<p>Met at start of my freshman year in college, his sophomore year; I was 18, he was 19. Love at first sight for me, but I didn’t act on it because he was gorgeous, seemed to be a bit of a player, and I thought I’d get my heart broken. So we were just friends our first year in college, went home for summer break (our separate ways), came back in the fall thrilled to see each other, and have been together since. Got engaged my senior year in college and married the summer after I graduated. (He had graduated the year before.) Just celebrated 30th wedding anniversary, although we waited quite a few years to have kids. Absolutely no regrets!</p>
<p>Both kids are in college now, and both are in relationships, which has led to me recently pondering many of the same questions the OP is. The world has changed so much since the late 1970s. Now it’s almost the norm for couples to live together for a long time, often having a child (or two) before even considering marriage. Also, weddings are more of a production/event now, compared to how (relatively) inexpensive and simple they were then. Our families were pretty conservative so we didn’t really even consider living together without being married, and we knew we wanted to be together, so … It’s certainly worked out well, and I think I would be OK with my child wanting to marry right out of college, if that’s what the couple wanted to do. That age seems a lot younger now, though, than it did back then. (My perspective, perhaps, or maybe the way the world has changed?)</p>
<p>"Well, she turned out to be a terror, picking fights with cabdrivers and waitresses, and being very difficult with my friends as well.</p>
<p>Things were never quite the same after that weekend.</p>
<p>We never married.</p>
<p>But I have always regretted not marrying her, and if I could, I would go back in time, and not go on that weekend trip."</p>
<p>I don’t know what this says about the woman you did marry…but no …unless you are a glutton for punishment…sounds like the woman you wanted to marry is a nightmare…</p>
<p>I told my daughter that the guy she marries should worship her. If he doesn’t treat her well after a couple of years…it is not going to get better…20 years in, it will be ugly. Plus I said watch how he treats others…and watch the guy’s dad…some guys, not all, are similar to their dads. </p>
<p>My daughter knows what is good for her though.</p>
<p>To the OP…once the intensity of the relationship fades…are you really going to like the other person? Respect the other person? And vice versa? One of the reasons couples don’t make it is contempt. Each person should not have contempt for the other. And hopefully, communication is open.</p>
<p>Yeah, contempt would be bad. Really bad. If you get to the stage where you feel contempt for the other person, you should have left before that or gone for counseling.</p>
<p>I met H 2 days after graduating from an all women’s school. We dated on and off, got serious, I broke it off, then we got back together. Married 2 years after we first met. Married now 25 years.</p>
<p>Do NOT tell my daughter this…I have a modified version that I will tell her so she won’t think this is the way to a perfect marriage…</p>
<p>I met my husband abroad at a conference both attending from the US. I was 25 in grad school and he was 35 and faculty at different universities. I thought he was perfect for me and wrote in my diary that night that he was the one or I had to find his twin. …so I have written proof. I made it my goal to start a relationship ASAP. Success!</p>
<p>We had an intense and very short romantic interlude (3 days?) and he went back to States and I stayed doing research. When I returned to the US we had a long distance relationship for about 6 months–total time together–12 days. I decided to transfer to his university, changed my PhD field and moved in with him but with the stipulation that we would be engaged within the year or I would leave. We were engaged in exactly one year, married the following year after I took my prelims, first child 9 months later. Second child and PhD 4 years after marriage. He says we decided to get married on 12 days of experience but I know that I had our future locked in within the first 1/2 hour of meeting him. We will celebrate 21st anniversary this month! </p>
<p>I would tell my daughter that this was nuts and on bad days I know it was nuts but we have so many more good days than bad days so what if its nuts?</p>
<p>I met my H in 1984 at my first real job. He was working there part time while finishing grad school. We moved in together 2 years later and were engaged 3 years after that. We were married 9 months after we were engaged. D1 was born 14 months later and D2 2 1/2 years after D1.</p>
<p>We celebrated our 21st anniversary last month and will be empty nesters in a year when D2 heads to college. H has always been my best friend and the one person I never get tired of spending time with!</p>
<p>I met my husband in college. We were friends for about 8 months, dated for 1.5 years, and were engaged for 1.5 years. I would have preferred a shorter engagement, but we had to graduate from college first! We were married in July after graduating in May and recently celebrated our 16th anniversary. The kids are 14, 12, and 8.</p>
<p>DH and I met as juniors in college- both 20. Did the long-distance thing after graduation, got engaged after 3 1/2 years together, then married a year after that (had just turned 25). We had our first daughter when we were 28, then twin daughters at 31. Just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary. I don’t think we were too young for any of this, but when I think about our oldest daughter, who will be 23 in December…she seems too young to be even close to marriage! :)</p>
<p>Met H in a bar when we were both 21. I had recently graduated from college and he was starting Senior year. Got engaged 1 1/2 years later and married the next September. Never lived within 600 miles of each other until we married, so people were not giving us much hope. Celebrated 31st wedding anniversary last week.</p>
<p>I enjoyed reading these posts by people who married in their early twenties and are still married. We don’t know anyone who married early that is still married to the same spouse although in most cases the second spouse is really great and the “newer” marriages are strong.</p>
<p>We met at a National Model UN conference in 1982, though we had been introduced at the same conference the year before. He remembered the previous year; I didn’t. We were juniors in college. I was in the process of breaking up with my fiance at that point for a variety of (as it turns out) good reasons, esp. as I see he is now on his third marriage and it’s always “her fault.” </p>
<p>H asked me out to lunch and we went to a Jewish deli in midtown (not Carnegie). That night, my plans fell through and he said he didn;'t want me stuck at hte hotel by myself, so asked me to join him and a bunch of Georgetown MUNers for Chinese, but we’d need to go dutch. Fine by me. By the end of that weekend, we sat on a huge rock in Central Park and he said he was going to marry me. !!! </p>
<p>We started talking on the phone (long distance; I was at UGA, he was at Penn), saw each other later in the summer, and did the long distance thing for a year. By the time he graduated (December 82) we were talking about the long term. I looked into transferring to UMass and he went up with me to look at the program in March 83. That night, he proposed. I moved to Philly in April, transferred to Temple and we were married eight months later. Waited on kids for seven years, mostly by choice, partly by infertility. We were one of the first to get married, but our friends who married five years later than we did had kids before we did.</p>
<p>It will be 28 years in December. Not always sure we’d make it, but here we are!</p>
<p>My older S and his GF met junior year (she was an exchange student @ his school) and are planning to get married in two years. They will be about the same age we were, and boy, it feels young. OTOH, they have their heads screwed on straight, want to get careers established, travel and experience the world. They just want to do that together.</p>
<p>I had a bet with my mother - she claimed that if I went on a date with someone that was nice that I normally would say no to then I would probably like them. So, I said - OK - your on. I always seemed to date the wrong guys…fast forward two weeks later.</p>
<p>I met my husband when I was 28 and he was 29 through friends at a bar. We talked for a bit, he was nice enough but not someone I would normally date and we parted ways. I then ran into him about six times during the next several weeks. He asked me out, my mother’s voice in my brain urged me to say yes and the rest is history.</p>
<p>We dated for about 18 months, became engaged and got married six months later. </p>
<p>I should have listened to my mother sooner.</p>
<p>dated for 3 years- engaged on a monday and married on that friday- 27 and H 32. i thought a long engagement would be too stressful. we have a theory- the more expensive the wedding the less the longevity. What do you think?</p>
<p>Met first week of freshman year; more or less exclusive by the end of semester.
After graduation, he went off to grad school 5 hours from where I got my first job.
Engaged toward the end of his first year of grad school;
married when he finished his courses a year later.
Relocated, new jobs, I did the grad school thing, bought a house, so we waited 5 1/2 years before kids.
It was 33 years this spring.
We are now empty nesters in that same house!</p>
I don’t think the age is relevant as long as they are not children and responsible. Some people are ready at 22, some aren’t until 32 or 42. But I do believe the person you’re marrying is way more important than the age you are. What a shame it would be to pass up a wonderful person because you think you’re too young, only to find it hard to meet another wonderful person 10 years later. I don’t understand how falling in love and being happy stops you from a fulfilling career or life or maturing. I’ve seen way too many people put off that most important (in my opinion) part of life to further their career or become financially set first. Money does not buy happiness.</p>
<p>H and I met freshman year- had the same engineering block schedule. Can’t say it was love at first sight for me because he hung around with 2 friends and the trio reminded me of the 3 stooges. The other stooges ended up dropping out and then it took me a while to realize that H was interested in me and not my one girlfriend who I always sat with in class. Meanwhile I was interested in another guy in our block schedule but soon realized he was a pothead and that ended that attraction.The first clue that H was interested in me went over my head- he asked me in chem lab to help him light his bunsen burner! His pick up lines never got any better but I slowly came to appreciate many of his other attributes. We married a year after graduation and just celebrated our 29th anniversary on 9/11/11.</p>
<p>When DH proposed, he listed 17 reasons why it made financial sense to get married. You can only imagine the reaction he had when S and GF told us they have been keeping a notebook on the reasons to get married, potential issues, etc. and they wanted to ask us questions about finances, budgeting, etc.</p>
<p>I’m a bit surprised by people who married young in the 1970’s saying that things were different back then and people were marrying younger. If you go back to the 60’s maybe but not the 70’s or 80’s, that’s when the age of marriage was climbing steadily, except maybe in the south. People were living together a lot back then, although I will admit it was kept a bit quieter than it is now. I remember a girlfriend marrying at 23 and we all (her friends) were crazed that she was getting married at such a young age. Maybe I’m tainted in my view because I’m from NYC but that’s how I remember it!</p>
<p>I do think standards in New York City, at least among professionals, are different from most other places – people get married much later there. Of my friends/relatives living there, only a few got married before 30, and each of those was a somewhat special situation (one very long-term couple, one woman in her late twenties marrying a man 10 years older, one birth-control slip-up). Outside of New York, most of our (heterosexual) friends who married did so in their mid/late 20s.</p>
<p>^^^ Yes. DH was from NYC. Getting married at 22 was almost unheard of among his peers, but was considered relatively late (!) where I lived in HS.</p>
<p>I’m not from NYC, but the way I remember the 60s and 70s was that in the 60s people didn’t live together yet. That started in the 70s.</p>
<p>There were lots of people who got married relatively young in the 70s and then got divorced. Kind of an epidemic.</p>
<p>In the early 90s, when I was in my 40s, I met a lot of twenty-somethings with unhappy memories of the disruptions caused by their parents’ divorces.</p>
If he doesn’t treat her well after a couple of years…it is not going to get better…20 years in, it will be ugly. Plus I said watch how he treats others…and watch the guy’s dad…some guys, not all, are similar to their dads. </p>
although in most cases the second spouse is really great and the “newer” marriages are strong.</p>