By
Maria Morava is a Newsweek reporter based in Edinburgh, U.K. Her focus is reporting on relationships. She has covered news, culture and trends, and entertainment at previous publications. Maria joined Newsweek in 2024 having previously worked at CNN and PinkNews. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds an MSc from the University of Edinburgh. You can get in touch with Maria by emailing m.morava@newsweek.com. Languages: English, Albanian.
Maria Morava
Relationships Reporter
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An Instagram reel has sparked a heartfelt conversation about love and commitment as millennials.
In the clip, Sara Strueby, 31, and her husband, Matt, 35, shared their profound realization while witnessing friends marry in their 30s. The couple told Newsweek about their observations, which challenge conventional timelines and celebrate the depth of relationships forged later in life.
“Can we talk about that feeling when you’re watching two of your friends get married in their 30s and you don’t wonder if it will last. You know it will,” Sara captioned the video. “Because they’ve already proven ‘I will’ long before the ‘I do’s’ of today.”
Sara and Matt Strueby in their Instagram reel attend their friends’ wedding.
@sarastrueby/Instagram
Sara elaborated on this eye-opening experience. While she and Matt themselves married young—Sara was 23 and Matt was 27—she expressed immense admiration for her friends’ journeys.
“Watching our friends get married in their 30s has been such an honor,” Sara said, “especially because many of them have already walked through so much.”
She noted the personal growth and challenges many have faced: “They’ve navigated heartbreak, built careers, lost themselves, found themselves, healed, grown—and in some cases, faced unimaginable hardships, like battling cancer or grieving the loss of a parent together before ever walking down the aisle. That kind of love changes how you see commitment.”
Reflecting on her own early marriage, Sara said that she adores her and Matt’s love story.
“I wouldn’t change a thing. Even though I was young, I owned a home, I was settled in my career and I’d met my person, so getting married felt like the next step,” Sara said.
While getting married young provided the couple many years of growing and learning together, Sara acknowledged some unique challenges of saying ‘I do’ in your 20s.
“We still had so much ‘becoming’ to do,” she said. “There were seasons that were messy and hard, because we were figuring out who we were while trying to hold onto each other. Your 20s are incredibly transformative, and we’ve seen firsthand how not every couple can grow together through that.”
Now, as a mother herself, Sara’s perspective on her daughters’ futures is less about timelines and more about freedom.
“I just hope they feel free,” she said; “free to take their time,