Emma Camp's test for a good scary choice: the fear goes away once you commit
Writer Emma Camp got engaged at 23 and learned to tell a leap of faith from just stalling.
Not Dead Yet · Emma CampEmma Camp, the 27-year-old senior editor of the Wall Street Journal's Free Expression newsletter and author of a forthcoming book on risk, got engaged at 23. Friends from college were not surprised because, as Camp put it, she and her boyfriend were "the mom and dad friends of the group." Acquaintances from work in Washington were blunter, saying "congratulations on your future divorce," saying they had been stupid at 23 too, and in one case asking if she was in a cult.
Camp argues the reaction reflected a cultural worship of experience, the idea that your 20s should be spent collecting dating and travel experiences to earn self-knowledge before deciding what you want. She believes that approach overrates the self-knowledge gained and underrates love, and she describes it as defensive, a way to avoid a bigger mistake later.
Asked how to tell a bold choice from just running out the clock, Camp offered a temperamental test from her own life. One feels like running away, she said, and the other feels like "you're jumping out of a helicopter with a parachute on your back." She cautioned that the idea was "not concrete at all" and would have a million exceptions.
Marriage was her example. She had met her husband during the first week of college and started dating him in their third year, and married right after she turned 24, a decision she called "pretty awesome." Deciding felt like a shared leap of faith, "jumping out of the helicopter together." She said the natural anxiety beforehand vanished right after they committed, leaving her thinking, "Okay, this is awesome. Yay." If she had followed the fear and stretched dating out for five more years, she said, that would have been what she calls "running away anxiety."
Stirewalt called it the difference between good scared and bad scared. For Camp, at least in that decision, the fear that lifted after committing marked the leap, and the fear that would have kept her delaying marked avoidance.
Questions people ask
Isn't marrying at 23 statistically risky?
On average, marrying very young is associated with higher divorce rates than marrying in the late 20s, though the risk varies a lot with education, income, and family background. Researchers generally find that maturity, financial stability, and shared expectations matter more than age alone.