<p>Dated 6 months before engagement.
Engaged a little less than a year.
Never lived together.
Married 25 years.
I was 22 and he was 27 when we married.</p>
<p>Dated six months, engaged eight months, married 22 years next June.</p>
<p>OP here. Thanks for all the great replies. I guess there is no single right way. I am neither asking or getting asked. My daughter is the one in question after a very short (6 months) relationship.</p>
<p>Met at work in January. Started dating in July. The following January we got married. Celebrate our 20th anniversary this January.</p>
<p>OP, looks like six months of dating has been pretty successful on this thread. :)</p>
<p>molliebatmit – I LOVE your proposal story and your parents story as well. My inlaws met in homeroom – they were alphabetically next to each other. They’ve been married well over 50 years now. DH and I dated for 1 1/2 years and were engaged for 9 months. We celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2 weeks :).</p>
<p>Met in a working situation and were friends for two years. Dated for 2 years - then moved in together for 4 years. Had our son 5 years after getting married. Married for 23 years. No one can say we rushed into anything. ;-)</p>
<p>This thread got me thinking about the role of lust in a long-term relationship. From the first time I met my husband to the present, I think he’s HOT. (This embarrasses my children no end.) 26 years of marriage and still… I wonder about those first-we-were-friends relationships. Is lust still important? I mean, I know that lust has gotten DH and me through some rough periods–can a marriage last without it?</p>
<p>date number one sept 17
engaged nov 15
married april 20…no not pregnant! …rofl</p>
<p>Married 19 years April 2010</p>
<p>First date, New Year’s Eve, moved in together several months later, lived together about a year, got married (me 24, DH 23), got pregnant 8 months later, baby 1 born when I was 25 and DH was 24 - but he looked about 17-years-old. People could not believe that he was the daddy! 
DH was a produce clerk making just above minimum wage and attending CC when we got married. If I had been my parents, I would have been truly distressed about the whole thing! He graduated with a BA when DD was a baby, we both went back to school to get grad degrees and had another baby… married for 25+ years, very happily.</p>
<p>3innest, if this does happen in your child’s life, do you imagine you’ll have 2innest or 4?</p>
<p>Dated year and half, engaged six weeks, did not live together, married now for almost 19 years</p>
<p>Best advice that I received was to date at least a year.</p>
<p>My mother, age 19, began her sophomore college year and decided it was definitely time to get married. She dated 6 boys, met all their families, picked one, got married 6 weeks later. Been married 47 years. I wonder if my paternal grandparents had heart palpitations–my mom was the oldest of 7 kids, dirt poor, alcoholic dad who beat his wife and kids. My grandma signed for my dad to marry (<21) and the only thing she insisted upon was they both graduate from college.</p>
<p>Me, H1, dated 5 years, married at age 20, lasted 10 years. I have never regretted marrying young. S1 born at 25 yo.</p>
<p>H2, met July 1, married following Jan 25th. Married now for 15 years. Been some long ones, but I definitely view marriage as “till death due us part”. Some days he comes really close…ha!</p>
<p>I’m not convinced length of courtship/dating/engagement plays that much into success of the marriage. Maybe it’s just me. I could tell in very short order if I could be married to someone!</p>
<p>Dated 2 1/2 months before engagement. Married two months later. Married 47 years so far. Did not live together. I knew, before we ever dated, there was a good chance that he was the one. I was 23, he was 26.</p>
<p>Kinda like you’d know wow can’t hurt much just happened.</p>
<p>I knew DH from work. One day he offered to come over and fix a broken light in my apartment. He returned several days later to watch the US defeat Russia in the 1980 Olympic hockey game. Several days later we went on our first date to see “Kramer vs. Kramer”. We were engaged in November 1981 and got married in July 1982. </p>
<p>DD, on the other hand, is in a long-term relationship going back to their college days. Its been almost 4 years and personally, I don’t think either one of them is ready for marriage.</p>
<p>3innest
I don’t think you can predict based on length of dating, but rather, the characters of the 2 people. The only people who have responded are those still married.</p>
<p>My H and I met the summer between our junior and senior year of college. That summer we were both living away from home and we basically moved in together a week after meeting (it was student type housing so it was easy to do). That September we both returned to our schools and began a long distance relationship (about 6 hours drive time). The September after we graduated (15 months after first meeting) I moved to his state. Four months later we moved across the country so he could take his ‘dream job’. That was 1980. We became engaged 6 weeks after moving to the west coast and were married less than two years later. We will celebrate our 29th anniversary this year. </p>
<p>I find this thread interesting because my college freshman D has shared with me that she and her boyfriend of 4 months have already discussed marriage. They knew each other in high school and she had a crush on him. He was a senior and she was a freshman. They were in the same leadership class as they were both ASB and/or class officers. Over Christmas break she shared with me how on her final day of class when she was a HS freshman she sobbed to her friends that she would never see that senior boy ever again. </p>
<p>Fast forward to her HS senior year. It turns out that he attends the college she decides to attend and he contacts her via Facebook. (There was no contact between them once they graduated - just “sightings”). Within 2 weeks of arriving on the college campus they are dating and it sounds like within the first month or two they decide that this is forever. They are talking about becoming officially engaged December 2010 when he graduates.</p>
<p>He is a very nice kid, good family, works hard and would treat my D very well. But they are so young!!! If I try to caution my D that this is still in the early stages of a relationship and it may not go as expected she gets mad at me. I have decided not to be ‘realistic’ and let her run her own life. I also realized I have no objections to the young man, I’m just concerned about my D’s young age. I found reading all these stories about young love and it’s lasting power has helped.</p>
<p>4 years — married 28 years</p>
<p>Met wife in 10th grade at public high school.
Started dating in 11th grade. Study partners and lab partners in high school.
Both got accepted to Harvard. Randomly placed in same freshman dorm.
Got engaged the summer after graduation in 1981.
Married the next summer. Both 23.
Married 28 years this summer. Always knew we would get married.
4 kids. (Twins just finished applying to college.)</p>