@Lindagaf - Both of my smart, beautiful daughters graduated from high-end colleges (5 years apart) in STEM majors, Both having dated off and on but with no serious boyfriends in sight. I had concluded that guys these days must be really lame when girls like my daughters and their smart, attractive friends go dateless for weeks and months on end.
D1 finally hit the jackpot at age 29. She moved to Palo Alto to take a new job and met a great guy. He is very smart and good-looking himself and has a promising career as an attorney. I later found out that 2 or 3 days after they first met he went home to visit his parents and excitedly announced “I met a girl!” - which something he had never done before. They started dating more or less right away and were married a year and half ago. They are very happy. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right one to come along.
D2 appears to be on the same trajectory as her big sister. She just finished her Master’s and turns 26 next month. No men in sight. But she’s moving to DC to start her new job, and that appears to a be a city with lots of energetic young professionals, So I’m hopeful that lightning will strike for her too.
We have neither cats nor librarians in our family. We are dog people and scientists. And I can’t promise you that everything will work out for your daughter. I can’t even promise that for my own 2nd daughter. But my experience with D1 teaches me to be optimistic, and tell your daughter to not be afraid to pack up and move to where the eligible men are.
I have to say that the idea of my daughter having an arranged marriage is making me LMAO. I might ask her if she is interested, just to see her reaction, haha!
@Lindagaf I’m not a parent but a Class-of-2016er, and I wouldn’t worry about it, your daughter will find someone.
For what it’s worth I know plenty of 28/29/30-year-olds who are getting engaged to/marrying the people they met when they were 23/24/25, AFTER college. I don’t know anyone who’s still in a relationship with someone they met IN college.
I think I can name maybe 7 classmates of mine who had relationships during college, and all but one of those were with grad students or recent grads, not other undergrads (so if she goes to an LAC or more rural school that may be part of it).
Most people really didn’t start looking for relationships until either last semester senior year (if they knew they were going to stay in the area and wanted to start putting down roots) or until they’d moved and started working. I know it’s anecdotal, but I think that waiting to date (as your daughter is doing) is very very normal.
Our D has tons of male friends as well as many close female friends. I know she’s very particular and has set a high bar if what she wants in a good friend and a higher one for a love interest.
She says S has a high bar too. To be attractive to S, the woman has to be like D–attractive, fit, athletic, smart and like the outdoors, plus has to get along with D. Since S has been dating (casually), I think he’s found some females who meet the standard.
My oldest had a crush on a girl in high school, but I don’t believe has ever had a girl friend. He’s 28 now and more and more set in his nerdish ways. I’m not holding my breath.
My younger son went around in a co-ed pack in high school. There were some couples in the groups, but mostly they were just friends. I wasn’t even sure whether he preferred women to men. And then senior year I discover he’s had a girlfriend for six months he hadn’t bothered to tell us about. We’ve gotten to know her quite well since then. She’s great. The big challenge for them and their future relationship is whether they can manage to be in one place for any length of time.
S and D like keeping their social lives rather private and we respect that. We will have our ears perked if they ever start talking about a particular friend. I’m glad they have a nice social network and seem happy.
Ours had great luck using a dating-app, using a “just me” ordinary photo, honest assessment of interests, and stated desire to meet a compatible fellow college student. After several pleasant dates, met a “good match” attending another local university, and by goodness, they’re a committed couple, like “peas in a pod”. Recently listened to NPR piece on internet dating, noting these relations lead more often to committed relationships and marriage than more traditional methods of date-sourcing. Read NYT’s wedding announcements, which often flag dating site that brought couple together. Beats bar-hopping.
My D’s buddy and my nephew went to Creighton. Many of the students from nearby got married younger and were married in college and pharmacy school. D and her friends are all in mid to late 20s. To date, none are married and none have kids.
My niece who is in mid 30s has 2 kids and says many of her friends are still single, though they are interested. They haven’t met anyone that has worked out and it makes niece and friends sad. My other niece (her younger sister) got engaged at 30 and married a year later and just had a baby.
I just want my daughter to kiss a few frogs before she finds her prince. Above all, I wish her happiness. If she ever gets married, then I wish her wedded bliss like many of the rest of us. Now, you will forgive me, but I am going to bed. No doubt my other half will already be snoring blissfully.
Ha! You are reminding me of when my first was an infant. When she was asleep I would wake her up, and when she was awake there was nothing I wanted more than her going back to sleep… In other words, she’s fine! And give yourself a break from worrying, it sounds like she’s an awesome person.
I’m starting to believe in arranged marriages. >>>>>
Online match sites. I’m a big fan. My oldest son got married this weekend to the girl of all our dreams who he met online. I know many couple who met this way. It’s a modern matchmaker.
My D1 dated a boy for 3 weeks in 10th grade, but that was it until she went to college. She met a guy freshman year there in swing dance club, and they are still happily together 8 years later. D2… beats them off with a stick, has more admirers than she knows what to do with. But every time she gets into a relationship she thinks it is “too much work” and ends it within a couple of months. Sigh.
I also think that dating has changed alot since we were young. When I was in school, kids started pairing up as early at 4th or 5th grade (late 1960’s). The boy would give the girl an ID bracelet with his name on it and they would be “going steady”. Kids were in and out of “relationships” from then on through high school - with some being long-term and many couples got married right out of high school. People started worrying about you if you hadn’t settled down by the time you graduated from college. I had dated probably 20 or so boys by the time I graduated from college but was not sexually active until my senior year in college. I pretty much bailed when things got serious. I mean, I had a lot of fun, but I had places to go and people to see and did NOT want to be held back by a relationship. I got married at 28.
My daughters’ lives have been much different with hardly any casual dating with multiple short monogamous like me. D1’s friends rarely date at all, most don’t even drive. Her female friends don’t hang out with each other much either, they just constantly text each other (my bestie in HS and I were inseparable and spent lots of time together). I really don’t get it. My D1 has dated only three boys in high school for short periods. She is pretty and outgoing, smart and talented. She is dating a boy right now (after a 18 month dry spell) and is angsty about it because she really likes him but they’ll be going to colleges four hours apart. She wants to try to maintain a long distance relationship. She doesn’t at all understand the concept casually dating for fun or “playing the field” one person at a time. She can’t believe I dated so many boys and she doesn’t understand how I could have survived dating that many without getting a broken heart (that only happened once). She goes into each relationship thinking this guy is going to be “the one”. I tell her she’s too young for that (she’s 18) and that she should date around when she goes to college in the fall to make sure that she finds the best match for her. I think she is insecure and feels the need to be “liked” by someone. She has told me that if this long distance relationship doesn’t work she will be crushed (and they have only been dating for 3 months). I just wish she could be confident and just enjoy her college experience and not get hung up on having a committed boyfriend. Like others have said, I think kids are missing out on one of the best aspects of the college experience if they are in long distance relationships and don’t embrace the social opportunities. I enjoyed my college experience so much, I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I had been stuck with one person the entire time.
So, @Lindagaf , I don’t think the situation with your daughter and her friends is unusual these days as my D’s and friend’s experiences have been similar. I have a D2 who is a sophomore is very pretty, smart, and talented too, and she’s never been on a date - but she’s very shy. I do want my daughters to date, like you, but I don’t like the way that my oldest “needs” to be in a committed relationship wanting from the very start for the guy to be her Prince that she will eventually marry. I feel like she will end up getting hurt many times with that kind of attitude - or else just end up with the wrong guy. So my advice would be to count your blessings, your daughter’s time will come and hopefully she will be able to be more confident and mature in her thinking compared to my D1. Like you said, we seem to always be worrying about something.
Love will come to her, eventually. Hopefully she herself is not stressing over it. (If she is, help her by expressing confidence that she is loveable, and that when the time is right, love will happen.) It is very, very common for highly intelligent, top students to have their first relationships some time during college, in graduate school, or even later. For my husband, for me, and certainly for some of our younger relatives who are now in their twenties and thirties, our first serious relationships were not until college or beyond. One of our young relatives met his first girlfriend in law school… and eventually married her. His sister is in her thirties and this Passover was the first time she ever brought home a boyfriend!
We are liberal atheists with no qualms about premarital sex. We were all just waiting for a person we really, truly loved… and also did not have any choice in the matter because we were unable to find someone before then! Nice people but nerdy, and in some cases kind of shy!
Those of us who are married have wonderfully happy marriages now! If only we could have been confident that would happen when we were longing for a boy/girlfriend back in high school! I thank my parents for always reassuring me not to worry, it would happen someday when the right person came along. It did.
My niece is 30 and just announced her engagement. They’ve been dating for many, many years. I think he’s the main serious BF she’s ever had. She gets along with his family and her dad gets along with the fiancé.
I will be the contrary voice and point out that it is true she may not marry. Pew research estimated that one quarter of millenials won’t. I think the key is encouraging a full life rich with friendships and activity even if one ends up unmarried.
