everything about who I was and, you know, my past and different things. Kristina just listened to the whole thing and I went home to my dad that evening. I had only known Kristina about a week and a half at that point, and I said to my Dad, ‘If I start going out with that girl I’m going to marry her’. So I knew pretty quickly.”
Commitment
With both couples knowing they’d found the one they wanted to marry, the obvious question was why to proceed with marriage so quickly – particularly when it isn’t the done thing in today’s world.
Katie tells me, “There was something really nice that the priest said in the homily at our Mass, at our wedding Mass. He said, ‘There’s something really beautiful about a couple giving their youth to each other’. And he mentioned how we’re witnessing a human sacrifice today, but what he meant is us laying down our lives for each other, and especially to do that young, how that is, yeah, I guess a real, a real treasure and a unique thing in today’s culture… I think that that’s the kind of commitment that unfortunately the culture today is just kind of afraid of. I think our generation is really afraid of commitment. Like whether it’s going out Friday night and who they’re going to hang out with, or it’s who am I going to spend my life with. I think we really struggle with commitment.”
Edward added to this by saying, “Yeah, and also both of us being practicing Catholics, marriage is a lifelong commitment, which means no matter what, we are agreeing or placing ourselves in a covenant-relationship that we are going to be with each other for the rest of our lives, and that our vows actually mean something. That they’re not just words – they are truly things that we believe in and that we’re signing up to, for better, for worse, for absolutely everything that goes on. We’re not stupid, we don’t think that we’re not going to go through periods in our marriage which, you know, please God will last 50-60 years, something like that?
“Health going well and all that sort of thing. We’re not stupid to think that at some point, we’re not going to have ups and downs, but it’s just knowing that through all of those downs, that ultimately, we are always going to be together. That brings such a level of freedom to be more yourself, and this is very much something that we learned in our marriage preparation…as a man it can be difficult to actually fully open up and be like, the true version of yourself. And the freedom that comes with knowing that you can be the real you, you can say whatever is bothering you, to truly, I guess, be vulnerable.”
Darragh expressed the same notion – how radically important that ability to be vulnerable is, “You don’t realise how vulnerable you become, and then you get married. That vulnerability around your spouse is just the most incredible feeling.”
Darragh took a straightforward approach to things, citing the tendency to hang around after meeting someone wonderful as being a real danger to potential happiness.
“Yeah, it’s like, because even in the Catholic circles, there’s people wait a long time before they actually meet the one that they want to marry. And that’s understandable. But I suppose the fact that we met each other so young, we both knew. We met in June 2018, and by October, November, we both knew. We were both on the same page in the sense of, ‘We want to get married’. So then, why wait? You know? It’s like, there’s no point in waiting then, we know we want to get married, so you know, we could be going out four or five years and not be married or not engaged, you know?”
Kristina then, referred to the suitability of youth for looking after children – a task that grows more difficult as energy wanes with age.
“I think, how your Dad always says that kids are for the young, and looking at it in a way that, yeah, we’re in our 20s, early 20s, which means we have so much energy, right?… It is true that while we’re so young, we can give all that energy to the kids, whereas later on at the stage when you are losing that energy and you can’t really give so much energy because you physically, you know, can’t anymore.
“But I don’t know, I think in that way, it is great to have kids at a young age. In another way, it’s great to get married because I think it’s better to marry within a short span. Like, not too short, like six months, but I think there should be like a year of courting and another year of preparing to get married. Around that, or even a little bit longer but not too long.”
Both couples acknowledge the centrality of God and the importance of prayer in their relationships, with Edward saying they understood that in getting closer to God, they knew they’d be getting closer to each other, and Darragh commenting about the priority of the Sacrament on the wedding day.
And a good thing they adopted this attitude too, as both couples experienced major disruption to their original wedding plans. Darragh and Kristina brought their day forward by over a year in an effort to cut through the uncertainty posed by Covid, with Darragh explaining, “the most important thing for us was simply getting married. Taking everything else away. It was like, this is a union between us and God, and stripping it back to the essentials, and all that’s important was us getting married in the eyes of God. It couldn’t have been any more perfect.”
Edward and Katie found themselves in an equally awkward position, their wedding postponed by over two months amid the shifting regulations. However, they too saw it as God’s doing, as they got to focus on what was truly important without distraction.
“We knew throughout all of that, the most important moment was the moment in the church. It was the Sacrament. That was what was truly, truly important to us. And all the other things around it are wonderful, but they are very much secondary. The day itself – so many people came up to us on that day or texted us afterwards, or just, so many people said the same thing, but you know we felt as well, it was just a day full of joy. It was truly joyous,” Edward says.
Married life
Both couples were delighted with their day, regardless, and have strode forward together into married life, each confident in the other. Referring back to what they said previously, both Katie and Edward, and Kristina and Darragh point to the security and comfortability they feel with their spouse as one of the most enjoyable aspects of married life. It’s a feeling which cannot be replicated outside the bond of marriage, they assure.
Asked about some of the most enjoyable elements of their new life so far, Kristina explained, “It’s time together, but even to be together in peace. You know, like one reading something, the second person doing something else. And it’s just that being together without even a word,” which Darragh quickly affirmed.
“It’s almost like the other person becomes an extension of yourself. It’s just being there with the other person. Do you know, it’s having a best friend that’s always beside you.”
Katie voiced the same contentment as Kristina, explaining “I guess, the security in the, I don’t know if it’s the same as for a man, but as a woman, there’s something particularly enjoyable and, I don’t know, something that just means a lot is knowing that our relationship is secure and for forever, and just being able to live that each day. Yeah, and just being yourself completely with the other person. That’s a daily joy that I think, obviously you can take for granted, but you are reminded of it quite often because there’s nobody else like your spouse that you have a relationship with in that way.”
The immense satisfaction and joy that both couples exude is evident, but rather than turning their gazes inward, they continue to look to God and his plan for their married lives.
Kristina comments, “But it’s funny, you know? The things that we learned. We thought that when you go into marriage, you’ll learn about the other person more, but it’s funny – you actually learn so much more about yourself…You find so many little things about you, like, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m so selfish in this way’ or ‘Oh my goodness, that is something I should work on’, and it’s such a beautiful way because marriage really is a prep. work to Heaven. I can genuinely speak through what we’ve gone through, only six months so far – it’s shown me so many ways where I can improve myself. You know what I mean? I think that’s the best thing about marriage, it really prepares you.”