<p>How many parents out there met their spouses in college? I just finished my frosh yr @ University of Michigan and many of my friends (including me) want to marry their college boyfriends or girlfriends. Is this a common phenomenon? Does this really occur as much as I think it does...lets say like 50% of the college population meets their spouse @ x school that they attend? Any opinions...</p>
<p>My college was all-male when I attended. </p>
<p>That would be less of a problem nowadays. ;)</p>
<p>I guess so LOL i completely didnt even think of that possibility....</p>
<p>Met my wife in grad school, and married several years after we left. Like mini, undergrad was all-male although we had an affiliated women's college on the other side of town.</p>
<p>Met my H through semi-mutual friends a year after we both graduated from rival schools. Had I met him through these friends during college, I NEVER would have gone out with him since he went to the wrong school.</p>
<p>I met my husband in college, but he graduated two years ahead of me. We didn't date again until after I graduated, and then married soon after.</p>
<p>My parents met througha mutual friend while at college. 4 yrs difference, but my mom was working on a masters degree at the same school still.</p>
<p>I met my husband in October of my FRESHMAN year in college! He was ahead of me in school, however. Even for my generation, we were unusual at our school as we married the summer after my soph year, though he had graduated. I still continued on at my college (Tufts) as his graduate school was in Boston and we lived in an apartment off campus in Cambridge between our two schools after we married. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>LOL, Soozie, I met my husband in October of my freshman year too. We didn't get married until after I graduated, however, which was a year after he did. It boggles my mind when I think about getting married at 22 and how, almost 33 years later, I'm still married to the same person. DS is 22, DD is almost 21, and if either of them announced an engagement I'd have a total hissy-fit. Interesting the way times have changed - back then, it was no big deal for 22 year olds to marry; now, 22 seems barely out of diapers, at least when talking about marriage. I've told my kids to take their time, and not to follow their parents' example. Meanwhile, DS met his current girlfriend (they've been together for 3½ years) during his freshman year, so it looks like history may be repeating itself after all.</p>
<p>My parents went to college together but didn't start dating until after they had graduated (I think they hooked up on a celebratory graduation trip with mutual friends). Dad had a serious girlfriend in college but she dumped him bc he wouldn't get his master's degree. My parents married 2 years after college.</p>
<p>I met my H our senior year of college, and married a year later. He chased me till I caught him.</p>
<p>Certain colleges seem to foster this phenomenon. My parents met at Cornell, and I have 4 sets of friends (married couples) my age that met there as well. Williams, post-Mini, seems to have a similar reputation. I don't remember the number of Williams students that marry each other, but I saw it once, and it was quite high, I thought. My daughter has been with the same guy since October of her freshman year. Broke up for 2 weeks a while ago, back together, more intense than ever. Part of me thinks they're too young, but the guy is fantastic and has become such a fixture in our home at holidays and such that I'll grieve if she ever dumps him.</p>
<p>Schools with a lot of alumni involvement = fosters relationships? :p</p>
<p>Supposedly 70% of Princeton people marry each other.</p>
<p>I do know of at least two happily married gay couples from my days at Williams.</p>
<p>There ya go. There's something in the air up there.</p>
<p>I met my husband shortly after I transferred to Yale junior year; we got married seven years later. Now that our daughter is there, I get sentimental flashbacks whenever I pass the dining hall where we first had lunch and got in a rip-roaring argument over whether the Beinecke Rare Book library, with its marble walls, was a glorious temple of learning or a decadent waste of money that should have gone to the poor. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Marcy, you are right that it more than boggles the mind if our kids today married as young as we did. I can't fathom it in a million years and hope it does not happen. But actually, even in MY generation, for college educated folks, I married younger than almost everyone. I was only 20 and he was 22 and I venture to say that I was likely the only married person in my class at graduation. So, it was pretty rare then too. I'm not counting people who do not go to college as they often marry young (or so it seems even here in my neck of the woods where I have read of two marriages from my older D's high school class already and she graduated a year ago!). Shudder......</p>
<p>Editrix...I can relate to your post about being back on campus and the exact spot where you met. When our kids were younger and if we happened to be in Boston with them, we would drive by Tufts to show them where we met and one time years ago, we took them to the very spot...the laundry room in Hill Hall. Then years later, as it turned out, my oldest child became interested in Tufts. I never cared if she applied there (we both went there) at all, but I noticed she had it on the list as it appealed to her. So, it was very weird for me to go back to campus, as a parent with a prospective student and seeing it through her eyes all over again. It became one of her favorites and we went back for an overnight in fall of senior year and for the accepted student event in April of senior year but she chose another school. But it just felt like all these memories came back just being there. Actually, tomorrow, I have to pick my D up in Boston as she finished a summer architecture intensive today at Harvard Design School and I went to graduate school at Harvard and I think it is gonna be weird for me to go back on that campus too but as a parent. I was not the one who dropped her off at the start of it so I have not been there yet but she was housed in the Law School dorms, but it feels funny for me to think of her exploring Harvard Square and all our old hangouts (some of which have changed, but some have not). </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>I went to England for my junior semester abroad. Within two weeks of arriving met this really nice, cute, smart 26 year old Brit, with a heavenly accent. We were engaged within 6 weeks, (when my parents arrived for a fast visit to find out what was going on). US goverment made us marry within 90 days of his coming to the US in the summer. I was just 21 and a feminist. I couldn't possibly have imagined marrying that young. We're still very happily married after 32 years...but we did wait 15 years to have children..too busy, I with my career and my husband with earning his Phd.
Be careful when you study abroad! I just heard of this happening to a friend's daughter...went to England and married an Australian she met there! Very very romantic. The one good thing is that you're guaranteed to return abroad to visit your spouse's family. I still love the UK.</p>
<p>Actually, my mother met my father when she was in college, at an all-woman's college. Obviously my father was not at the same college -- and my mom ended up dropping out after soph. year to get married. </p>
<p>I had a bf all through college, but then I went off to law school and the relationship did not last. I do have friends from college who married -- and stayed married -- but the vast majority of college relationships did not lead to marriage. </p>
<p>I personally am glad that I finished my education and was embarked on career before marriage & children, and I hope my daughter will do the same. When I was in lawschool, many of my female classmates were somewhat older, returning students - women in their early 30s on up who had married early and were returning to school to get their degrees. It was good for me to have older friends - it made for a richer law school experience -- but in general, many of these women lacked confidence in their own abilities, so the hiatus for child-rearing was not so great for their self-esteem. Fortunately, they perked up after the first semester of law school when the first set of grades were in - and they all had the highest grades. </p>
<p>But again, I think the ideal path is to finish the education first, and worry about marriage when both partners have a very good idea of who they are and what they want to do with their lives, and have a little bit of real-world experience under their belts. It doesn't really matter so much who you marry or where you met your spouse -- I'm just talking about when. (And in fairness I do also know people who married while still in college, even started families -- and they had o.k. lives too).</p>
<p>My wife and I met in law school, dated for the first time nine years later, and shocked many of our classmates by showing up married to each other at our ten-year reunion. (Some of them may have been just as surprised when we showed up still married to each other at our twenty-year reunion.)</p>