I would be surprised if even half of 18-29 adults attended a religious service at least once a month.
I’m a 20 year old guy who has never dated. Is this bad? I’m a sensitive guy due to my aspergers and it seemed over the first two decades of my life that relationships are too hard for me to handle.
@SuperGeo5999 I’d suggest you start your own thread if you want to get some responses. This thread is already at page 19 and it’s focused on a different question.
@Lindagaf raises a good point a page back. She indicated that she wished to marry a college educated man. Sociologists would interpret this as a woman looking for a partner who can provide for her children and therefore would be a good mate. Eddie Murphy did a skit in the 80’s singing “You have to have a J-O-B if you want to be with me”. I find this generally true. College educated woman are not at all interested in dating a guy who does not work and/or really has no ambition to work. He might be a good looking and caring guy (surfer dude) but ultimately woman do prefer a man who can help provide. I know this is very old thinking but this culture is slow to change.
The whole problem is that girls love the surfer dude in HS and college. So they have lots of fun at the beach as they get older and the serious guys begin to marry off. But why compromise? Why get serious before your ready? Go out and have fun!!! The downside is that a lot of men will be taken by the time the woman gets serious. The same holds true for men. How many men out there just want to have fun (drinking Frat boys) and who never really want to grow up. How many woman have made the mistake dating them with the hopes of changing them.
I think the bottom line is that those who prioritize relationships during HS and College will be more successful with them and will marry sooner. Those who put education, career, and money first will marry later. Who’s to say which path is right. Hard to travel both paths simultaneously.
I think it is a false premise to assume guys without a college education aren’t intelligent and/or are jobless surfer dudes.
A real smart, successful woman can provide for herself anyway.
“The whole problem is that girls love the surfer dude in HS and college…Why get serious before your ready? Go out and have fun!!! The downside is that a lot of men will be taken by the time the woman gets serious.”
So true, @MassDaD68 Timing is a big deal. I try not to freak out watching DD1 (rising senior) with her current gorgeous boy who is in her HS because he was kicked out of his boarding school. She’s allowed to play around in HS, but I do expect her to get serious by the time she gets to college. In fact, I’m going to bring it up when I pick her up this afternoon from her HIV lab. Thanks for the reminder! Never too early to get started!
really?! in high school?
That’s true @doschicos . In my case, I just wasn’t interested in any guy who wasn’t at least as educated as I was. That’s snobbery, but that’s how I felt at the time. But a lot depends on what’s important to a person. I wanted someone intelligent because I find that attractive. Everybody values different qualities.
Again, intelligence doesn’t always = education. Some people don’t have the means or family background. I think a “must have a college degree” requirement creates limiting barriers. Best to be open minded and treat people as individuals not a resume. Besides, I know some true dumb asses with college degrees. 
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I work in a law firm, and over the years, I can’t tell you how many of them met their partners in law school. It’s become the norm for the group, I think.
Not having a college degree NOW is not the same thing as never getting one. Possibly a terrific person could be encouraged, supported (not financially) by a potential partner to go back to school in order to benefit a future family. I’ve noticed that many men have a strong desire to be a contributing family member and will take that seriously when the time comes that it’s a realistic possibility.
I see this in my own history. I dated a lot of fun boys in HS and my twenties, before slowly moving toward the kind of man I wanted to marry. I missed out on one terrific guy in college because I just wasn’t ready for someone like him at age twenty. Lucky for me, I found someone similar (smart, hard working, family oriented) a few years later.
“I think it is a false premise to assume guys without a college education aren’t intelligent and/or are jobless surfer dudes.”
I thought that people without college educations were called “working class”? Call me lazy, but I found all those years working as a Carpenter pretty damned hard. I even had to actually read plans and do some math in order to not build things backwards or upside down.
The ignorance being shown here of what a Tradesman has to go through to in order to become a Tradesman is astonishing. As far as I’m concerned, the college educated women who are moaning about the lack of available men are trapped by their own prejudices.
Additionally, a lot of those trade jobs will still be around when “white collar” jobs are shipped overseas or replaced by computers and robots.
My wife and I both have multiple degrees and lots of Latin to show how (equally) smart we are. But her oldest sister, who is a true other-worldly, ivory tower genius – she is a famous academic in her field, and seems to get some major honor every other year or so – has been married for almost 37 years to a guy with an AA in refrigeration system maintenance from one of the colleges in Detroit owned by an auto manufacturer. It’s been a great marriage. Unlike her earlier marriage to her college boyfriend and fellow PhD student way back when.
A friend of ours from college, who also went to law school with my wife, married a then-illegal immigrant who at the time was an apprentice plumber a year or two after she finished law school. Now he’s a legal master plumber. That’s another marriage that has always been strong.
“The whole problem is that girls love the surfer dude in HS and college…Why get serious before your ready? Go out and have fun!!! The downside is that a lot of men will be taken by the time the woman gets serious.”
MANY years ago when in my 20’s I dated a woman who did NOT prefer the “exciting, suave” guy, but instead preferred the serious student. She mentioned that she had pretty much always had a boyfriend, but that nearly all of the men that she dated had never had a girlfriend before and had friends nearly none of whom had girlfriends. This led to a “difference in experience of dating” which she had found was a recurring theme in her relationships.
And yes, in my experience those “serious student” men did eventually end up being married, and also mostly ended up doing well in their careers.
Agreed 57! I have many friends who went to college and many who didn’t. Special, funny, interesting and intelligent people. I think folks are misguided in seeing “college” as equivalent to “good-paying job, intelligent person.” There are lots of trade jobs that require so much intelligence, skill, perseverance, dedication and that pay well- jobs that cannot be outsourced: electrical linesperson, carpenter, plumber, electrician, tile installer, contractor, surveyor, automotive repair, custom door maker, HVAC installer, guitar maker, etc…
In some fire and police departments and similar, people without degrees can be promoted up by taking tests and eventually have good salaries, benefits, and important titles.
Again, I agree @doschicos . At the time, I associated a degree with intelligence. I don’t think anyone thinks that people need a degree to be intelligent. I have referred to my hard-working, WW2 veteran neighbor before. He is now 92. Still mows his own lawn, grows his own organic vegetables, and was a plumber, electrician, and carpenter who built his own house. He is definitely one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. His mind is still as sharp as a tack too.
Agreed.
Plenty of examples among recent politicians or in the corporate world such as how Barings, a 250+ year old UK banking institution run by Oxbridge graduates was bankrupted to the tune of nearly $2 billion by one HS graduate because they didn’t have basic security safeguards in place which were standard at other banking/securities firms even back then.
If one had a scoreboard for elite college grads vs non-college grad…it’d definitely be
elite college grads: 0
non-college grad: 1