“Personally I think 29 or 30 is a good age to marry.”
I think it’s a good age to marry provided you can find or already have identified a good marriage prospect. When you are in college or grad school you have at your doorstep the greatest concentration of marriageable adults you will ever have in your life. After you leave college the pickings immediately get slimmer out there in the working world.and continue to dwindle as time goes by and others marry. By time she hits her early 30s an unmarried woman’s dating pool is much reduced compared to what it was a decade earlier. This trend continues until her mid to late 30s when things pick up again as the divorced dads start to show up.
Lindagaf- Your daughter and her friends sound so nice that I would like my son to go to school with them. I am wondering which school it is. They sound lovely.
“Marriageable adults. That just sounds so much about settling. Ugh. There are way worse things than living alone.”
I don’t disagree. Living alone is far better than being stuck in a miserable marriage. But as for “settling,” I think the notion that there is One True Soulmate out there waiting to be found, and one should wait however long it takes (perhaps forever) to find him or her is a fantasy, a potentially-destructive fantasy.
The trick to a happy, lasting marriage is not to hold out for Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right. The trick is to find someone whose imperfections you can live with and who in turn can live with yours.
Whether the pickings improve or worsen after college and grad/pro school depends on so many factors.
When I was a student, I was in serial serious relationships. I had a few dates and one serious BF in HS for several years, dated a few people and then had a multi-year serious relationship in college and dated a bit and then had another multi-year serious relationship in law school. Once I graduated and started working, I dated quite a few more men before settling into a serious relationship with the man who I married. I’ve never had a shortage of interesting eligible men to date.
S doesn’t seem to have a shortage of women either and I believe he’s pretty content; he’s dated at least a few women, tho he doesn’t share much of his personal life. D has 3 male housemates, so I believe she has a ready and reliable source of single male companionship, tho both S and D have graduated from college.
I’m hoping my kids are satisfied with their romantic lives but the subject hasn’t yet arisen.
I think romantic love that doesn’t involve a relationship is not a relationship. It’s one sided, or illicit, or unrequited, or something else, but that’s not romance.
Dd is going to be a senior in college. She wants to go to grad school (med school) so I think it will be a very long time before she settles down. She has been so focused on her classes as she is engineering/premed that she hasn’t really taken the time to meet or date anyone. She feels the guys in her classes are too nerdy. (though they seem to like her) I have had a few parents ask about my daughter though. She doesn’t want an arranged marriage but I have been getting referrals from friends since most of them have kids out of college and they are keeping their eyes open for the perfect addition to their family. Our family jokes with dd that the right one will have to go through the family interview process. She dreads introducing anyone to my family. I am guessing the interrogation of the poor guy from my siblings would be like getting a security clearance. For now she is focused on her career goals and when she meets the right person she will have my blessing.
That doesn’t seem to be the case among those of my parents or my generation. Most of them married in their 30s or 40s and are fine. The only cousins who married younger than that both ended up divorced* before marring a second time in the “normal age” for my extended family.
Going by their experience, lesson seems to be if one marries too early to conform to parental/larger societal expectations of getting married by early-mid-20s, the marriage isn’t likely to last.
One was among the oldest in my generation who really wasn't ready for marriage in his mid-20's and was pushed into it by parental/culture of his local area in suburban CA. After a few decades, he married again and now is a proud dad.
Another found her first marriage was a mistake and divorced him in her early 30’s sometime during my HS years. Found the second marriage was the charm. She’s now happily married with a much better spouse with 3 kids one of whom is about ready to start college in a year or two.
No, I am saying that you are confusing a platonic relationship with a romantic relationship. I don’t want my thread shut down, so please start your own thread.
Put me in the arranged marriage list S1 is charming, sweet, funny, athletic, smart, loves all sorts of interesting things, lives to travel, has a great steady job. Oh, and loves kids. Hasn’t dated in years and while we once thought his female friends from college would eventually notice him, that hasn’t happened. He’s the guy they call in a crisis, or during a breakup, but he’s firmly in the friend zone. In a sort of role reversal, he is more interested in something lasting, but the women he knows are very much into their independance and girlfriends and nightlife. As if a man is a giant millstone to be avoided at all costs, and only useful as a pretty accessory, or they’d have to give up their feminist card.
That’s one role I dread having as I hate serving as someone’s effective therapist…especially if the same individual makes it a regular habit.
After suffering through too many friends and acquaintances(male and female), it’s a reason why I minimize interactions with those who try using me in such a manner.
“I think that nowadays there is a lot of hooking up and casual relationships going on, driven by the guys more so than the girls. And a lot of girls aren’t into those types of ‘relationships’, hence they are single longer. Nothing wrong with that imo.”
Hasn’t been my observations. Of course there are casual hookups on campus but that was going on back in my college days as well. Both of my kids’ colleges have plenty of longer term relationships, boyfriend/girlfriend type stuff as evidenced by their own relationships and those of their friends and classmates.
My daughter got married at 25 to a guy she met in 8th grade. They went to different high schools and didn’t run into each other again until ten years later.
Ah well going to throw out the general reminder that dating patterns and sexual relationship patterns haven’t changed really in several decades.
So…
Doesn’t explain anything since it’s nothing new.
The marriage age has dropped, yes, because cohabitation has gone up. The actual first age of cohabitation with romantic partners hasn’t changed in several decades… there just isn’t as strong of a desire to make it “legal” anymore.
@momofthreeboys you are so right about all this grand gesture nonsense. I hope this is a fad that goes away forever, and quick. My D would die of mortification if any guy she ends up with does a flash mob proposal or invites the whole family to be part of it, and other things of that ilk. She is shy and private. I feel for the quiet guys who didn’t ask a girl to prom or whatever because of the whole promposal thing. I am actually grateful that it’s acceptable these days for kids to go to prom with friends. That’s what my D did. Back in our day, if you didn’t have a date, you didn’t go to prom.
“She has been so focused on her classes as she is engineering/premed that she hasn’t really taken the time to meet or date anyone. She feels the guys in her classes are too nerdy. (though they seem to like her)”
My D is a Chem E. While we were looking for colleges we toured Rose Hulman and someone asked one of the few female students about the dating prospects. She smiled and said “for the guys it can be rough, for the girls the odds are good but the goods are odd”
Meeting people after college: I used to lie awake at night worrying about how my daughter was ever going to meet someone. She had not had any serious relationships in college. The field in which she worked (and still does) is substantially feminized – probably at least 80% women. At the job she had until a couple of years ago, the only men she dealt with on a regular basis were a 40-year-old gay man and the 75-year-old CEO. She had some male friends from college who lived near her and whom she saw regularly, but they were all gay. She had two straight male friends that she saw with some frequency, and both had long-term girlfriends. She was in a master’s program part-time that was 70% female. Between her job and the masters program, she had very little free time, and she seemed to spend most of it on maintaining her core friendships and, yes, her cat.
Finally, I asked her about it – How do you meet new people? How would you meet someone to fall in love with? (As it turned out later, she already had, but she wasn’t ready to tell me that at the time.) What she said was, “With all the internet dating services, if you are not meeting people you have a good chance of liking, it’s because you are choosing not to do that, or because you’re completely unwilling to give it any meaningful time. Not that you click with everyone you meet, but meeting appropriate people isn’t a problem at all.” Her completely appropriate, very classy boyfriend of 3-1/2 years now came from OK Cupid.
Of course, she lives in Brooklyn, which is a little like a gigantic college campus for people 21-35.
Someone upthread commented on how many New York Times wedding announcements note that the couple met via one online dating service or another. No kidding! I swear, last weekend it was at least 60% of them. Including [gulp] Tinder!
S1 is charming, sweet, funny, athletic, smart, loves all sorts of interesting things, lives to travel, has a great steady job. Oh, and loves kids. Hasn’t dated in years and while we once thought his female friends from college would eventually notice him, that hasn’t happened. He’s the guy they call in a crisis, or during a breakup, but he’s firmly in the friend zone. In a sort of role reversal, he is more interested in something lasting, but the women he knows are very much into their independance and girlfriends and nightlife. As if a man is a giant millstone to be avoided at all costs, and only useful as a pretty accessory, or they’d have to give up their feminist card.