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I question the entire thesis that the longer you wait to get married the more likely you are to succeed in marriage.
The longer you are single, the better you get at being single. But the life skills required to be successful at being a single person versus a married person are different.
When you are single being too attached to any one specific guy is probably a bad choice. Relationships tend to be transitory and the successful single female is the person who is good at moving on to the next guy. The more emotionally detached a female is in a relationship, the less problems she has with break ups. The more guys a female dates, the less emotionally attached she is to any specific guy. The primary skill a woman learns from dating a lot of guys is emtional detachment and that when there is a problem in a relationship, breaking up is often the best tactic. The other issue with dating lots of guys, is that she is gaining lots of baggage from dating lots of guys. Rare is the woman whose self-esteem is improved from having 30 different boyfriends/sex partners. Instead those are the women who are bulimic.
Marriage and single life require different skill sets. In marriage especially when kids are involved, relationship skills become paramount. There are huge financial costs associated with both starting and ending a marriage. Additionally there are emotional costs on any kids from the of the marriage as well. In short, in marriage because its more difficult to end a relationship, figuring out how to fix and address problems becomes that much more important.
People who wait too long to get married have a who lot of social proof that solution to any problem is to break up. They actually have poor relationship skills from all of there time being single. They have a bunch of past dating experience that investing in the relationship at the expense of the individual is a bad choice. Yet that experience makes them a worse spouse.
The older people got married, it seems like the worse the outcomes. I had an aunt who got married at 33 and divorced at 35. As I look around at friends and cousins the longer they waited the worse they did. Whereas I know several women who got married at 20 or 21 and they are still happily married.
In terms of child birth, the earlier you do it, the less problems your baby will have, the more strength and energy you will have for raising your kids and the better your body handles child birth. If you look at the teen age moms, there boobs held up better after childbirth than the women who had kids later.
The more sex partners a woman has, the more likely she is to have had at some point a venerial disease and that also creates problems regarding being able to concieve a child.
Starter marriage?? Wow! Some folks obviously are not too hopeful going into marriage, eh?
I learned that term RIGHT HERE...on the Relationships sub-forum. The exact words, if I recall, were "...coming off of a starter marriage." I thought, "Wow, this is progress...."
I learned that term RIGHT HERE...on the Relationships sub-forum. The exact words, if I recall, were "...coming off of a starter marriage." I thought, "Wow, this is progress...."
Ooooh, I don't like that...I've heard "marry the first time for love and the second time for money" and I thought that was bad enough!!
I learned that term RIGHT HERE...on the Relationships sub-forum. The exact words, if I recall, were "...coming off of a starter marriage." I thought, "Wow, this is progress...."
This term's been around for a while - books, websites, and all... Just in case it hasn't come across your mind, the media will plant it... just like with anything else.
You can say that again. I'd say women need to wait until they are at least 35. I think in general men and women are equally as immature in their own "special ways".....and hopefully with experiences, trial and error, and learning they will be stable and mature enough to handle a relationship by 35.
One of my friends who is around 28 still thinks and acts like a 16 year old. It is embarrassing for him. He is divorced and has a child but is able to hold down a job for long periods which is pretty good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by robertpolyglot
Yeah, some people need to wait even longer than the popular 26-30 window. And thank you for NOT using the term "starter marriage."
I question the entire thesis that the longer you wait to get married the more likely you are to succeed in marriage.
The longer you are single, the better you get at being single. But the life skills required to be successful at being a single person versus a married person are different.
When you are single being too attached to any one specific guy is probably a bad choice. Relationships tend to be transitory and the successful single female is the person who is good at moving on to the next guy. The more emotionally detached a female is in a relationship, the less problems she has with break ups. The more guys a female dates, the less emotionally attached she is to any specific guy. The primary skill a woman learns from dating a lot of guys is emtional detachment and that when there is a problem in a relationship, breaking up is often the best tactic. The other issue with dating lots of guys, is that she is gaining lots of baggage from dating lots of guys. Rare is the woman whose self-esteem is improved from having 30 different boyfriends/sex partners. Instead those are the women who are bulimic.
Marriage and single life require different skill sets. In marriage especially when kids are involved, relationship skills become paramount. There are huge financial costs associated with both starting and ending a marriage. Additionally there are emotional costs on any kids from the of the marriage as well. In short, in marriage because its more difficult to end a relationship, figuring out how to fix and address problems becomes that much more important.
People who wait too long to get married have a who lot of social proof that solution to any problem is to break up. They actually have poor relationship skills from all of there time being single. They have a bunch of past dating experience that investing in the relationship at the expense of the individual is a bad choice. Yet that experience makes them a worse spouse.
The older people got married, it seems like the worse the outcomes. I had an aunt who got married at 33 and divorced at 35. As I look around at friends and cousins the longer they waited the worse they did. Whereas I know several women who got married at 20 or 21 and they are still happily married.
In terms of child birth, the earlier you do it, the less problems your baby will have, the more strength and energy you will have for raising your kids and the better your body handles child birth. If you look at the teen age moms, there boobs held up better after childbirth than the women who had kids later.
The more sex partners a woman has, the more likely she is to have had at some point a venerial disease and that also creates problems regarding being able to concieve a child.
I will give you credit for arguing your points well, you make a clear case for your opinions and you state them well. I think you make a lot of good points, even if I totally disagree with your thesis, I appreciate your skills for stating your opinions so well.
I don't think, however, that it's a good idea for anyone to have kids at a young age. It's kids having kids. Nobody who is 18 is actually mature, no matter how mature what they do may seem like. Sure, LeBron was playing basketball then, he matured faster than most people, Hilary Duff was already a public figure and doing music and movies. But the average person who is just 18 is still a kid. They don't have any real emotional maturity and they are still too young to understand how to take care of someone else well. It's also not a good burden to place on anyone because they never develop a life for themselves. They just end up focusing on someone else's life. What kind of an existence is that? If everyone went through life that way would even be the point of it? Get barely old enough, have kids, then your kids do the same, it would be an endless cycle of mediocrity, of nobody being able to pursue any truly great goals or live their own lives, but instead having to make their life priorities match up with someone else's all of the time.
I think despite the solid argumentation of your points, to play Devil's Advocate here, you don't consider the possibility that the more men a girl dates, the more she realizes what she likes, what she doesn't like, and the more relationship experience she has in general before making a large commitment. I believe that could make a girl appreciate her spouse that much more, or the opposite is also true. If she has dated lots of jerks in the past, and meets a really great guy in her late 20s, she is going to realize a guy like that isn't so common after all and he is worth holding onto. But if she gets married early, to the first guy who comes along, she may be curious -- what did I miss? Could I have done better? Because she's never experienced much else, she wouldn't realize the value of what she has.
You can say that again. I'd say women need to wait until they are at least 35. I think in general men and women are equally as immature in their own "special ways".....and hopefully with experiences, trial and error, and learning they will be stable and mature enough to handle a relationship by 35.
One of my friends who is around 28 still thinks and acts like a 16 year old. It is embarrassing for him. He is divorced and has a child but is able to hold down a job for long periods which is pretty good.
I agree with this. In the interest of being politically correct I won't say that I think women are in general more immature at the same age than guys, but I think that's more true than the converse, which is always argued so vehemently by girls. My primary example is high school girls, ones who are 16, 17, 18. They are supposed to be "more mature than guys," but like everyone else I went to high school, I don't see it at all. The best example that, to me, indicates girls if anything don't mature as fast as guys, or certainly no faster, is the way that high school girls treat relationships. Ask 1,000 high school girls in a relationship if they think their boyfriend and them are in love and will last forever, I guarantee about 50% of them will say yes. They really are that stupid and naive. Ask 1,000 guys in the same position, I doubt even 5% of them would say yes. Guys know high school romance is no big deal, and when girls at that age get all indignant (we see this in the movies, too), "He's just in it for the sex! Guys are so immature, all they want is sex!" No, that shows a degree of maturity that obviously the girls have not developed. The guys realize that it's early in their lives, it's just high school, of course this relationship ultimately won't go anywhere so they might as well enjoy it for what it is -- fun!
The girls seem unable to mature fast enough to understand that until they're in college. I'm not talking about all girls or even most maybe, but a large percentage of girls really do think their high school relationships are "true love." I haven't seen this so-called girl maturity at all. What I've seen is a lack of a sense of humor and perspective, which I don't call maturity. Guys can joke around with each other, call each other names, and playfully hit one another, camaraderie, and they are usually very loyal to each other, especially let's say on sports teams in high school. Girls, by contract, stab each other in the back, make horrible comments about one another, call each other sluts, and are in general absolutely vicious to one another at that age. My sister went through all of this. I'm sorry but to me, the facts are all there -- girls mature slower than guys in almost every respect but physically, where girls often get taller than guys younger. Physically, however, is not emotionally, and I think emotionally girls growth is slower than guys.
Yet the stereotype is somehow that girls are more mature, which I can only presume stems from misguided notions like that a high school girl wanting a kid is "mature" but a high school boy wanting to play video games is "immature." In the sense that mature adults are the ones who are supposed to have kids, not kids in high school, I guess that's true. In reality, however, having the maturity to have fun when you're younger rather than make major life decisions that can screw up your whole life would be a form of maturity a lot more advanced than thinking about having kids and your wedding when you're in high school. I also notice that girls don't seem to have as much of a sense of humor in general, especially in high school, which I guess you can mistake for "maturity" if you think being mature is not laughing at fart jokes, and being immature is laughing at them. I, however, will continue to laugh at fart jokes until I am dead and gone, because they are funny. It doesn't take an historian to look through the great comedians of all time and realize that 98% of them were guys (Ellen Degeneres? Rosie O'Donnell? Queen Latifah? These are "leading" comedians today, and none of them are funny in the slightest, and two of them are fat and obnoxious). I just don't think girls are as funny as guys, in general, I have no idea why that is, if it's socially improper for a girl to be that way, or if it's just not ladylike or what. But that is another reason I think girls are seen as "more mature" when they are not; they're just less funny, that's all.
In my life I have never seen any evidence to indicate that girls mature faster than guys in anything but a physical sense. I've seen everything to the contrary.
I vote 30. If I had married at 21 I'd be married to a guy in a suck band with a motorcycle and long hair. I am not even the same person I was back then. I used to say in my teens that I'm not getting married until I'm at least 30 because you may as well get married... you're too OLD to have a life anyway ahhhh youth. I think of your 20's as a huge transitional time, by 30 you are more confident with who you are. My parents got married at 18 and 19 and they just celebrated their 37th anniversary, so it can work out. My mom said you just have to make sure you grow together not apart when you marry young.
My choice really gaps two groups. I think between 25-28.
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ahhhh youth. I think of your 20's as a huge transitional time, by 30 you are more confident with who you are. My parents got married at 18 and 19 and they just celebrated their 37th anniversary, so it can work out. My mom said you just have to make sure you grow together not apart when you marry young.
